Telegraph style book: Cc
caesarean section: Not 'caesarian'; lower case like 'wellington boot'
Camorra: Naples mafia
Cage, Nicolas
Campbell, Alastair
canvass: To seek views. canvas: for painters
carcass
cardiac arrest: Not the same as a heart attack
carmakers: one word
carnage: Means extensive or indiscriminate slaughter
car park
Cass review: Do not capitalise the 'r'
Catholics: 'Roman Catholic' at first mention; lc for 'catholic taste'
caviar: No 'e' on the end
cave: A noun. Do not use as a verb (e.g. 'caved to pressure')
Center Parcs
Central Saint Martins: No apostrophe
centre on: Not 'centre around'
century: Lower case 'c' (e.g. 20th century)
chairman: Use even for women; 'chair' means a piece of furniture except in quotes. Chairperson is also banned
champagne: Use only for true champagne and lower case; others = 'sparkling wine'
Channel 4, Channel 5
Channel tunnel: Lowercase 't'
Cheltenham Ladies' College: Note apostrophe
cheese: Capitalise regional types; 'cheddar' is lower case as it's generic
cheap: Objects are cheap, prices are low
chief executive: Not CEO
child abuse images: Not 'child pornography'
childcare, ChildLine, childminder
cholesterol
choice: Do not write 'two choices'
Christ Church Oxford: Not 'Christ Church College'
Christie's/Christies: Apostrophe for auction houses; no apostrophe for company/offshoots
church: Capitalise for institution (the Catholic Church); lower case for buildings/denominations
Citizens Advice Bureau: no possessive. Plural = bureaus
City Hall: For London
Civil Service: But lower case for civil servants
CJD: Only vCJD is human mad cow disease
Claridge's
Clinton, Hillary: Two l's
Co: As abbreviation for 'company' only in official names
coastguard: One word (UK); 'Coast Guard' (US)
Cobbleigh, Uncle Tom
Coca-Cola
Coco Pops
Cold War
colon: Cap up the following word in headlines (Donald Trump: The US is great)
Colosseum: Rome. 'Coliseum' is the London opera house
comedic: Use 'comic' instead
common sense: Two words (noun), one (adj)
Communist: Capitalise if referencing a specific party, lower case for ideology
compare with: To highlight differences 'She compared the UK's poor performance with Germany's brilliant one'
compare to: To suggest likeness 'He compared Macron to Napoleon'
complement/compliment: 'complement' = completes; 'compliment' = praise
comprise: The whole comprises the parts; never 'comprised of'
Condé Nast
confidant/confidante: Male/female forms
Congress (US): Use 'member of Congress' not 'Congressman'
consensus: 'Consensus of opinion' is tautology
Conservative: Capitalise for party/policies; lower case for attitude
consonants: Double before certain suffixes. Exceptions noted.
constitution (US): Lower case
Continent: Capitalise when referring to mainland Europe
continuous/continual: 'Continuous' = uninterrupted; 'continual' = frequent with breaks
co-operate: Takes a hyphen
co-operative: Capitalise when referring to the company. Co-op in headlines
coronation: Lower case unless referring to specific event
cost of living crisis: No hyphens
Côte d'Azur
councillor: Abbreviated to 'Cllr' in names: Cllr John Smith
counter-offensive/counter-attack: hyphenated
country: Uses 'it' as a pronoun, not 'she'. 'Britain is a country. It is in Europe'
Covid-19
Covid Inquiry: Capitalise at first mention; 'the inquiry' thereafter
Coward, Sir Noël
crackdown: Use sparingly; tabloid
credence/credibility: 'credence' = belief/trust; 'credibility' = believability
crescendo: Means gradual increase, not climax
crisis: Use only when truly justified
crossbencher: One word. 'Cross benches' = two words
Cruella de Vil
Crufts: No apostrophe
cryptocurrency: One word; 'crypto' is acceptable shorthand
Currys
curtsy
Hashtags
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Telegraph
21 minutes ago
- Telegraph
My ‘mankeeper' wife always wants me to share my feelings. Why can't she just leave me alone?
So it is called 'mankeeping' now, is it? Not 'nagging', or 'pestering', but a nice touchy-feely expression which gives every woman – especially my wife – the right to badger me multiple times a day about how I am 'feeling'? Last week my wife of 38 years, Diana, reported on this new psychotherapist term, 'mankeeping', in which couples are suffering a detrimental effect on their relationship because women are having to do all the 'emotional heavy-lifting'. 'Mankeepers' grumble that their male partners fail to share their innermost feelings and emotions with them, so they in turn feel shut out of their lives. This very much struck a chord with me as Diana asks me about 10 times a day if I am 'OK'. It drives me crazy – and I think most men will agree. I fear mankeeping will now become the word of the month in our household – and another stick to beat me with. Yet I do not need to be mankept by my wife or anyone else, thank you very much. We men want mainly to be left alone with our thoughts. We are not all emotional husks and we do have deeply felt emotions that do occasionally come out and, yes, need to be talked about. Just not 10 times a day. To avoid the never-ending 'How are you feeling? Are you sure you are alright?' series of enquiries about my health, both mental and physical (we're both now 64 years old), I have adopted a kind of rictus grin to allay any fears Diana might have about my state of mind. Sadly, I don't think it works. I spent 10 years as a TV war correspondent, reporting from Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Albania, and, because some of my colleagues now have PTSD, Diana wants me to 'vocalise my fears'. Yes, the plight of civilians I witnessed – brutalised and trapped in these places – during my career did have a profound effect on me, and the memories are very deep-rooted. But that is where I want them to stay. If I opened that Pandora's box in my mind on a regular basis I very much doubt that our marriage – or even myself as a sane human being – would survive. Those memories need to be shared only by the camera operators and other journalists I have worked with over the years, not my wife and children. In other words, people who can relate to those things. When I get together with like-minded people – mostly men, but I also have female war-correspondent friends – we do share feelings and emotions, without the fear that we are burdening someone with them. Because that is how I feel – my emotions are mine. I don't want anyone else dabbling in my soul. Of course not many men have witnessed such trauma – but I think most do feel like me, that they'd rather trundle on from day to day not thinking about anything very deeply, just putting one foot in front of the other, getting jobs done and looking forward to a beer. I cannot understand why women need to take their emotional temperature seemingly 20 times each day and tell each other everything. It's as if they are constantly mentally patting themselves down, asking: 'Am I happy?' Men are not like this. We deal in facts and realities, and practical issues such as: 'Must get more AdBlue for the car.' When my wife looks at me with that annoying 'caring' expression and asks: 'What are you thinking?' I have to swiftly make something up on the spot that I think will please her, when the real answer is 'nothing whatsoever'. The term mankeeping was coined by postdoctoral fellow Angelica Ferrara, a postdoctoral scholar at America's Stanford University, and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. The term, she says, 'describes the unreciprocated work that women do to manage the emotional and social needs of the men in their lives, an under-recognised form of labour resulting from men's declining social networks'. Now hold on there! I have quite a few close friends, and we talk a lot. OK, mostly about cars and football and very little about our feelings – but that does not mean the closeness is not there. It is there, in an expression, in a nod, in a hand on the arm. We don't need to emotionally bleed all over each other to feel our support. I know they are there for me, and would go to the ends of the Earth if I needed them. But we deal with personal issues through jokes and light banter. I rely on them to cheer me up – not constantly mop up my spilt emotions. I can do that myself, thank you. If I really think about it, I don't want to be seen as weak by anyone, especially not my wife or children. That's my self-worth as a man. I remember an episode in the TV show Friends where one of the characters complains that her boyfriend has never cried. She pursues him until he breaks down and suddenly, he can't stop weeping. Soon after, she leaves him. Point proven! I hate crying in front of my wife. She says it is a 'strength' but to me, I have failed if I let go to that extent. That isn't my role. I would far rather unburden myself to people who really know what I am feeling inside – and this only very occasionally. In many ways this has been very helpful to us as a couple – I hope my wife now understands that emoting all over the place makes me feel much worse, not better. I don't enjoy it. I find it confusing and hurtful, and it stirs up way too much inside. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in stoicism and presenting a brave face to the world. And, at the end of the day, I like to know I've kept my head down, worked hard and earned a drink. We really are that simple.
Telegraph
21 minutes ago
- Telegraph
‘I was sunbathing topless when I heard a male voice': The trans row over women-only swimming
Janice Williams was first taken to the Kenwood Ladies' Pond on Hampstead Heath in the 1990s by a group of single mothers from a community project. 'Many were survivors of domestic violence, prostitution, trafficking etc and, for these women particularly, the single-sex status of the pond meant that it was not just a sanctuary, it was the only sanctuary, a place of freedom, healing and community,' says Janice, 69, a former training consultant who lives near the ponds in North London. 'We could picnic on the meadow, remove bra tops and – for the few who had learnt to swim – dip in the water while another mum watched our kids. There were women from all different backgrounds – Muslim, Jewish, Afro-Caribbean – it was pure and beautiful to be immersed in nature.' Today, the sign on the iron gate at the pond – the only natural women-only bathing pond in Europe – still reads: 'Women Only. Men not allowed beyond this point'. And for almost a century, since it opened in 1925, this rule was respected by the large majority of visitors. But recently, another sign appeared which reads: 'Those who identify as women are welcome to swim at the Kenwood Ladies' Bathing Pond.' The Ladies Pond is open to biological women and trans women with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment under the Equality Act 2010. The City of London Corporation is preparing a public consultation on the future admissions policy at the Ladies' Pond.' It seems that The City of London Corporation – the multi-billion-pound local authority that manages the site, and governs the Square Mile – is doubling down on its 2018 decision to update its 'Women Only' policy to include trans women (men who self-identify as women). When that update became public, protests ensued. One grassroots women's group took to wearing fake moustaches and went to the nearby men-only pond to raise awareness of the hypocrisy of the policy (they were thrown out). But in April, when the Supreme Court ruled that 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 meant biological sex and that even men with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) could be excluded from women-only services, the protesters hoped their fight was over. They were wrong. The City of London Corporation says it is 'currently reviewing its access policies'. It means that for now at least, it will still allow men who identify as women to swim at the women's pond. Campaign group Sex Matters is planning to make a £50,000 legal claim over the Corporation's failure to comply with the Supreme Court ruling. 'The Corporation has said this is not a single-sex service because it already lets trans women in,' says Maya Forstater, executive director of Sex Matters. 'They're basically saying that although the Supreme Court defined what 'man' and 'woman' means in the Equality Act, the words 'man' and 'woman' mean something completely different on their sign and therefore they don't need to use the Equality Act rules at all – which is extraordinary. 'We suspect that's what all other councils who are saying 'it is complex' are thinking as well. They're all biding their time while sticking 'to the pack' because they don't want to be sued. 'We've heard a lot from women who say they don't swim in the pond any more. They're self-excluding or changing their behaviour, such as going first thing in the morning when they believe fewer 'trans women' go because they feel it's safer. 'There are other women who say they have had bad experiences when trans women are there – one told us of an elderly transsexual asking young girls to do his bikini up for him and whether he could go naked into the female showers.' Forstater, who has campaigned for clarity on sex in law and policy since winning her own discrimination case in 2021, says that the law is clear and that the City of London is breaching the Equality Act 2010. 'We feel we have a clear-cut case,' she says. 'The ponds are already using sex discrimination because a mother can't take her five-year-old son to the Women's Pond yet a man claiming to be a woman is being allowed access. 'The City of London is a public body providing a public service and so we are bringing this as a public law case to show that here is an organisation breaching sex-based rules. It's irrational and we think it puts women at risk of harm. 'The ponds are an iconic space and the only outdoor women-only amenity in the country. But there's also a male pond and a mixed pond so there's no sense that anyone is not allowed to swim and between those three options, everyone is included.' In a statement, a spokesman for the City of London Corporation said: 'In line with other service providers, we are reviewing our access policies, including those at Hampstead Heath's Bathing Ponds. 'In doing so, we must consider the impact of current and potential future arrangements on all visitors, while ensuring we meet our legal duties and provide appropriate access. 'This summer we will engage with our service users and other stakeholders to ensure we understand their needs and can take properly informed decisions. 'In considering the way forward, we have taken, and will continue to take, specialist legal advice. The current arrangements remain in place during the review. 'Our priority is to provide a safe and respectful environment for everyone.' Hairy bodies in bikinis The reaction to the news that biological males are still allowed in the Ladies' Pond is mixed. One woman who asked not to be named says she has felt as though her privacy has been breached since the rules changed. 'I was sunbathing as usual, topless,' she says. 'I suddenly heard this male voice next to me and he said: 'Do you know what time the pond closes?' Even though I consider myself a broad-minded person, it really freaked me out because I heard a male voice. The idea that someone was there when I was not being modest or protected by any clothing felt wrong. Even though I thought I was a liberated person, I realised I'm not.' The whole experience made her 'very uncomfortable' she admits. Coming out of the pond, another woman wearing a linen shirt and carrying a swimming bag over her arms says that she once saw two men using the pond which made her 'despair'. 'At the time I was very distressed because I thought: 'Oh that's the end of women-only spaces then,' she reflects. The guys I saw were very much a provocation. They had big hairy bodies and were wearing bikinis. It was very aggressive, very much an attack. I felt it was sad… I felt angry. 'The beauty of women-only spaces is that you don't have to think about what your body looks like in a costume or whether you want to take your top off when you sunbathe,' she says. 'There's a lovely freedom there and I think it's instantly contaminated, even if you're liberal-minded about the trans issue.' But not all bathers today are concerned. Alba Hernandez, 28, a theatre usher from north-west London is more accepting. 'I feel very safe and I don't think I would feel threatened,' she says. 'If anything happened that would endanger somebody, the pond is a very strong community and it would be stopped very quickly.' Barbara Massey, 76, another regular, holds a similar view. 'There was one person who was a man and became a woman, she was always coming here,' she says. 'But she sat with us up on that bench and everyone accepted her as a woman. As long as they don't feel you up or chat you up. 'But if it's a guy who's sneaking in here, saying: 'I identify as a woman' and he's actually eyeing women up, we wouldn't like that.' Yet other women point out that erasing women-only spaces excludes certain religions. 'It's very important for some people to have space for women-only,' says 75-year-old Daphne Grey. 'Certain religions would not be allowed to swim at all if they had to go mixed, so I think it's important. They've got mixed ponds and men-only ponds, so why not women-only?' Protesters against the recent policy claim that one of the main figures driving the charge to allow trans-identifying men into the ponds is Edward Lord, an elected member of the City of London Corporation since 2001. Lord identifies as non-binary and goes by they/them pronouns. It was Lord who, in 2018, oversaw a consultation by the City of London Corporation about its trans policy, including in relation to women's and men's ponds and changing rooms on Hampstead Heath. Promoted mostly on his Twitter account, Lord launched the consultation, saying: 'It shouldn't be controversial. It shouldn't be a debate. Trans women are women, trans men are men.' Yet when Forstater polled her Twitter followers in 2019 to see how many people said they had been blocked by Lord in the past – and therefore would have been less likely to see the survey he was promoting – it appeared that 83 per cent of the 1,821 blocked were women. However, some women on the online forum Mumnset did see the survey and sensed problems straight away. 'No mention of sex, no mention of impact on any stakeholders, all leading questions, and horrible clear intention to filter,' wrote one. The survey found that 60 per cent of respondents appeared to support the inclusion of trans-identifying men in the ponds. Yet critics argued that it was 'a sham'. Alice Sullivan, professor of sociology at University College London's Social Research Institute and author of a recent independent review assessing how sex and gender identity are recorded in public data, statistics, and research commented at the time. She said the consultation had been handled in an 'oddly discreet way'. Today, her views are even more robust. 'This is a strong contender for the worst questionnaire I have ever seen,' she says. 'Instead of asking users of local services concrete questions about whether males should be allowed into women's spaces, the City of London asked pure gobbledygook questions such as: 'Do you agree or disagree that: 1/ a person may come to feel that their gender is different from that assigned to them at birth. 2/ A person who consistently identifies in a gender which is different to the one they were assigned at birth should be accepted by society in their stated gender identity etc. 'To add insult to injury, there were 39,650 responses, but half of these responses were deemed invalid, with analysis only carried out on the remaining 21,191 cases. The exercise was a sham from start to finish.' However, the trans-inclusive policy was adopted, leading to women's rights campaigners to lead several protests. 'The moment a man was allowed in, [the atmosphere at the women-only pond] changed at a stroke in a short-sighted move designed to bolster the already overinflated ego of Edward Lord,' says Janice Williams. 'I later joined the committee of the Kenwood Ladies Pond Association (KLPA) hoping to explain all this to them but to no avail. They refused to even discuss it. I proposed the AGM motion to return the pond to women-only but a lot of young students appeared to have been drafted in at the last moment to vote against it and the meeting was abandoned in chaos because speakers in favour were refused a hearing. This was pre-Supreme Court clarification.' A spokesman for the City of London Corporation said: 'Edward Lord has had no direct involvement in shaping the City Corporation's response to the Supreme Court decision. Our position is guided solely by our legal obligations under the Equality Act and our interpretation of the Court's judgment.' Supporters of the trans-inclusive policy cite the positive vote to include trans women from members of the KLPA as a reason why Sex Matters should drop any case. But Sex Matters dismiss this. 'You can't vote to discriminate and obviously if you've caused lots of women to self-exclude and then you take a vote amongst those who didn't self-exclude, the answer will be: 'We think it's fine,'' says Forstater. 'But it's not up to them to vote, it's up to the City of London to provide a service that is lawful. 'People still have freedom of association to vote to live their life in a particular way and if there is a group of women who want to swim with trans women then they are free to do that. 'But they need to do that in the mixed pond. What they can't do is vote that a public service that is spending public money and is required to comply with the Equality Act doesn't do that.' Venice Allan is another supporter of Sex Matters' legal action and will be a witness for their case. She has taken part in several protests since 2018 to keep the pond women-only. 'In a women-only pond you're free to be semi-naked in the pool and naked in the shower, but there's a joy and physical peace to being there because there are no men or boys splashing around,' says Allan, 50. 'I have two sons myself and there's nothing wrong with that kind of swimming but to have a peaceful space like this was wonderful.' Venice says she has encountered men claiming to be women swimming in the pond on at least two occasions. 'There were two men who were clearly 'transitioning' because they had little 'moobs' and several years later there was a man with a woman who was on some kind of hormonal treatment. They were sitting there topless just watching the women. 'Some elderly lesbians I was with actually complained to the lifeguard and at the time I was quite timid and felt: 'Was this the right thing to do?' 'But now I feel completely differently. The men who go now, particularly after all the publicity with the Supreme Court judgment, are deliberately violating our boundaries. When one man comes into a space with lots of women the atmosphere completely changes. 'I was absolutely thrilled when Sex Matters said they were going to take this action. There are three ponds where these men could swim – it's literally the most progressive, inclusive and welcoming space in London – and there is no reason on Earth as to why these men can't use the mixed pond. For me it's the perfect court case.'
Telegraph
22 minutes ago
- Telegraph
AI isn't the greatest threat to language, apathy is
Oh dear. The English language is in terminal decline. Shocking, I know; who'da thunk it? Apart from Scotsman of letters James Beattie in 1785, who fretted it was 'degenerating very fast'. Oh and Irishman of letters Jonathan Swift in 1715: 'Most of the Books we see now a-days, are full of… Manglings and Abbreviations.' Swift felt the purity of the language peaked during the Elizabethan period; no mean feat given that as far back as the 14 th century English chronicler and Benedictine monk Ranulf Higden proclaimed that due to intermingling with Danes and Normans 'the language of the land is harmed and some use strange inarticulate utterance, chattering, snarling and harsh teeth-gnashing'. By way of an update, medieval teeth-gnashing over the spoken word has now been replaced by hand-wringing over its written equivalent. A full 77 per cent of those surveyed by language-learning platform feel that British (aka proper) English was being Americanised by AI programmes. In addition, 51 per cent of respondents admitted they had stopped using punctuation marks like semicolons and Oxford commas because they were too 'AI-like'. I'm all for ditching Oxford commas because they are, let me think… ah yes, stupid. But the extinction of our precious native semicolons doesn't bear thinking about. It's easy to blame AI of course. It can blame itself in 240 languages. Easy but lazy. And as we all know, laziness is a distinctly human rather than technological trait. Which is to say the fault lies not in our stars or even the Cloud but in ourselves. On the one hand we have sold out centre for center and bandy about 'awesome' like college kids on a spring break, yet on the other we are too timid to use splendidly expressive long dashes – in case our writing looks AI-generated. It wasn't always so. Me, I'm old enough to remember when Google (which was originally named the very much creepier 'BackRub') was a rather snippy stickler for grammar and a bit scoldy to boot. Yes, children, long long ago, around the turn of the millennium, if you slapdashily typed in, say, 'Queens Jubilee', it would passive-aggressively enquire 'Did you mean Queen's Jubilee', which of course you did. Your bad. Sure it was humiliating, but it also felt like the search engine was making us better, more literate people. Until of course the Silicon Valley programmerati decided they weren't that into self-improvement and binned it. Now you can enter any sort of gobbledegook and it will guess correctly – because, and I don't care what anyone says, your phone really is listening to every word you say. How else did I mention Birmingham in conversation and immediately get a nudge from to literally get a room? But back to language. There are some who believe usage is sovereign and we should accept that language and even grammar is dynamic rather than fixed. They are wrong. They are probably also the kind of people who say nonsensical things like 'no worries' instead of 'you're welcome'. Yes the national lexicon evolves. I'm still all about the rizz and I frankly love the Gen-Z term 'delulu', as in delusional. But grammar, like the guard rail on a car ferry, is immutable. It's there for the common good; you might not think it's for you, but when you need it, you absolutely do. It's how we communicate, how we understand one another and why Eats, Shoots & Leaves
