Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Mea Culpa: rehearsing for a spell of retirement

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

John Rentoul
Saturday 28 March 2020 14:43 GMT
Comments
Theory and practice: when the latter becomes a verb, an arbitrary convention of British English requires a different spelling
Theory and practice: when the latter becomes a verb, an arbitrary convention of British English requires a different spelling

Janet Street-Porter in her column last week wrote about how she was, as a result of the coronavirus, “being forced to experience PR”. This was her abbreviation for “practice retirement”, that is, a rehearsal for pensioner status.

It is a distinctive phrase, so naturally we used it in the headline, which (briefly) read: “Coronavirus is forcing me to practice retirement – and it isn’t all bad.” However, in shortening the phrase we turned “practice” into a verb, which by arbitrary convention is spelt “practise” in British English.

So we had either to change the spelling in the headline, which would make it different from the noun phrase “practice retirement” in the article, or we had to do what we did, which is to change it to: “Coronavirus is forcing me into practice retirement.”

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in