Mea Culpa: an initiation ceremony for Spider-Man fans

In a commentary on the Sony-Disney dispute over Spider-Man rights, we used the phrase "for the uninitiated …". Speaking semi-initiated, with a rudimentary understanding of the difference between the Marvel film universe and DC one, I thought it might be a condescending way to introduce a paragraph of explanation.

I can understand why the author did it, knowing that most of those who would be interested in the article would be aware of the context. But it's never hard to summarize briefly "history so far", even for an audience that knows it well.

Much more often, we make the opposite mistake assuming that the reader knows too much. Last week, a fellow journalist told me in a conversation that she had heard in a train: "A neighboring couple who had heard about the suspension of Parliament had waived three lines in the BBC report. News and talked about something else. . "

I am sure that they were reading L & # 39; Independentthey would have known what was happening.

Flat: This week we presented an exclusive analysis of polls: "Scrutineer John Curtice explains the country's situation." Henry Peacock was in touch to suggest that we should have said "the lie of the country".

This is the sentence I would use. If I pressed him, I would explain it by saying that it means "the way the earth is located" and that most people would not say "the way the earth rests".

The Oxford Dictionary describes "the configuration of the land" as North American and "lie" as British. This would explain why the phrase "layman" is used four times more often on the Internet, according to Google. Even Google Books, which has millions of digitized titles, estimates that this happens three times more often.

In British newspapers, however, "the lie of the country" still has the advantage, used 66 times in the past year, against 49 examples of "staging the country."

I suspect that this is one of those language changes that has almost run its course. We should prefer "the lie of the earth" while there are many British readers for whom "the layman of the earth" feels bad, but we should accept that it can begin to appear at the same time. Ancient.

For always more: Regarding the language change, I'm happy to announce that we used "more words" twice 13 times last week and one word eight times. I know this is only a stylistic preference, but I think "more" is more elegant than "more," just as I prefer "forever" to "forever." So the.