Who is correct? The tale of the idiot and the newspaper

[VeryImportantTitle]

I complained to a newspaper outlet about a newsletter I received yesterday which had some errors in my opinion. I wrote to customer services as I was in a cantankerous humour. The newsletter is usually sent out by a particular reporter and I enjoy his style but it was a new reporter yesterday who was filling in for him. no I do not have anything better to be doing

One of the sentences I complained about was this one: A voice from the world of football has thrown his weight behind the Labour leader and accused prime minister Liz Truss of “taking the Mickey” by cutting taxes for the rich.

My complaint was about capitalisation. In my mind, prime minister should have been capitalised and Mickey should not have been. The same newsletter referred to mini-Budget.

I received a very nice reply to my mini-Rant.

To that particular part of the complaint, this was their response: "I agree with you, of course, regarding mickey, but our style is Budget (to distinguish it from the noun or the verb budget, I suppose), and it is therefore also mini-Budget. We also do not capitalise job titles, so we go for prime minister over Prime Minister."

Not to be out-done, I thanked them for their response as I hadn't been expecting one but disagreeing again lol. Shovel and hole comes to mind.

In any case, the person who replied did not have any details included apart from their name. Out of curiosity, I have just googled the name and he is none other than the Managing Editor of this publication. Now I'm thinking VeryImportantTitle - you're a fucking idiot! 😝

This is Mickey I think

Thinking about it, that may be why he didn't include a signature. He wasn't sure whether to capitalise his job title or not! 😂

I feel I should update you all.
So, I sent the guy from 'Customer Services' a link to this thread, thanking him for his indulgence.
He very kindly replied having read it and here you go.....

Well, it looks like it has been quite a fun debate! The good thing about a style guide is that as a reporter you don't really have to think about it, just follow it. Of course, that's not much help to me when I am fielding inquiries
We have our own pedants' corner(s), of course, which I usually enjoy frequenting!
All the best,
Mickey (name changed to protect the innocent)

The University of Oxford Style Guide has the following:

Use capitals for titles prefixing names, but not for job descriptions. Note that
some job descriptions are never used with names, such as ‘prime minister’.

They don't even mention who someone is then? Just presume that everyone around the world knows who Liz Truss is?

Mind you, at this point I think that everyone has now heard of Liz Truss!

They mean that you don't say 'Prime minister LIz Truss' rather than 'Liz Truss, the prime minister.'

I think!

Does anyone else think that the phrase
"a voice...has thrown his weight behind"
sounds a bit odd?

It was the first thing that struck me when I read the excerpt from the newsletter. Maybe it's just me though?

The person who wrote the newsletter had a name which would be distinctly connected to a country with a different language - a language which I also happen to speak. Her English was good but a little less 'good' than a standard you might expect from a native English speaker. It's hard to explain, but there were ways of phrasing things which would be more associated with the other language than with English. When I initially opened the newsletter I didn't notice that it was a different reporter. There were just some nuances in the writing which prompted me to scroll back up to see who the reporter was as the usual guy's writing is distinctive. When I clicked on the reporter's profile who had written the newsletter, it linked to an entirely different reporter's profile! That was my first complaint to the guy in 'Customer Services' who shall henceforth be known as Mickey in my mind. 😂
Then we had the capitalisation issue lol.

There were a couple of other little things too which collectively irritated me sufficiently at 9am to take to the keyboard lol.

I can pm you the offending piece of writing. Some of my complaints were simply idiocy on my part rather than errors on her part.

Never again. 😂

I have crawled back into my box.

That probably sounded a little confusing.

Say the newsletter is usually written by John.
On the day of shame in question (my shame), somebody called Belinda wrote the newsletter.
When I clicked on Belinda's profile picture and link to her credentials at the top of the newsletter, it went through to the profile of Daisy.

If the reporter spoke English as a second language (or as one of a number of languages) that would explain things all right.

The Guardian and Observer style guide (available to view online if you’re interested) states that job titles (including prime minister) should always be lower case.

Of course, this all depends on the individual media outlet and their own style guide. Personally I would make an exception for Prime Minister, Queen, Editor etc.

Given the ridiculously high copy output required of journalists these days, and the lack of resources given over to subediting and proofreading, it sounds like this reporter did very well to have quite clean copy on the whole.

Most people expect their news to be free these days, and that has led to a lot of streamlining and a decline in standards. Where once a journalist had time to write a decent piece, which was then edited, subbed and proofed by trained staffers, increasingly the journalist is expected to wear all hats with barely any time to do so.

If the worst you can find is capitalisation inconsistencies, then they did very well indeed.

Late to the party (I've only just discovered this part of the site).

Style guides vary, as PPs have noted. For what it's worth, New Hart's Rules gives the examples: "Tony Blair, the prime minister" and "Prime Minister Tony Blair". (Yes, my edition is a rather dog-eared one from 2005.)