Mea Culpa: Closing in on a sharpened target

A mishearing, a breach of convention and a double negative in this week’s Independent

Modern knives are made of some miracle metal that stays sharp for ever, but the word hone survives

The word hone comes from the Old English han, stone, on which a knife would be sharpened. Modern knives are made of some miracle metal that stays sharp for ever, but the word hone survives, meaning sharpen, but mostly as a metaphor for refining or perfecting something.

We used it this week in a profile of Graham Potter, the manager of Ostersund, the Swedish football team up against Arsenal: “He has a distinctive approach to man management, honed during his masters degree on leadership and emotional intelligence.”

One of its common uses these days, however, is in the phrase “hone in on”. We reported this week that “the Mueller probe is honing in on potential ties between the top-level Trump campaign and Russia”. This originated as a mishearing of “home in on”, as in a homing pigeon and, by extension, a missile approaching its target.

The phrase “hone in” makes no sense, but it has become established and it is perfectly clear what it means. All the same, we should avoid it because it is one of those markers: some readers think less of us if we use what they regard as an incorrect form.

Less furore: Similarly, my friend Oliver Kamm is always telling the world that there is nothing wrong with using less instead of fewer. I know, I tell him, that it is a mere convention, but journalists need to know that many of their readers think that it should be “less” of quantity and “fewer” of number – and that it should be “amount” for a quantity and “number” for countable things.

We broke these conventions rather prominently the other day in a sub-headline on a report on the City of London jobs market: “There were 27 per cent less financial professionals looking for work in January compared to the same month a year earlier and around half the amount seeking jobs in January 2016.”

Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for pointing out that this should have been “27 per cent fewer” and “half the number”, as we were talking about numbers of people. If you wanted to be really pedantic, some people think it should be “compared with” rather than “compared to” – to compare something “to” another thing is to say they are alike – but I am not sure that is a battle worth fighting.

Definite no-no: This isn’t really a mea culpa, as we were reporting Minnie Driver’s words, but Henry Peacock wrote in to draw attention to an interesting usage. Ms Driver, an ambassador for Oxfam, responded to the charity’s staff using sex workers in Haiti by saying: “In no uncertain terms do I plan to continue my support of this organisation or its leaders.”

That is what she said, and it is not possible to edit the sentence without rewriting it. And, again, it is clear what she meant, even if you have to read it again to check.

But let this be a warning to us all of the dangers of double negatives. In logic, “no uncertain terms” means “certain terms”, so what she was saying was that she planned to continue supporting Oxfam. She meant the opposite.