Voices: Mea Culpa: ‘He gave it 1,188 per cent’

We sometimes use percentages greater than 100, but they do not generally help the reader, unless we are quoting a footballer who says he “gave it 110 per cent”.

We had this headline on Thursday: “Popular London outdoor swimming spot sees 1,188 per cent increase in bacteria.” We might as well have said “a huge increase” because no one knows how much 1,188 per cent is. Having thought about it and checked my arithmetic, it is more than a twelvefold increase. We could have said that.

In the text of the report, we said that the actual increase in E coli in the Serpentine Lido in Hyde Park, London, was “1,188.8 per cent”. Giving a test-sample figure to five significant figures is an example of another common bamboozlement, that of spurious accuracy. The actual increase was from a count of 45 to 580: rendering that to the nearest tenth of one per cent serves no useful purpose.

Go forth and multiply: Another headline on Thursday said: “Multiple people dead after private jet crashes in San Diego neighbourhood.” I know this is how some Americans speak, and one of them was quoted in the article – the assistant fire chief said there had been “a direct hit to multiple homes” – but British people would usually say “several people” if, as in this case, they didn’t know how many exactly but knew that it was more than one.

Singularly inadequate: We confused our singulars and plurals in Wednesday’s editorial: “It is some months since anything resembling an adequate supply of food and medicines were provided to keep blameless Palestinian civilians alive, and famine, as well as war and pestilence, now stalks the Holy Land in grim biblical fashion.”

Thanks to Sue Alexander for reminding us that “an adequate supply” is a singular noun, so it should be “was provided”. She suggested a more elegant solution, though, which would be to replace “an adequate supply of” with “enough”.

Safety break: In a sports report, we said: “Lewis Hamilton was fortuitous in various safety car interludes but still carried off a typically composed performance on track.” As Roger Thetford pointed out, we meant “fortunate”, meaning lucky. Or we could have said his escapes from the “safety car interludes” were fortuitous, meaning happening by lucky chance.

Gold suspension: We reported an unusual crime story thus: “A man involved in the plot to steal an 18-carat gold toilet, valued at £4.75m, from Blenheim Palace has avoided prison after being given a suspended sentence.” This implies that there were two events: first, the would-be thief was given a suspended sentence, and later he avoided prison. We could have said “when he was given”.

Murder mystery: Our report of the sale of Abraham Lincoln’s gloves began: “The blood-stained leather gloves that were in Lincoln’s pocket the night he was assassinated have been sold for $1.52m at a controversial auction.” That makes it seem as if they were blood-stained before he was killed; we could have said they were the gloves he had when he was assassinated, and come to the pocket later.

Semi-mythical star: We quoted Elton John on the subject of protecting copyright material from large language models: “The government are just being absolute losers and I’m very angry.” We described him as “the legendary singer”.

As John Harrison pointed out, this is like calling him famous: either you have heard of him or not; if not, being told that everyone else has heard of him implies that you are ignorant.

As for legendary, though, that strictly means a historical but unverified figure; here it just means “great”. I mean, I think he was great in the 1970s, but that is my opinion, not a news story. Did you know he had only two solo No 1 hits in the UK: “Sacrifice” in 1990, and the Diana version of “Candle in the Wind” in 1997?