Is it Twixmas or Twixtmas? And other style guide conundrums we have faced this year at the Guardian | Charlotte Naughton and Katy Guest

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Are we in Twixmas or Twixtmas? Do dinosaurs have capital letters? Is space measured in kilometres or miles? These are some of the questions we thought would be easy to answer when we were appointed as editors of the Guardian style guide in October.

Journalists on the Guardian contact us every day wanting to know the correct style for the terminology in the articles they are writing or editing, and we need to make a ruling on each, or sometimes update an existing one. If there are style guide queries with obvious answers, we haven’t encountered one yet. One colleague asked if the abbreviation AI had entered the language, and was it necessarily generative or just gen? Another told us that if journalists drop the al- from Arabic names it is just like dropping the Mc from McDonald.

The introduction to the 1960 edition of the style guide was headed “Neither pedantic nor wild”, and we try to live up to that maxim. There’s a trend towards the permissive in language, as well as towards American English, and we need to reflect how readers speak. But we are cautious not to erode the diversity and complexity of English as it has evolved in the UK.

It’s a fine balance. Many of our readers around the world may understand kilometres better than miles, kindergarten better than nursery or sidewalk more than pavement, but our lexicon is still rooted in British English. We did make an exception to the rule about acronyms when our colleagues in the Guardian’s US office asked us to capitalise ICE. It is their Immigration and Customs Enforcement department, after all, and a rule that results in confusing readers is a rule that should be bent. But Nasa and Nato stay as they are.

In space, however, nobody can hear what measurements you use. When a reader asked whether we should be using kilometres in space rather than miles, we consulted the UK space agency’s chief scientist, Prof Adam Amara. He agreed. “In science, all measurements, including lengths and volumes, use the metric system,” he said. But he went on: “That said, once you get into space, we very quickly move away from the metric or imperial system altogether and we work with AU (astronomical units) and parsecs (a measure of distance)”. After much discussion we decided not to change the guide, which advises that “We use the metric system for weights and measures; exceptions are the mile and the pint.” We wouldn’t use kilometres first for a Spanish story, regardless of local usage, so we didn’t see why the rule shouldn’t apply in space.

Sometimes, the language we use can be political. The tradition of taking the al- from somebody’s name when we refer to them by surname in a story seems rooted in a careless western convention, and we have decided to end it. We were helped enormously in this ruling by Dr Nada Elzeer, a senior lecturer in Arabic at Soas University of London, who expertly steered us through this complex topic, reassuring us that she had told us “enough so that you won’t look stupid”.

As for dinosaurs, there are convincing arguments for and against, but our job is to make a rule that’s consistent and clear. So you’ll find lowercase triceratops in the Guardian, just the same as hippopotamus. And bringing us right up to date, we think that most readers now know generative artificial intelligence as gen AI.

There are some questions that we will take time over. We have already had a valuable discussion with the charity Mind but we have many more conversations to have about terminology around mental health. References to ethnicity, disability, sexuality and neurodiversity differ around the world and will always need updating.

We want to be as open and transparent as possible about how we talk about the complex world we live in. And we want to hear from you. Perhaps you have expertise on a sensitive topic, or you just care about how we use words. We may not always agree, but we will always investigate, listening to all sides and making a judgment based not on our prejudices but on our principles: of honesty, integrity, fairness, courage and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. Please email your comments or queries to the readers’ editor at [email protected], putting “Style guide” in the subject field.

We chose Twixmas in the end. It is by far the most common usage, but lest anyone think we are pandering to populist dumbing down, we should point out that the old English word for between is “betwix”. Style guides play a part in the evolution of language, and we need to move with the times. But as you contemplate another mince pie in this downtime between Christmas and new year, we hope it’s reassuring to know that Twixmas traces its roots back to the old high German word zwiski, meaning two each.