SOMEWHAT with shock, I find myself simpatico with Jacob Rees-Mogg. In defiance of the very thing we are simpatico about, I will say that again.
Jacob Rees-Mogg and I - kindred spirits.
It's time to book in some annual leave, check myself into a retreat and reassess everything I stand for.
Mr Rees-Mogg has issued his staff with a strict house style guide, a set of linguistic dos and don'ts for such occasions as writing to constituents. One such rule is to limit the use of I, a rule I have already emphatically broken and that I will continue to do.
Among his other preferred rules is that Mr Rees-Mogg requires all non-titled males to be referred to as "esquire" as a sign of respect. There is no female equivalent of esquire but one perhaps must only be grateful Mr Rees-Mogg allows use of Ms. So modern of him.
READ MORE: Jacob Rees-Mogg brushes off ‘Resign’ heckle on despatch box debut
It, as an aside, is an apparent benefit of having Meghan Markle join the royal family that Ms seems now to be used. Previously, the royal household stuck rigidly to Miss and Mrs. I - there I go again - attended the Garden Party at Holyrood Palace a few years ago, taking my mother as a guest.
I put our details both as Ms Stewart. The Ms was rejected and our invites arrived bearing the honorific Miss. Ma Stewart was quite affronted at having an important part of her life erased so quickly and completely while I was quite affronted at having my feminist gas put on a peep.
When asked about his style guide, the Honourable Member said, "It's just a thing listing banned words, which are sort of New Labour words like 'unacceptable.'" He went on, "If something is wrong, say it is wrong."
Who can argue? Plain speaking is a gift in modern times. We have so much baffling claptrap to wade through that even simple things can become entirely impenetrable - plain-speak away. At the same time, you also find people with unsavoury right-wing views boast about their plain-spoken ways. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump both would pride themselves on being such.
This is where the gift element comes in. They believe they are being direct by failing to pause before engaging their gobs. This means we have an instructively clear insight into how their brains work, failing to keep their racism and sexism hidden. Useful.
And so to the Leader of the House of Commons, a bit of the plain-speaking there too. "Just" and "banned words" is quite the telling coupling. Banning words should never be prefaced by "just". A ban requires a robust defence, something Mr Rees-Mogg's style guide is lacking.
Yet, I'm prone to support a style guide. For someone with a love of language, a style guide is one of the delights of working on a newspaper and something precious, to be protected. Choice of language says much about attitude and influence; it is also a connection to the past, a thread running down through the years.
READ MORE: Letters: Jacob Rees-Mogg is speaking my language
One of my favourite parts of The Herald's house style guide is "Never use a French phrase when an English one will do just as well."
Rees-Mogg's soi-disant style guide makes me wonder if social media could do with a bit of a style guide too. When heated debates play out in the public realm Twitter is the platform for much of these discussions.
And yet, instead of the debate being nurtured and furthered, the letter limited medium of conversation naturally forces people to use shorthands, usually deeply unhelpful shorthands that only silence, or at the very least, stymie debate.
Think pro-life as a term for those who are anti-abortion. It doesn't quite cover it, does it? Pro-lifers are hardly pro the mother's life. If American and Republican, they can hardly claim to be pro any life once it is out of the womb and isn't white and/or wealthy.
It's a disingenuous phrase at best and dishonest at worst.
The issue of independence has come to the fore again with a Boris Johnson prime ministerial term and a looming Brexit returning the issue to the public domain. Can we drop terms like Yoon, and Nat? No matter what your persuasion, either one prompts nothing but hackles to rise and that's the last thing we need at what is crunch time for the country.
TERF - with regards to the trans rights debate - is another one. TERF is a slur. Others say it is not. No matter whether you agree it is offensive, it is a tool for shutting down debate. It is a form of threat.
It is almost impossible for these shorthands to be satisfactorily explanatory of a person's beliefs.
They then become offensive and damage debate by reinforcing prejudices.
It must be possible to have lively, robust debate without reducing people's views to pitiful stereotypes.
It must be possible to take the sting out of the worst of Twitter debate by being allowed and able to name our own viewpoints without being thoroughly dishonest about what those viewpoints are.
How about: Never use a reductive label when treating people as individuals will do.
How about: drop labels, use respect.
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