Mea Culpa: automatic, systematic, hydromatic and problematic

Questions of style and usage in this week’s Independent

‘Problematic’ is one of those words imported from academia because people think that it sounds intellectual – although it reminds me of the words of ‘Greased Lightnin’’ (Rex)

In an interesting article about the decline of cash, we reported a survey that found “half of those polled said they would find living in a cashless society problematic”. It may be that this was the actual wording of the survey question, in which case I should address my curmudgeonly grumblings to Link, the cash machine company that carried it out.

But I suspect the survey used normal English, asking people if they would find living without notes and coins difficult. “Problematic” is one of those words imported from academia because people think that it sounds intellectual – although it reminds me of the words of “Greased Lightnin’” in Grease: “This car is automatic; it’s systematic; it’s hydromatic...”

As if to illustrate this point we also carried an article about Shamima Begum by two academics, which talked about the “problematic narrative of ‘jihadi brides’”. I think this is academic jargon for “a lot of people have mistaken preconceptions about young women travelling to Syria”. But if that is what they mean, couldn’t they say that instead?

Unsocial: In an article about LGBT History Month, which was February, we wrote that “deeply homophobic societal attitudes” resulted in the playing down of the gay victims of the Holocaust. This seems to be another example of making a normal word longer for no good reason. “Societal” adds nothing to this sentence that “social” would not.

Besieged: This week we described the German national football team, Chris Grayling and the prime minister in turn as “beleaguered”. It is a fine word, from the Dutch belegeren, meaning “around a camp”, but it really ought to be reserved for sieges. Of towns or castles. With walls and turrets.

Mixed metaphor: In an article about an entrepreneur who started his career at Lehman Brothers we said that, “within three months, global financial markets had spiralled into meltdown”. We often write about things “spiralling out of control”, but this conjures an image of traders in an open plan office which is going round and down so fast that it melts.

Jimmy: Seumas Milne, executive director of strategy and communications for the Labour Party, spells his first name in what I think is the older Irish fashion. We briefly referred to him today as Seamus, which is much the more common spelling these days. It has several variant spellings, and in other places it can be spelt Hamish, James or Jacob.

As a public service, I propose to add him to an updated version of my list of Top 10 commonly misspelt names. This was originally compiled by Oliver Kamm of The Times 10 years ago. Being perverse, I’ve listed the wrong spellings to give you the fun of correcting them: Clement Atlee, Alistair Campbell, Sir John Chilcott, Mohandas Ghandi, Len McClusky, Ed Milliband, Seamus Milne, Penny Mourdant, George Osbourne and Chukka Umuna.