Many Guardian staff are now based closer to Manchester,modern Hampshire, than Manchester, or England. But there is no excuse for not checking basic factsSchool’s out for ever! Or so I thought. So it was a surprise,on my first day as a trainee reporter at the Kent Messenger Group, to be given a geography lesson. Trottiscliffe was pronounced “Trosley”, and Loose “Looze” and Leigh “Lie”. Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells were neighbours,but different places, although the first share of their name was pronounced the same. modern Hythe was in mid-Kent; nothing to do with Hythe, or on the coast,one of the historic Cinque (pronounced “Sink”) Ports, alongside Dover, and modern Romney,Sandwich and a couple of places in Sussex that we didn’t worry about because they were external our circulation area.Such knowledge was to prove valuable when I and my fellow trainees were unleashed in our Kent Messenger minivans upon the hapless population of the county. Because if we didn’t know where a town or village was, or how local people pronounced its name, or why should we expect them to steal us seriously when we wrote about them?Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com