It’s fun and easy to mock the dervishes of politically-correct language.

But the thinking behind it masks a righteousness that would hang anyone who says ‘lumberjack’ instead of ‘woodchopper’ for fear of offending millions of marginalized female lumberjacks.

This week I stumbled across the WIPO Guidelines on Inclusive Language, issued by the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Here I learned to say “faithful dog” instead of “man’s best friend”, a “person who has had a stroke” rather than a “stroke victim”; and “a person with a drug addiction” rather than “an addict.”

Read on…