‘Remember to bring your childrens bikes with you so you can all enjoy the estate,’ the National Trust’s website says, inviting visitors to its parkland site at Crom beside the shores of Upper Lough Erne in Northern Ireland. If, like me, you think omitting the apostrophe in ‘children’s’ is a bad look for an organisation that claims to raise ‘the standard of presentation and interpretation’ at the places it looks after, then steel yourself; it gets much worse.
The National Trust can’t even be bothered to make sure its pronouncements are written in correct English
You see, the National Trust may ‘look after nature, beauty and history for everyone to enjoy’ but it doesn’t seem to care much about the English language. Its invitation to ‘Take a peak at the view of Sidmouth’, for example, might be more alluring if the reader wasn’t thinking: ‘Er… shouldn’t that be “peek”?’ An organisation with an educational mission and commitment to ‘teach and inspire’ really shouldn’t be making basic grammatical mistakes and spelling errors.
Occasionally, Spectator articles have suggested that, as a custodian of our islands’ history and heritage, the National Trust is not always above reproach. But exhorting us to ‘camp considerably’ (I think they mean ‘considerately’) when visiting Divis and the Black Mountain suggests that perhaps the Trust can’t be trusted with our language either.
‘Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong,’ warns Nietzsche. However, given the comic combination of smugness and error found in so many of the Trust’s pronouncements – ‘The plan sets out the best way to care for the long-term future of Lyme’s diverse landscape and the wildlife that live here’ – sometimes the urge becomes irresistible. How can they be so sure that it’s ‘the best way’? And why can’t they conjugate verbs?
My urge to punish came on quite suddenly one morning when I was reading the National Trust’s ‘commitment to inclusion and diversity’: I’d like to see it pay a fine for each grammatical and spelling mistake it makes. After all, the English language is also an important part of our national heritage.
Especially as the fines I have in mind would be quite hefty. What might be a suitable punishment for an organisation that thinks it’s OK to write ‘a hot summers day’, or wonders if the damage to a Georgian urn was caused when it fell ‘of its base’? I don’t know what the penalty is for leaving rubbish, but the Trust has surely got to fork out a fair bit more for littering its public pronouncements with such solecisms. After all, sweet papers on a lawn are soon removed and do no permanent harm. But the Trust’s spelling and grammatical mistakes constitute an educational hazard. How many impressionable schoolchildren will assume that the phrase ‘It’s location is unknown’, published by such an august body, must be correct?
In case anyone thinks I’m just another intolerant pedant, let me be clear that I’m not suggesting that the National Trust be penalised for typos, such as ‘There a deckchairs to relax in’. Or for its occasional, unaccountable preference for American spelling: ‘the simple joys of exploration and free-spirited fun take center stage.’ And I’m not suggesting either that it pays for its self-satisfied pomposity: ‘a series of key initiatives which have been developed through an extensive co-creative journey with local communities and stakeholders.’ Provided the Trust shows remorse and a genuine determination to try harder in future, such errors and the frequent clumsiness – ‘He placed the mansion back to how it looked in his childhood’ – needn’t be punished.
But it’s clearly unacceptable for an organisation that hosts many thousands of schoolchildren persistently to confuse ‘of’ and ‘off’, ‘everyday’ and ‘every day’ and ‘it’s’ and ‘its’. And the same, of course, goes for ‘effect’ and ‘affect’ (having sanctimoniously informed us that ‘As a member of the LGBTQ community Wilde endured prejudice, oppression and the loss of his freedom’, the Trust then laments that Oscar’s prison sentence ‘irrevocably effected his health’).
Despite boasting about its ‘focus on quality’ and ‘high standards of conservation, stewardship and curatorial care’, it seems that the National Trust can’t even be bothered to make sure its pronouncements are written in correct English. If our new government could fine the Trust £500 for every mistake, it would surely raise educational standards. Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned. True – but they do have coffers to be raided.
It only took me an hour or two browsing the National Trust’s webpages, and a morning wandering around one of its properties, to find the mistakes I’ve listed above. But since this is an organisation which has rather a lot to say for itself, there are still reams of text that I haven’t looked at and doubtless plenty more mistakes just waiting to be found. If its education officers are too busy, then there are surely plenty of retired lecturers and English teachers who, in return for a modest fee (£10 per error detected?), would be only too happy to help the Trust avoid those hefty fines and ensure that visitors really do get ‘a better experience’.
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