Language and Culture Manchester UK

The John Rylands Library’s ‘Women Who Shaped Manchester’ exhibition ends this weekend, to coincide with International Women’s Day 2019. We would like to celebrate who we think deserves to be among them, namely, Ruth Ibegbuna.

Ruth founded the Manchester-based youth leadership charity Reclaim​ in 2007, with an ambitious aim to end leadership inequality within a generation. The charity’s pioneering work has been recognized by many local and national awards, including two Philip Lawrence Awards.

Ruth also set up the Roots Programme, out of a desire to heal the division exposed by Brexit through exchange programmes involving people from all walks of life and with contrasting opinions.

Thank you Ruth for all that you have done to shaped the life and opportunities of young people and communities in Manchester and beyond.

This is not a statement about our views on Brexit. We shall leave that to the politicians and the Twittersphere.

While leaving the politics of Brexit aside, what we have noticed is much inconsistency and inaccuracy in the use, or non-use, of hyphenation in its reporting.

In particular, it has come to our attention that the ‘rules’ of hyphenation have not fared well in the age of Brexit.

While, in spoken English, we rely on context to determine whether hyphenation is attended, in written English, hyphenation can make the difference between what is intended and the opposite of what is intended.

Let us take the phrase of the moment: ‘no deal’.

The Guardian homepage this morning (22 February) led with the headline ‘No deal risk’:

As written, ‘No deal risk’ refers to the absence of a ‘deal risk’, which is presumably not what the journalist intended. Rather, the first two words must be hyphenated if the headline wishes to raise awareness that there is a risk of no deal. In other words:

No-deal risk/Risk of no deal (true)

No deal risk (false)

It is noteworthy that, within the story itself (linked from the homepage), hyphenation is correctly applied:

So, even in the same newspaper, we can find that hyphenation is randomly applied.

The other ‘no’ term to have experienced a similar fate is ‘no confidence’.

On 16 January 2019, the UK Government led by Prime Minister Theresa May won a confidence motion in the House of Commons by 325 to 306 votes.

In media reports and elsewhere, the confidence motion was typically referred to as a ‘no-confidence vote’.

Again, the hyphenation is critical. In the headline below, we can see that the hyphen is missing.

Presumably, the journalist did not intend to state that there was an absence of any confidence vote, but this is what the headline literally means.

Again, we find inconsistency in applying hyphenation, in this case, on the same page as the headline immediately above:

That is to say:

No-confidence motion/no-confidence vote (true)

Vote of no-confidence (false)

A press release is a clear, straightforward format in which to bring news to the attention of print and broadcast media outlets. In an era of intensifying social networking, issuing press releases to non-traditional media individuals and organizations is also critical if you want as many people as possible to know about an event, a campaign or positive news story you are involved with.

Writing a press release is not a complicated process.

Topic and angle are key to securing good coverage, so try to assess your press release from the perspective of a journalist or other communications professional: will this press release make an interesting story for their readership?

Study the outlets, organizations or platforms being targeted to gain a better understanding of the stories they cover and what level of knowledge their readership is assumed to have. Unless your press release is intended for a specialist publication, never assume the intended readership will have prior knowledge of the technical or organizational information relevant to your press release.

Press releases should ideally be written in the same font and colour, with a size of at least 11 points – smaller type is difficult to read on a computer screen or the printed page. Try wherever possible to keep the body of the press releases to one page (supplementary notes can run onto a small number of additional pages).

We have prepared a simple guide to writing a press release.

You can also cross-reference this guide with one of our own press releases.

Another useful resource for anyone writing a press release is the Guardian newspaper’s online style guide.

Today (8 March) is International Women’s Day 2018.

To commemorate this annual global event, we are celebrating the work of poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, short story writer and lawyer, M. NourbeSe Philip.

Philip was born on 3 February 1947 in Woodlands on the Caribbean island of Tobago. After graduating from the University of the West Indies, she pursued graduate degrees in political science and law at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She then practised law in Toronto, Ontario, for seven years, leaving her law practice in 1983 to devote time to her writing.

Philip’s approach to language is unique and extraordinary, giving voice to the silenced, dignity to the dispossessed and identity to the unknown throughout colonial history.

We always defer to Oxford Dictionaries when proofreading and editing for clients. Their website is an essential – and free! – resource for all writers of UK and US English. We also recommend their excellent tips and advice on English grammar here.

10,000-year-old Mesolithic stone calendar, found in Scotland and believed by archaeologists to be the world’s oldest calendar discovered to date  

Addressing gender specificity, neutrality and fluidity in written English

Of late, abuses of patriarchy in Hollywood, the theatre and politics have dominated the news. For many, we are witnessing a step change in terms of what modern society considers to be acceptable, decent and inclusive. History will tell.

If modern society does indeed choose to comprehensively unpick the structures of patriarchy, not just in light of recent events, language will be under scrutiny as never before. The relationship between language, power and gender is as old as language itself. As a communication tool, in common with any other tool, language can be used to do good or serve malicious ends. From benevolence to exploitation, from cruelty to kindness, from compassion to hatred: language is an indiscriminate enabler.

As a proofreader and editor, I witness the impact of gender on the use of the English language on a daily basis.  The most immediate – and probably most obvious – manifestation concerns the use of the pronoun ‘he’ when referring to someone of either gender, rather than a specific male person. There are various ways in which ‘he’ appears in this regard, sometimes accompanied by ‘she’. Here are a few examples:

Exclusive use of ‘he’ to refer to someone of either gender

Mixed, inconsistent use of ‘he’ and ‘she’ to refer to someone of either gender

Consistent use of ‘he/she’, ‘s/he’, ‘he and she’, ‘he or she’ and ‘he and/or she’ (or ‘she/he’ etc.) to refer to someone of either gender

Undoubtedly, there are various reasons why any of the above is applied. Professionally speaking, ensuring consistency across the board (e.g., in terms of font values, type of English and hyphenations) is my number-one responsibility. Thus, if an author refers to someone of either gender as ‘he’ in one paragraph and ‘she’ in another, I will inevitably apply ‘he/she’ or ‘s/he’ throughout the manuscript to address this inconsistency. Nothing problematic about that.

I also increasingly come across the exclusive use of ‘she’ to refer to someone of either gender. Choosing to apply ‘she’ in this manner should be respected not only as an alternative to ‘he’, but also as a potential statement of equality and empowerment.

But, what about the persistent use of ‘he’ to refer to someone of either gender? Does a proofreader and editor have a responsibility beyond spelling, punctuation and grammar to address this clear (even if it is unintended) demonstration of patriarchy in written English? I would say ‘yes’.

This is not to argue for a heavy-handed approach on my part. Instead, I propose that a polite, but unambiguous, comment, which advises a more gender-neutral approach, should be adequate. After all, the author is responsible for his/her own content, which includes the values embedded within that content (within limits, of course, because I would never entertain proofreading or editing ‘hate speech’).

In my professional estimation, the situation is similar to how we use terminology that relates to mental health, where a literal or outdated translation into English may be regarded as highly inappropriate or even highly offensive, however unwittingly.

Returning to the topic in hand, it is clear that gendered identity is no longer limited to binary definitions, to the extent that terms such as ‘he/she’ and ‘s/he’ may not be sufficiently gender-neutral in certain contexts.

Indeed, for some time now in my professional life, I have encouraged the use of ‘they’ (as well as ‘them’ and ‘their’) in the third-person singular as a way to positively – and comprehensively – embrace gender neutrality when writing English. That said, the jury is still out concerning the use of ‘themself’ as the third-person singular equivalent of ‘themselves’. For now, the Oxford English Dictionary advises against its use when writing English in a formal style. What is clear, however, is that language is going to be one of the major indicators of how we evolve and communicate with each other in relation to gender fluidity.

If you have any comments on this or another topic related to using the English language, please feel free to contact me.

That’s not including the many immigrants who have made Europe their home and brought their mother tongue with them. More than 100 different countries are represented by those living in Europe.

For more information on the European Day of Languages, which has been celebrated on 26 September every year since 2001, click here.

Today (26 September) is the Council of Europe’s European Day of Languages.

There are 24 languages that are officially recognized within the European Union. There are also more than 60 indigenous regional and minority languages, as well as numerous non-indigenous languages spoken by migrant communities.

That’s not including the many immigrants who have made Europe their home and brought their mother tongue with them. More than 100 different countries are represented by those living in Europe.

Here at Language and Culture, we are sorry to learn of the death of Sir Peter Hall, the British stage, opera and film director, who founded the Royal Shakespeare Company at the age of only 29.

For us, as for many, his artistic directorship of the National Theatre in the 1980s was a remarkable period for British drama (Hall took over from its original artistic director, Sir Laurence Olivier, in 1973).

His tenure on the South Bank included his iconic staging of The Oresteia (which was performed on the National’s Olivier stage, as well as at the ancient Greek theatre at Epidaurus, on which the Olivier is modelled) and legendary productions from the Shakespeare canon, such as Anthony and Cleopatra with Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench in the title roles.

Despite his widely known love and respect for the classical repertoire and fidelity to the original text, as artistic director of the National, Hall was also immensely supportive of new writing. Indeed, among the 33 productions that Hall directed for the National were the world premieres of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978), Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus (1979), and the London premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s Bedroom Farce.

One of Hall’s most memorable productions was the 1984 staging of his own adaptation of Animal Farm. Not only was this dramatization of the George Orwell classic the first production to grace all three stages of the National Theatre, it went onto to become one of the most loved shows ever to originate from London’s South Bank, enjoying several UK and international tours.

Cast of the 2017 Royal Court production of Road by Jim Cartwright (image credit: Sarah Weal)

Tonight (21 July), the Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Downstairs in London’s Sloane Square begins its revival of Jim Cartwright’s play, Road. This production, directed by John Tiffany and starring the actor, writer and Chancellor of the University of Manchester Lemn Sissay, comes three decades after its world première at the same theatre.

When Road first graced the stage in 1986, British theatre discovered in Cartwright a distinctive and vital new voice. His account of a journey along a derelict street in Lancashire’s post-industrial wasteland on a Friday night contrasted so vividly with the work of prominent Oxbridge-educated playwrights. Led by Scullery, a boozy and piratical master of ceremonies, Road depicts a weekly ritual of inebriated escapism, desperate aspiration and upbeat defiance among Britain’s working class.

The popularity of Road, as well as its resonances with subsequent generational hardships, has persisted. Indeed, in a poll organized by the National Theatre, it was voted the 36th best play of the 20th century.

In 1995, Cartwright made his directorial debut by staging a revival of Road at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. During rehearsals for that production, Language and Culture co-founder Dr Stephen Gregson interviewed the playwright-turned-director for the magazine Plays International. Extracts from the article are reproduced below:

A director’s Road

To put it mildly, Jim Cartwright is an enigma. “I didn’t go to university or anything,” he admits. “I haven’t got a massive vocabulary. I’m not well read. I can’t spell.” He even dares to be politically – or should that be culturally? – incorrect. “My major influence is Elvis. Bruce Lee’s a reference. Confessions of a Window Cleaner is a reference.” Not exactly the stuff of Establishment playwrights.

Born and educated in Farnworth, near Manchester, Cartwright’s theatrical talent was very much fostered by the Welfare State. “I was a working-class lad,” he says. “Soul music I got into. I liked all the things that lads like, I suppose. We had a good drama teacher at school and I did some acting. It excited the hell out of me, it was great.” Enough it seems to have pushed him into an initial career as a jobbing actor. “I was a professional, darling,” he says, tongue in cheek. “But that’s what got me to know the Royal Court existed and that was the place to send new writing.”

His playwriting career began when, egged on by friends, he posted an amorphous collection of scenes to Sloane Square. “I’d done bits of writing, but really for myself. I sent this, well, it wasn’t even a script. Bits of scenes. And they liked it.” An ensuing commission led to his first play, Road, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1986 and subsequently transferred to the main stage. Cartwright easily enjoyed the most impressive debut for a playwright since John Osborne and Look Back in Anger 30 years previously.

In every sense, Cartwright is British theatre’s equivalent of a punk rocker: in the same way that punk challenged the music industry, Cartwright has thrown out all convention on what constitutes a playwright. “How many geniuses have been squashed while we speak?,” he muses. “I’m just doing my own thing and I’ve got my tools that I can work with. Like a lot of working-class artists. Somebody said when punk came out, you just learned three chords and started a band. So, don’t worry that ‘writing land’ is over there and you got to go to university. Express, and express with passion. That’s all that matters.”

Almost 10 years now as a professional writer, he boasts an enviable CV: numerous commissions (including from the National Theatre) and critical acclaim for the international productions of his plays. There has even been a run on Broadway with Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s staging of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, albeit for nine performances. “The critics hated it. I almost imagined they were going to do the cleaning lady next,” he wryly recalls.

But Cartwright is also a pragmatist. It was to Britain’s regional theatre that he turned to hone his craft, under the auspices of Andrew Hay, first at the Bolton Octagon and then at the Bristol Old Vic. Now Cartwright makes his own directorial debut with Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. In doing so he revisits his first play.

Road depicts the events of a single night on an almost derelict street in an unidentified Lancashire town. Scullery, the play’s master of ceremonies, guides the audience in and out of various incidents in this slice of Northern working-class life. Each of the inhabitant has a profound experience to relate: stories of survival in an industrial wasteland and betrayal by an uncaring government.

There is nothing synthetic about Cartwright’s Lancashire: his own background remains his strongest point of reference. “I don’t consciously study it or anything,” he says, refuting the suggestion that the play is a piece of social anthropology. “I don’t make little notes when I get on the bus and all that. It must be just what’s inside, where I come from.”

Nor is this strongly evocative portrayal of an urban community in North West England an overt critique of the Thatcher administration. “It was written in the 1980s but it survives because it’s about human beings.” The play instead embraces the poetry that Cartwright recognizes in the dialect and landscape of Lancashire. “It’s a tradition of Lancashire bloody everything,” he says, with just passion. “It’s beautiful. The old 60s films, black-and-white terraces and cobbles. Ugly, and all. But there’s something attractive about that landscape.”

That said, Road does not indulge in pernicious nostalgia: a spurious romance that transforms former factory hellholes into sanitized working museums. Cartwright, then, is not in the business of peddling Lancashire stereotypes. “I don’t mean that it’s all going to be jolly, let’s have a laugh and look at the Northern people eating chip butties,” he asserts. “I hate that kind of theatre.”

An atmosphere of intimidating disquiet pervades the play, a reminder of the horrors of the past, the squalor of the present and the hopelessness of the future. It is a rollercoaster ride of emotions, as Cartwright makes clear. “At times, it’s going to be like ‘hold onto your hat’, and, at other times, it’s going to be uncomfortable, on the edge.”

In essence, however, Road is a genuine attempt to create a Lancashire night out for a theatre audience. “These little communities, they’re often a wee bit behind the times. The fashions are usually a good few years behind. So, you get more characters in these pubs and discos.”

The Northern social venues that feature in Cartwright’s world are the embodiment of an upbeat mood he is anxious to convey. This affirms the view that Road is overtly a celebration of human endurance. Indeed, Cartwright is particularly riled by the extent to which certain critics have labelled the play as grim. “If you come to see this play, it’s a night out,” he enthuses. It is certainly not his intention to deliver a bleak representation of a downtrodden working class. “The characters might be in the gutter. But, like the old saying, they’re looking at the stars and they enjoy the gutter.”

Manchester was the first local authority to provide a public lending and reference library after the passing of the Public Libraries Act 1850. The original library, which was based at Campfield, was opened by Charles Dickens in 1852.

The current Manchester Central Library, designed by Vincent Harris and constructed between 1930 and 1934, was based on the (second century) Pantheon in Rome. Similar to the Pantheon, the library is a round building, with a large two-storey portico at the entrance, and surrounded by five bays of Corinthian columns. Around the second and third floors is a Tuscan colonnade.

Manchester Central Library has now been immortalized in Lego by Boltonian Robert Clarkson, a member of recognized Lego Users Group, Northern Brickworks. It is currently on display in the Central Library Search Room until 30 September.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the ceremony in which the UK Government returned Hong Kong to China.

This transfer of sovereignty marked the end of a lease agreement - known as the Second Convention of Peking - between London and Beijing, signed in 1898. In this agreement, control of the islands surrounding Hong Kong, known as the New Territories, was ceded to the British Empire. In return, China received a promise that the islands would be returned after 99 years.

The triptych shown above, which hangs in Beijing's National Art Museum of China, is a fascinating artistic representation of how the ceremony may have been viewed in the People's Republic.  The painting also depicts, in the top-left corner, the 1984 summit in Beijing between UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese President Deng Xiaoping, which led to the signing of the Joint Sino-British Declaration. Under this declaration, London agreed to return Hong Kong to China 13 years later.

What is particularly striking about this artwork is the contrasting body language of the two delegations participating in the handover ceremony: the British look awkward, even stiff, while the Chinese look relaxed, yet authoritative. It is as though the artist is mischievously responding to Prince Charles' notorious "appalling waxworks" comment, which was leaked to the Daily Mail and published by the newspaper in 2005.

On 16 June 1986, the legendary Manchester pop ground The Smiths released their third album, The Queen Is Dead. 

Today, one day after its 31st anniversary, we visited Salford Lads Club. Most fans of British pop music will be familiar with Stephen Wright's iconic photograph of Morrissey et al. taken outside the club for the inside cover of The Queen Is Dead. But, in the words of the club motto, just as it did when it opened its doors to the Salford community of Ordsall in 1903, it exists to 'brighten young lives and make good citizens'.

But, what is Salford Lads Club?

Salford Lads Club was officially opened on 30 January 1904 by Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts Association and the Girl Guides. The club was part of a wider movement of “lads clubs”, which were established by local industrialists between 1886 and 1910 in many industrialized cities, particularly the north-west of England. Their aim was to lure boys and young men away from gang culture by offering them positive distractions in the form of sports, cultural and educational activities.

One of the unique characteristics of Salford Lads Club was that it also function as a “labour exchange”, finding employment for boys aged 13 and older.

The club was founded by the Groves brothers, who owned the Bathe and Newbolds Brewery on Regent Road in Salford, later to become the Groves and Whitnall Brewery.

In 2003, the club received listed status, partly in recognition that its tiled interior and original fittings, including a boxing ring, snooker rooms and a gym with a viewing balcony, have remained unchanged since it opened over a century ago.

The connection with The Smiths began in 1985, when Stephen Wright photographed the group outside Salford Lads Club for the The Queen is Dead's artwork in 1985. Twenty years later, the photograph was accepted into the National Portrait Gallery, the UK's official collection of famous British men and women.  The Smiths’ music videos for “There Is a Light that Never Goes Out” and “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” also feature footage of the club's exterior.

In 2004, as part of the club's “From Baden-Powell to Morrissey” project, a weightlifting room was transformed into The Smiths Room (pictured above). The room includes original pictures and written messages from fans who visit the club.

If you wish to visit Salford Lads Club, it is open to the public every Saturday from 11am to 2pm. Whether you are a fan of The Smiths or interested in social history, it is well worth a visit. Visit the club website for more information.

On this day, 12 June, in 1929, Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1942, on her 13th birthday, she received an empty diary, in which she documented her life in hiding in an Amsterdam attic from 1942 to 1944. She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1945. The posthumous publication of her diary has inspired generation after generation with her message of hope, courage and kindness in the face of the utmost intolerance, fearfulness and adversity. Now more than ever, we need to remember that message:

"What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again."

In recent days, I received my copy of the 10th anniversary edition of Manic Street Preachers’ eighth studio album Send Away the Tigers. I have been collecting Manics’ special editions for some time now. While they sit outside the scope of my electronica radar, I find them musically, lyrically and aesthetically irresistible; indeed, their exceptional artwork is often the reason why I purchase their reissues, rather than James Dean Bradfield’s kitchen demos.

Last year, of course, was the 20th anniversary of their iconic (as a threesome) Everything Must Go, which followed their even more iconic The Holy Bible (when they were a foursome).

Against this backdrop, I have been reminded of my encounter with the early plays of Patrick Jones (pictured above), which I covered when I was a drama critic at the turn of the second millennium. Jones, for those who don’t know, is the older brother of Nicky Wire (real name: Nicholas Jones), feather boa-adoring bass player of the Manics. But he is also one of the most intriguing playwrights I ever came across. Given that I am dipping in and out of the Manics on iTunes these days, I thought I would share some of my writing on Jones’ first two staged plays, which I had the privilege of seeing in 1999-2000. While they were staged during the first term of Tony Blair’s government, the issues they explored seem just as relevant now, if not more so, as when they were premiered. Please bear in mind, as you read on, that the following was written in 2000.

Then came human beings. They wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to. Albert Camus

The Sherman Theatre in Cardiff is celebrating the millennium with an urgent form of epic theatre. Fusing the wintry apocalypse of 20th century British poetry, the classical paradigm of modern American drama and the nihilistic vision of a teenage wasteland, two powerful and contrasting plays reveal Patrick Jones as a vital new British playwright. This unique voice rejects the muscular iconography of Welsh culture and instead confronts historical and topical manifestations of nationalism and fatherhood.

With the nihilistic pose of punk and the androgynous pout of glam, Manic Street Preachers have always understood the grand gesture. The generation the Welsh rock group represent is largely drawn to the shared hopelessness that Richey Edwards, their original ideologist-in-chief, articulated in a despairing, often holocaustic, lyricism. His disappearance without trace, after episodes of self-harm and anorexia, in 1995 arguably compares with the cultural and emotional significance of Princess Diana and Kurt Cobain.

Provoked by the subsequent media hysteria, Jones was anxious to find a theatrical voice that would eloquently speak out: “The press were saying that rock music is bad for young people,” he recalls. “I wanted an intellectual rebel to look around today and ask what we have become. So I started writing notes for a play about how young people grew up amongst this.” Against an urgent rock soundtrack, Jones reclaims the classical tragedy from Arthur Miller for a youth betrayed by old Wales and the New Labour government.

Libraries gave us power, then came work and made use free. What price now for a shallow piece of dignity? “A Design for Life”, Manic Street Preachers

Jones’ first play Everything Must Go* is located in Blackwood, the South Wales hometown he shares with Manic Street Preachers. Under Margaret Thatcher, the capitalist temples of Sony, Toshiba and Pot Noodle replaced the local coal industry. In Phil Clark’s production, which premiered in February 1999 at the Sherman Theatre, beautifully choreographed factory production lines hover menacingly over the stage like an Orwellian industrial nightmare. As piercing shrills of factory hooters punctuate these images, a cacophonic fanfare to the philosophy of “arbeit macht frei” is hauntingly evoked. “It’s creating theatre that works on all your senses,” insists Clark, the Sherman’s artistic director and a highly regarded champion of new plays for young people.

The production inhabits a vastly different universe from the venal commercial instincts of an Irvine Welsh stage adaptation. What transpires is a powerhouse mixture of poetic imagery and an intelligent rock score. This Brechtian model sharpens the play’s dialectic by using popular songwriting to lend immediacy to not only the political issues raised, but also the human cost involved. “We should be looking for more epic forms of theatre,” argues Clark.

Opening with “A Design for Life”, this urban hymn to the British welfare state sweeps rhapsodically over an apocalyptic scene of youth culture in the Welsh valleys. “It allows the audience to enter into the dramatic world of the play,” explains Clark. Another song called “Ready for Drowning” translates the Stevie Smith metaphor into a polemic about how recent British governments have divided communities with free market economics. This nightmarish sequence shows a group of miners leaving the pit, before being placed in front of computers they are clearly incapable of using. As frustration turns into farce, one by one, the miners pick up their monitors and throw them into the pit hole, while the light from their helmets pierces the dark auditorium. “An understanding of the working-class voice and the structures of our society has always been of use to the next generation,” reckons Clark.

Only takes one tree to make a thousand matches. Only takes one match to burn a thousand trees. “A Thousand Trees”, Stereophonics

The narrative, however, pivots around the enigmatically named A, a rebel archetype in a similar mould to Quadrophenia’s Jimmy or The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield. As the play’s title infers, a plague of retail outlets has reduced Blackwood to a shuttered fortress. Better still, an anarchist’s playground. “The dilemma Patrick brings up in the play,” Clark suggests, “is that, even though A identifies what’s wrong, he doesn’t know what to do about it.”

Politically inspired by Aneurin Bevan, A has the ideal canvas on which to graffiti the social ills he sees around him – want, ignorance, squalor, disease and idleness – which the founder of the NHS sought to eradicate. More poignantly, Bevan’s message actually sounds like a modus vivendi for a modern Wales. “The message I get from young people is more cynical than the punk vision,” adds Jones. “I want to show that, if they had A’s awareness, it would give them empowerment out of all this.”

A is originated by a remarkable young Welsh actor called Oliver Ryan, who understands the protagonist’s iconoclasm and the ambivalence of his situation. “He’s terrifyingly well read,” says Ryan. “But he has built his own world through newspaper clippings, Welsh history and Karl Marx. He has to make it seem real to him. There’s so much sadness in A because he doesn’t realize that he has a voice. Instead, he chooses to destroy in order to create, which I think is very apt for teenagers today.”

This mentality is intelligently juxtaposed with Ryan’s mesmerizingly ethereal character in Unprotected Sex, Jones’ play by Jones, which premiered at the Sherman Theatre Studio in October 1999. Appearing as a sullied glam rock angel, Denver is the victim of childhood bullying who sought refuge among the mountain ponies and found solace in their need for companionship.

Witnessing the murder of a pregnant mare by knife-wielding thugs has heightened his selfless despair: a solo choir voicing the isolation and destructiveness of this grotesque rite of male initiation.

Acting as a counterpoint to Denver’s introspection, Richard Harrington’s portrayal of Gary, a former soldier, is a sensitive antidote to the Charles Bukowski image of manhood. What social skills the army taught him are the brutalizing, if childlike, means of control used to inspire discipline through some kind of surrogate family loyalty. Abandoned by his father at a vulnerable age, he is seemingly perfect cannon fodder. But military life has denied him the full range of emotions to deal with the atrocities he witnessed in Kosovo. The war still raging inside his mental universe, he returns to Triste, his pregnant girlfriend, with only alcohol and testosterone as support.

Returning to Everything Must Go, the dominant focus of A’s rage is to avenge the loss of his father, a former miner whose death was hastened after being sacked following a decade on a production line without any explanation. “It’s about how, with a click of the mouse, his father was gone from the workforce,” says Jones. In the apotheosis, extreme personal morality, rather than sociopathic dysfunction, inexorably propels A to kill Worthington, the factory manager responsible for sacking his father. “There’s a certain rage when words are not enough,” Jones accepts. “I’m not saying that killing someone is the answer. But I don’t think there was another way, dramatically, in which he could prove his point. He’s not going to be a politician or a pop star and he cares so much about his father.”

Every day when I wake up, I thank the Lord I’m Welsh. “International Velvet”, Catatonia

The betrayal of the human spirit underpins the damning indictment of Blair’s Britain, which drives Everything Must Go. For A’s friends, empty days are filled with material dreams, petty crime and a perverse determination to survive. There’s Pip, who is more interested in the next sexual conquest than political idealism; there’s Jim, who never seems to learn from the Open University TV programmes that keep him up all night; and there’s Curtis, who, denied an identity at school, speaks only in song lyrics from époque-making groups, such as The Who, Nirvana and Oasis. “It’s brilliant you have to pay to listen to young people, telling you how they feel,” enthuses Oliver Ryan, “because this is the generation that everyone is so quick to dismiss.”

This popular cultural sensibility is employed with greater subtlety in Unprotected Sex. Admittedly, there is a hypnotic score from James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers, which resonates through this compelling example of physical theatre. Meanwhile, the lyrical sense of poetry mirrors the social disintegration of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, which, in its time, commented on a crisis in the human condition. Moreover, it convincingly evokes the claustrophobic intensity of Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams.

Jones attempts to resolve the patriarchal conundrums that – from the Rebecca Riots to the tribal machismo of the rugby field – are posed (but not exclusively) by Welsh society. In each play, a female character – both stunningly portrayed by Maria Pride – offers poignant insights into maleness and its relationship with national identity at this millennial juncture. As masculinity implodes around her in Unprotected Sex, Triste becomes the voice of hope, while Cindy in Everything Must Go has to deal with her disgust and frustration at what Wales has become through self-harm and heroin abuse. “I’m sure part of me hates a lot of the old Wales,” believes Jones. “But part of me relishes what it was. We don’t really celebrate Bevan. Instead, we’ll have the Welsh national anthem only sing on the rugby pitch by ‘real’ men with a tear in their eye.”

Dr Stephen Gregson Co-founder Language and Culture

* Although the Manics’ album Everything Must Go was released in 1996, it took its name from Jones’ play, which was in draft form at that stage.

In his 1887 short story The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde said of our transatlantic cousins, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language”. Similar, albeit unverifiable, statements have been attributed to George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill.

I am often reminded of this witty remark from the self-styled Irish genius when proofreading for clients from around the world, whether from English- or non-English-speaking countries.

One’s own form of language or, in the case of the US, for instance, cultural context inevitably plays a part in how English, beyond the land of William Shakespeare, is written. Indeed, in nearly three decades as an editor and proofreader, certain styles, structures or phrasing in written English seem, to me at least, specific to the country of the writer in question, while others appear to be transnational in terms of usage.

True, there is no science here, beyond my anecdotal observations. To fully explain whatever phenomenon is going on here, one would need to investigate the different ways in which English is taught around the world, both in terms of curricula and teacher personalities, as well as which English-language texts are the most popular with foreign writers of English: in short, a mammoth, even impossible, task for any cohort of researchers.

For now, I would like to share some of the issues that I frequently come across in my proofreading work (including from the US). My intention here is not to enforce or, conversely, challenge the hard and fast rules of grammar, syntax etc. Rather, I am offering suggestions with a view to transforming awkwardly constructed English into something much more accomplished.

Allow

Use of the verb ‘allow’ is prevalent in academic papers I am asked to proofread, no matter where the authors come from. Typically, in this context, ‘allow’ is intended to mean ‘make possible’ or ‘enable’. Often, in English, especially when writing academic or other formal kinds of text, there is a tendency in many of us to use a more highfalutin word or, at least, a word that is less ordinary and conversational. Allow, in the aforementioned sense, is a bit of an oddball, in that it is an ‘ordinary’ word, but it is not the most appropriate, given that it can lead the author to construct a sentence that is less impactful and distracts from the information it is intended to convey:

Our research allowed to support our hypothesis (false)

Our hypothesis was supported by our research (true)

Abbreviations

As a proofreader, the main issue I come across regarding abbreviations is (the lack of) consistency. Here are a few suggestions:

If you are to use an abbreviation, make sure that it appears in brackets after the first appearance of the full wording, e.g., the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) or the National Health Service (NHS). After that, only use an abbreviation in the main body of the text. Stylistically, it is acceptable to use the full wording in headings, provided that the abbreviation and commensurate full wording are not used interchangeably.

Avoid abbreviating prepositions or using lower-case letters unless it is appropriate, e.g., the IoT for the Internet of things, but UCLA for the University of California, Los Angeles.

Be sparing with abbreviations, especially in short papers. For example, don’t use an abbreviation if it only appears once or twice, and never introduce an abbreviation if you are never going to use it afterwards.

Basically

This is very much a personal matter for me. The word ‘basically’ is ubiquitous in British English, especially spoken English. Its usage often indicates that the writer or speaker is about to convey something complex in simple terms. This can be a hostage to fortune. I also think ‘basically’ is a rather dull word, which suggests that what is being conveyed is boring. My advice is to use ‘essentially’ instead.

STOP SHOUTING!!!

Writing an academic paper or company report is not like writing a post on Twitter or Facebook. In other words, avoid the copious use of exclamation or question marks for emphasis, and never use ALL CAPS. Instead, try a subtler approach, such as the minimal use of italicization, e.g., I want this one, not that one (instead of I want THIS one, not THAT one!!!).

In the year…

It endlessly fascinates me how writers from certain countries always precede years with the phrase ‘in the year (of)’ when writing in English. I am sure this reflects the way in which their native language is structured. Simply put, never use ‘in the year (of)’ before a year or a period of years.

Comprise

This verb foxes so many writers, including those with a PhD whose first (and perhaps only) language is English. In any of its verbal forms, ‘comprise’ is never followed by ‘of’. My hunch is that many folk confuse ‘consist’ with ‘comprise’ (this collection consists of the complete works of Shakespeare, but that collection comprises the complete works of Charles Dickens).

Oxford comma

Ah, the Oxford (or serial) comma. So beloved by writers of American English, but all too often unnecessarily applied, including for unintentional comedic effect. That said, using the Oxford comma is generally a matter of personal style, provided that there are no unintended consequences. My own view is that long sentences without any form of punctuation should be avoided: think of the comma in terms of taking a breath when you read out a sentence.

British or American English?

This is fitting note on which the end the blog. Personally, I find the differing forms of English to be fascinating, as any language needs to evolve in line with changes in society, culture etc. The Oxford English Dictionaries website covers the topic well. All I will say for now is that you need to make sure that the proofing language you use is the same as that required by you or your publisher.

I hope this has been useful to readers and, better still, writers of English. If you have any questions or want to know more about our academic and business proofreading and editing services, please email me.