'sat' for 'sitting'

This is from a story about a couple whose first meeting was on an aeroplane:

"Their first date was sat next to each other on the plane, and after reaching their destination the loved up pair kept in touch via social media and Skype."

There is a great deal wrong with this sentence, and I would recast it as

"They first met when seated/sitting next to one another on the plane ..."

but I want to focus on 'sat next to each other'.

Standard British English would have 'sitting next', and I think this still applies in US English.

The use of 'sat' for 'sitting' used to be a feature of northern grammar, but is becoming increasingly prevalent and is now, apparently, sanctioned in print as standard.

The Wizard of 'as'

The word 'as' has two useful and different functions in combining parts of a sentence:

1. It can be an informal way to indicate cause:

"I can't meet you tomorrow afternoon as I am in court on a murder charge."

2. It can indicate events happening at the same time:

"As I drove by your house, I saw that it was on fire."

For the DM, however, the meaning of 'as' seems much more fluid:

"Disgraced ... actor ... hides in the back of a car as he is bailed on child porn charges" (December 30 2015)

Here 'as' seems to mean 'after' ...

I've a feeling we'll be seeing a lot of these as the year goes by.

Another trailer

On, December 30, in story about flooding in Northern England, we find:

"The storm is already causing carnage elsewhere in the country, including on the M74 in South Lanarkshire (centre) where cars were quite literally floating down the road today after the motorway was engulfed with floodwater."

"carnage" is not a synonym for "damage", and "quite literally" is redundant here.

Quick appetiser from December 29.

In a piece about an actor not being allowed to take a hoverboard on an aeroplane, we read:

"Complaining that the airline ought to have told him that he would not be able to bring them on board previously, he fumed: 'Where is your responsibility in this?'"

Why not have this instead?:

Complaining that the airline ought to have told him in advance that he would not be able to bring them on board, he fumed: 'Where is your responsibility in this?'

Purpose of blog

My intention in this blog is not to chart factual errors in the Daily Mail, but rather to make a record of errors in grammar and logic. I will begin the record on January 1 2016.