Persistent spelling errors undermine the National Trust

Jim Lawley describes in the Spectator how the National Trust’s sloppy approach to spelling and grammar fails to inspire trust when it comes to bigger issues.

How can we trust the National Trust?

A few weeks ago I felt it was my civic duty to draw attention to the many grammatical mistakes and spelling errors in the National Trust’s pronouncements. The abundance of howlers seemed to constitute something of an educational hazard: ‘How many impressionable schoolchildren will assume that the phrase “It’s [sic] location is unknown”, published by such an august body, must be correct?’

It’s hard to envisage the National Trust managing to reduce ‘unequal access to nature, beauty and history’ if it can’t correct elementary mistakes

Since such mistakes can be corrected easily, at no cost and almost immediately, it seemed reasonable to think that they’d soon be gone. No such luck: several weeks have passed and while a couple of the mistakes have been fixed – where it used to say ‘childrens bikes’, for example, it now says ‘children’s bikes’ – the great majority remain. The Trust is still, for example, insisting that Oscar Wilde’s health was ‘irrevocably effected’ by his spell in jail (to which, apparently, his membership of ‘the LGBTQ community’ had condemned him).

The mistakes cited in that article were in any case just a small, representative sample. The National Trust is something of a serial offender and there are many, many more: ‘Please take all litter home with you and use approperiate bins provided’; ‘… the Terry company and it’s place in York’s chocolate heritage’; ‘This crucial role helps supporters to understand the place their visiting’ etc. etc.

Why hasn’t the Trust taken action? We can discount the possibility that people at the National Trust read about their spelling and grammar mistakes but then decided that they couldn’t be bothered to correct them. The Trust wouldn’t shirk its responsibilities like that – it doubtless recognises that the English language is an important part of our national heritage (as George Herbert put it: ‘I like our language, as our men and coast; who cannot use it well, wants wit, not words’). Those responsible aren’t knowingly continuing to publish bad English.

It seems then that the mistakes remain uncorrected because the people in charge are still unaware of them. Perhaps the Trust’s senior staff ought to keep abreast of what the national press is saying about the organisation they lead but we should remember that these are important people doing demanding, sometimes arduous work: if they don’t have time to read Spectator Life and if nobody brought the article to their attention, they can hardly be blamed if the mistakes remain, can they?

Indeed it’s likely that the mistakes haven’t been corrected for the same reason that they were made in the first place – because the National Trust is working so hard on so many other fronts. It is, it tells us with appropriate pride, looking after ‘the nation’s coastline, historic sites, countryside and green spaces, ensuring everyone benefits’ while at the same time endeavouring to ‘grow the number of people who visit National Trust places; grow the diversity of people who visit, volunteer or work at the Trust, and improve the quality of the experiences they have’.

These are daunting challenges. But while it struggles with them, the Trust shouldn’t overlook the importance of getting the basics right. After all, no one’s going to believe that the National Trust can do difficult things like reaching ‘more diverse audiences’ if it’s unable to do simple things like writing correct English. It’s hard to envisage the National Trust managing to reduce ‘unequal access to nature, beauty and history’ if it can’t correct elementary mistakes to which its attention has been drawn. And how can an organisation ‘teach and inspire’ when it can’t even spell?

With its credibility at stake, the Trust will surely now want to take its ‘high standards of conservation, stewardship and curatorial care’ to a new level by finally getting round to correcting all those elementary grammar and spelling mistakes. It’s an important task but it’s also a very easy one. It just needs someone to mention the matter to those responsible: a word to the wise will be sufficient.

And the signs are good. Hilary McGrady, the Director General, has recently recognised that she and her colleagues need to have the ‘bravery to recognise when [they] get things wrong and a willingness to embrace feedback’. So now it’s just a question of how much longer it’s going to take them to embrace this particular feedback and to summon all the bravery required to recognise that where it says ‘approperiate’ it should say ‘appropriate’.