You either got or you haven't got style

This post has been gestating a while in but publication has been speeded up by the hilarious revelations yesterday of Jacob Reef-Mogg'f  rules for his staff in his new role as Leader of the House of Commons. The style guide issued by the Right Honourable Member for the Eighteenth Century has become a source of humour for social media, but it does raise valid questions as to what a style guide should be.

Two weeks ago, I bought my third copy of The Economist's style guide; the first I bought in the late 1980s or early 1990s and was a useful pointer for me in preparing a style guide for CBI News, which at the time I was editing. The first is still in London, the second has fallen to bits over the years. Style guides exist primarily to ensure consistency across any publication, especially one with numerous authors. Key points in any style guide include use of numbers, names, titles, addresses and, comma, of course, comma, punctuation.

I had intended to write about this in the context of Poles writing professionally in English - but the new Leader of the House of Commons has prompted me to change tack.

If Mr Reef-Mogg'f rules show a lack of awareness of familiar conventions in current usage, it's probably because he one learnt these from his English master at preparatory school at the age of nine and has not moved on since.

Going through his list one by one, as a former magazine editor and publisher, I must say that not all of them are wrong in my book. It's just that so many are; some are so hilariously wrong that Mr Reef-Mogg has duly received public mockery for them.

'Organisations are singular' he says. In general, I agree. But...

[from the BBC's style guide:]

Singular and plural

Treat collective nouns - companies, governments and other bodies - as singular. There are exceptions:

• Family, couple or pair, where using the singular can sound odd

• Sports teams - although they are singular in their role as business concerns ("Arsenal has declared an increase in profits.")

• Rock/pop groups

• The police, as in "Police say they are looking for three men". But individual forces are singular ("The Metropolitan Police says there is no need to panic").

• Press and public should be treated as singular, but rewording may be advisable (replacing "The press arrived soon afterwards. It had lots of questions" with "Journalists arrived soon afterwards. They had lots of questions").

Be consistent within a story (don’t say "The jury has retired to consider its verdict" followed by "The jury are spending the night at a hotel").

'All non-titled males - Esq.' he says. A plain anachronism. As a child, I'd see letters addressed to my father as 'Bohdan Dembinski, esq.'. (These letters would usually be signed off by 'your humble servant'.) But this was more than half a century ago. I don't recall ever receiving such a letter in my adulthood. The Economist's style guide doesn't mention 'esq', nor does the BBC's. Even the Daily Telegraph's style guide has no mention of the word esquire/esq. Mr Reef-Mogg'f  lack of temporal awareness and desire to return to Victorian times is living proof of reincarnation.

'M.P.s No need to write M.P. after their name in the main body of text.' There's no need to put full stops between M and P either. It's an Americanism (consider how Americans abbreviate 'U.S.'). In any British media style guide, it will be 'MP' (plural MPs, singular possessive MP's, plural possessive MPs'). "Do not use full stops in abbreviations", says The Economist. But hello? What's this? "...after their name"? Not "...after his or her name"? Suddenly we see a crashing dissonance, the collision of the 18th and the 21st century - the genderless plural possessive pronoun to refer to a singular masculine or feminine noun/proper noun. The introduction of they / them / their with singular reference by the BBC a few years back caused a massive outcry among more reactionary viewers.

'Double space after fullstops (sic)'. No, no, no. This died with the typewriter. And it's 'full stop', not 'fullstop'. This really shows a man out of touch with detail, instructing his staff to do things that are plainly incorrect. Just one space, unless you are an American typist from the 1950s.

'No comma after 'and' '. I assume this is a mistake. How can you construct a sentence with a subordinate clause without using a comma after 'and'? Consider the sentence: "I will catch the six o'clock train and, assuming it's on time, be home at seven." The subordinate clause needs to be bracketed with a pair of commas to make sense. "Detention, Mafter Reef-Mogg! You fhall write out fifty timef : 'A comma can be ufed after the word 'and'."'

'Use imperial measurements'. Remember, this is no longer a back-bench MP writing. This is the member of the Cabinet responsible for arranging government business in the House of Commons. Pints and miles are still in use in pubs and road signs of the nation, acres and square feet still figure in estate agents' windows, TV screens and car wheels are measured in inches, but this is daft. Bushels, roods, chains and quarts? Furlongs, gills, grains and hundredweights? Move on, granddad! Science uses SI units; without science we fail.

Banned words: Mr Reef-Mogg'f list is interesting. Partly prep-school master prejudice (he has banned the word 'got', see below), partly a reaction to political correctness (he doesn't like the word 'equal'), the list also contains words that I bridle at. The chief offender here is the word 'very'. It adds nothing to the meaning of a sentence. Compare 'I was busy last week' to 'I was very busy last week'. The word 'very' is a Trump word, there to lamely pad out sentences. Mark Twain wrote: "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

"You either got or you haven't got style"

We all have our linguistic pet peeves; I dislike the overuse of the word 'great', another Trump word. I deeply dislike the word 'societal' when the word 'social' will do. 'Anti-Societal Behaviour Order,' anyone? Comedian Alexei Sayle dislikes the word 'workshop' outside of the context of light engineering. The word 'ongoing' was once a fortnightly source of amusement in Private Eye back in the early 1980s, but is generally accepted today because it has no adequate substitute. Many people dislike 'going forward' (I don't have a problem with it).

Mr Reef-Mogg'f banned-words list also contains an all-too-gentle stab at bureaucratic turns of phrase that really do need rooting out. One example: 'I understand your concerns' (subtext - 'but there's nothing you can do anyway'), but this short selection goes nowhere near far enough at rooting out soulless constructions overused by British civil servants (and indeed bureaucrats the world over). But that's a far bigger issue.

I fear Mr Reef-Mogg'f rules show him up to be a pompous lightweight who appears intelligent because of his accent and background but actually quite lacking in intellectual firepower.

This time last year:
Total eclipse of the moon, Warsaw

This time three years ago:
'Others' vs. 'Our others'

This time four year:
Reducing inequality in Polish society

This time six years ago:
Llanbedrog beach

This time eight years ago:
The Accursed Soldiers - a short story

This time nine years ago:
Driving impressions of the Toyota Yaris
[The car continues to be totally, 100% faultless nine years from new]

This time 11 years ago:
Poland's dry summer

This time 12 years ago:
The UK's wettest summer ever