over-sensitive experts have established a new orthodoxy in language without anyone really noticing. In America, some changes were politically needed: ‘Negroes’ became ‘Blacks’ and now is being overtaken by the more generic ‘people of colour’. Of course, one must address people as they wish to be addressed, but the desire to avoid giving offence sometimes deprives language of the exactitude and colour that communicates most effectively. Would you prefer to learn that X was imprisoned, or that he was ‘a person experiencing the criminal-justice system’? What on earth does that even mean?
