More quibbling of headlines, this time in English news. Today, the BBC website leads with WHO raises pandemic alert level.
Which is all very well, but I glimpsed just the headline on another site and had to go and read the story to clarify if this meant more doom and gloom, or if it meant that things were getting better.
After all, if you advertise a product that “raises spirits”, it would do exactly the same as a product that “lifts spirits”. But “raising the alert level” is pretty much the opposite of “lifting the alert”.
It probably isn’t ambiguous to someone who is a native speaker and who has time to do more than skim the headlines. But it’s dangerous phrasing for the internet where the majority of the readership is liable to be non-native speakers in a hurry.
Incidentally, I had a blood test earlier in the week. During the brief procedure, the nurse sat there blithely chatting to her colleague, “My son got back from Mexico ten days ago with a sore throat and headache. I had to give him Ibuprofen. But I checked, and the incubation period is a week, so that’s ok.”
Well, technically, it’s probably absolutely fine, but it is hardly the sort of detail that you want partially overheard by just anyone. It’s the sort of thing that causes panic. Even if not a pandemic.
don't confuse the narrator 