Malaysian names will usually be Chinese, Malay or Tamil. Chinese names are no problem -- or no worse than they are anywhere else. The given names are usually not hyphenated. Malay names may be complicated. The prime minister, for example, is Mahathir bin Mohamad. This means Mahathir son of Mohamad and becomes (Mr) Mahathir on second reference. Tamil names are similar but even more difficult. In every case, ask.
major is much overused as a variation on "important". Newspapers and news bulletins are littered with major speeches, major problems, major new developments etc. If tempted, try to think of something more specific.
many should be used for countable items, much for uncountable quantities. See uncountable nouns for which is which.
mass meaning the religious ceremony does not require a capital. Note possible variations: mass, low mass, high mass, requiem mass. Note also that a mass is not "held"; it may be offered, celebrated, said or (high mass only) sung.
the masses, meaning the people at the "grass roots", presents some dangers. Firstly it must be plural: to talk of "the mass" is meaningless. Secondly the use of "the masses" has a whiff of Marxist rhetoric to it. Better to use "the general public" or some such phrase.
mean, median, mode are useful statistical concepts. The mean is what we usually refer to as the average -- to get the mean age of a class of 31 people you add their ages together and divide by 31. The median is the age of the person in the middle -- who has 15 members of the class older than him or her and 15 younger. The mode is the most popular number -- the age shared by the largest number of people. In what is known technically as a "normal distribution" they are all the same. Where they are different you can sometimes draw interesting conclusions.
media is a plural. The singular (seldom used) is "medium". Style book writers dislike "media" as a short, pretentious synonym for our industry.
memorandum should strictly speaking take the plural "memoranda", but "memorandums" is now widely accepted. Not a good word for news writing anyway; the shorter "memo" is acceptable in all but the most formal contexts. Plural "memoes".
metaphors are overworked in much modern writing. If you must use them try at least to avoid mixing them in incongruous combinations. My favourite example of mixed metaphor is Fowler's specimen: a virgin field pregnant with possibilities. Metaphors have an honoured place in editorial and feature-writing, but in news copy a few favourites tend to get over-used. Avoid, for example, that exhausted pair Commuters/shoppers will have to dig deeper into their pockets when fares/prices rise ... and Steady rain did not dampen the enthusiasm at yesterday's fair/sports day/boat races/orgy...
meter, metre cause confusion. A meter is used for measuring something: gas meter, thermometer, speedometer. The metre is the basic unit of length in the metric system.
metric system is the old familiar name for what is now known as the Systeme Internationale (pronounced with a French accent). This starts with seven basic units -- metres, litres, grams etc. -- and derives from them a complete set of physical measurements. Unfortunately some of the more remote derivations are concealed behind the names of ancient scientists, which can be confusing.
midnight by tradition is the end of a day, not the beginning of the next one. So if you are writing on Monday morning "midnight yesterday" means the midnight which has just passed, and "midnight tomorrow" means Tuesday night.
military traps to watch out for:
militate, mitigate are confused more often than not. "Militate" (seldom used in Hong Kong) means to have weight or effect against and must take the preposition "against". The fact that he had only one leg militated against his playing football for Hong Kong. To mitigate means to ease or soften. The effects of the famine were mitigated by shipments of free food from Oxfam.
minuscule, not miniscule.
mishap is a useful word for headlines about accidents and such like, but cannot be stretched too far. It must be reserved for minor happenings; anything with fatal casualties is certainly too serious.
money means, for our purposes, Hong Kong dollars. Style in copy is $5, $500, $5.50 (the final zero is required), $5,000, $500,000, $5 million, $5.5 million (not $5,500,000). Dollars are Hong Kong ones unless otherwise stated. Do not use HKD for them. If foreign dollars are intended the appropriate abbreviation must be used: US$, S$ etc. Many countries have francs: the country must be specified. The abbreviation for pounds sterling is £, option-3 on a Macintosh, and it goes before the number: £5. Foreign sums of money must always be translated in brackets: He was paid US$500 (about $4,000). There is a calculator on the Apple pull-down menu. Serious business publications check exchange rates daily but for TYR purposes this is pointless. Treat the US$ as $7.8 and the £ as $12. Round off the result.
MP is, in British usage, the standard abbreviation for Member of Parliament. In many other countries it is the short term for military policeman. Do not use the abbreviation (for either purpose) unless it is clear which you mean.
Mr, Mrs, Miss or Ms (all without points) should precede the full name of everyone in your story, and their surname in later mentions -- Mr David Chan... Mr Chan. The unadorned name may be used for a curious combination of folk: entertainment figures, sportsmen, juveniles and criminals including those accused but not yet tried. The SCMP, for some reason, adds journalists to this list. If people in the first two categories appear in a context outside their usual one they should be treated the same as the rest of the population: Singer and actress Ms Liza Wang has been appointed to the NPC...
music titles go as follows:
GIS permits "news media" but prefers "press", or "news organisations". The Economist prefers "press and television". NYT suggests "printed and electronic press" but will accept "news media" while holding its nose.
The system has officially been adopted in Hong Kong, though traditional measurements (like the tael and catty) are resisting vigorously and Anglo-Saxons cling to their miles, pounds and pints.
In matters of this kind it is for newspapers to keep abreast of public usage, not to run ahead of it. Use whatever will be most useful to your readers.
Bear in mind, in this as in other similar cases, that you must take the reader's point of view, and if your newspaper will not be read until Tuesday then a further adjustment is needed: "midnight yesterday" becomes Monday night and "midnight tomorrow" means Wednesday night.
Remember also that midnight means specifically 12.00 pm. It should not be used in looser senses to mean "at night" or "after dark".
In practice "mitigate" and the resultant noun "mitigation" crop up most often in court reports. When a person has been convicted his lawyer will usually make a speech explaining why his client should receive a light punishment, and this may be called a speech in mitigation of sentence. Lawyers sometimes use the verb "to mitigate" to mean to make this speech. Reporters should not imitate this, but you should make it clear what is going on if you report the speech, so: In mitigation, Mr Costly Wong QC said...
As far as Mrs, Ms and Miss are concerned no professional reporter should conclude an interview with a woman without establishing which she uses or prefers. The usual arrangement on newspapers (whose editors tend to be of an age and sex similar to mine) is that Mrs or Miss is used unless the interviewee expresses a preference for Ms. The current TYR policy is that Ms is used unless the interviewee prefers Miss or Mrs. As this is a matter of political rather than aesthetic sensitivity the TYR editors are free to frame their own policy as long as it is consistently followed. TYR reporters should bear in mind that on some publications the free use of Ms is regarded as a symptom of idleness.
Some newspapers, notably The Times, rightly believe it is unfair to strip accused criminals of their titles before the result of the case is known. But this leads to complaints from readers when the accused is ostentatiously guilty of something horrendous, so most newspapers have persisted with the old system.
Some publications put non-musical words in quotes if they crop up in a title (the "Eroica" Symphony) but this seems both unnecessary and complicated, because at some point you have to regard a familiar title as a whole. This then leads to difficult choices -- is it "The 1812 Overture" or The "1812" Overture?
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