Proposed additions, 2018. See notes.
Right-wing politics
- AfD
- Alternativ für Deutschland
- alpha, beta, gamma (male)
- ancap, n., adj.
- anarchocapitalist; sometimes AnCap
- antifa
- autogynephilia (autogynephile, autogynephilic)
- based
- bugman
- chimp out, v.
- chug, n.
- civic nationalist, CivNat n.
- coastal elite
- converged, convergence
- formerly single-mission enterprise that elevates diversity to a status equal to its ostensible mission
- countersignal, n., v.
- countersignalling, n.
- cuck, n., v.
- cucking out
- cuckservative
- deplatform
- it isn’t hyphenated; cf. no-platform (v.)
- desist, desister
- detransition (v.), detransitioner
- dissident right
- dogwhistle, v.
- not hyphenated
- echo, n., v.
- surrounding names or usernames of real or suspected Jews with triple parentheses
- 88
- the 88 words
- not “88 words”
- not eighty-eight words (even cap)
- EGI
- ethnic genetic interests
- ethnostate
- not hyphenated
- Euro-Canadian
- Euronationalism, Euronationalist
- (‑)fag
- productive affix belittling the root (cf. ‑tard): morality-fag (v.), namefag, Gun Fag Manifesto
- farstream, n.
- fash, n.
- fashy, adj.
- e.g., bash the fash, go full fash, a fashy haircut
- feminazi
- FGM
- female genital mutilation
- 4chan, 8chan
- lower case
- 1488
- not 1,488, “1488”
- 1488ers
- the 14 words
- not fourteen words (and not cap)
- Generation Z (Zyklon)
- Goodwhite (also Badwhite)
- Great Replacement
- grooming gang
- use rape gang
- HBD
- human biodiversity
- honour killing
- identitarian
- Identity Evropa
- Identity Europa permissible for legibility, and to avoid taking orders on orthography from this group (cf. KISS, k.d. lang)
- identity politics
- indigenous (Britons)
- the JQ
- the Jewish Question
- lamestream media
- LARP, v., LARPing
- live-action roleplaying, v.
- typically used derisively (Naw, an Afrowop like that is only going to be LARPing as pro-European)
- libtard
- MAGA (hat)
- Make America Great Again
- MAGApede
- magic dirt
- Magic Dirt Theory
- majoritarian
- manlet
- manosphere
- men’s-rights activist, MRA
- pl. MRAs (no apostrophe)
- MGTOW
- Men Going Their Own Way (pronounced “migtau”)
- misandry, misandric, misandrist
- minarchist, minarchy
- nationalist
- nativist
- neg, v.
- no-go zone
- normie
- othering (also other, v.)
- Overton window
- PUA
- pickup artist (generally not hyphenated)
- progressive stack
- race realist
- rape jihad
- rapefugee
- rapid-onset gender dysphoria (
- ROGD)
- reconquista
- Remainer (but Remoaner; also Brexiteer, Leaver)
- redpill, v.
- one word, no hyphen (as verb)
- cf. bluepill, blackpill, whitepill
- ROGD
- rapid-onset gender dysphoria
- r-selection, K-selection
- arguably take nonbreaking hyphen
- small r, big K
- the phrase R‑ and K-selection positively takes nonbreaking hyphen for the first one
- Regressive Left
- Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals
- shitlib
- shitlord, edgelord
- shitpost
- shoah, v.
- conjugates normally, but with get-passive (my YouTube video got shoahed [not shoah’d])
- SJW
- snowflake
- soft genocide
- soyboy
- spurg out, v.
- can be sperg out; as with biotch, this will take a while to settle down (or the spellings may remain in free variation)
- Suidlanders (South Africa)
- taqiyya
- tradwife
- trad‑ is a productive affix (cf. paleo‑)
- trans trender
- trap
- MTF transgender who fools a heterosexualist male into a sexual encounter
- TRS
- the Right Stuff (
.biz)
- Tumblrina
- 2A
- Second Amendment (U.S. Constitution)
- unperson, v., n.
- unthing, v., n.
- V4, Viségrad (countries, Group)
- Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia
- virtue-signal, v.
- decide on virtue-signaling vs. virtue-signalling and stick to it (I vote the latter, but such usages are almost 50/50 in en‑CA)
- vizmin
- like Canuck, it’s casual, not pejorative
- not viz min, vis min
- vehicular jihad
- White
- White genocide
- white-knight (for), v.
Left-wing politics
- anti-racist (activist)
- use in reference to opponents of such activists only if you can prove that those opponents describe themselves thus
- cishet
- cissexism, cissexist
- deadname, v.
- decolonize, v.
- dogwhistle, v.
- genderfluid
- gender-nonbinary
- gender-nonconforming
- those are the only acceptable adjectival forms; very much not gender non-binary (adj.), gender non-conforming (adj.)
- genderqueer
- intersectional, intersectionality
- Latinx (also Filipinx)
- correctly written with
VAR or at least italics on the x
- pronounced “lateeneks”; “filipeeneks”
- land acknowledgement
- majority minority
- misgender, v.
- neo-Nazi, n.
- not neoNazi, neonazi, neo-nazi
- use only if you can prove those specified describe themselves thus
- no-platforming
- normalize
- PoC/POC
- person/people of colour
- QTPOC, BIPOC
- queer and trans people of colour (pronounced “cutiepock”); black and indigenous people of colour (“byepock”)
- racialized, adj.
- settler
- TERF
- trans-exclusionary radical feminist
- tone-police, v.
- transmisogyny
- woke
Technology
- @‑reply, n., v.
- takes nonbreaking hyphen
- generally not at-reply
- adpocalypse
- avi, AV
- avatar (typically one that is readily changed, as on Twitter)
- block
- chan, adj.
- clapback
- demonetize, v.
- DDoS, DDOS
- distributed denial of service; generally pronounced “deedawss”
- takes get-passive: my site got DDoSed after I posted an “It’s OK to Be White” meme
- DM, PM (both n., v.)
- direct message (n.); direct-message (v.); private message (n.); private-message (v.)
- conjugates normally (the president DMed me [not DM’ed])
- dox, doxx, v.
- takes get-passive: the identitarian activist got doxxed after he posted an “It’s OK to Be White” meme
- Facebook jail
- GitHub (short form Git)
- intercap H
- hashtag, n., v.
- when a speaker utters “hashtag die cis scum,” it’s rendered as
#DieCisScum
- Hailgate
- sometimes Heilgate (from opponents of those present)
- hWite, huWyte
- humorous rendering of use of phoneme [ʍ] in “White”
- Intellectual Dark Web
- Internet site
- use website (CP style); all “Internet sites” are websites, and don’t pretend it’s beneath you to say “website.” While there are still such things as FTP sites (mostly just directories), in point of fact anything you can load in a browser whose URL begins with
http is a website, and nothing is an “Internet site”
- same with “Internet browser”; it’s just a browser
- livestream, n., v.
- not two words and not hyphenated
- meme
- rhymes with “seem” and is not the French word même
- memetic
- mention, n.
- message, v.
- MT
- modified tweet (almost always n.)
- mute, v.
- Periscope
- podcast
- when verb, past tense is podcast
- protected (account, tweet)
- ragequit
- retweet, RT, n., v.
- conjugate normally: retweets, RTs, RTed
- shadowban, n., v.
- it isn’t two words and it doesn’t go in quotes
- sideload
- subtweet
- subreddit
- absolutely not “sub-Reddit” or any circumlocution striving, and failing, to describe a single-topic discussion on Reddit
- story
- plural as usual: stories
- Super Chat
- swat, v.
- TLD
- top-level domain
- ToS
- terms of service
- can be a verb: my domain registration got ToSsed after I posted an “It’s OK to Be White” meme
- troll
- trolldar
- modelled after gaydar: ability to intuit/sense/suss out a troll
- tweetstorm
- unfavourite, v.
- unfollow, v.
- unlike, v.
- URL
- uniform resource locator, but the expansion of the acronym is irrelevant
- already in CP Caps and Spelling; not used in practice in copy that civilians are meant to read
- Vine
- YouTuber
- Zucked
- conjugates normally, but with get-passive (my post got Zucked [not Zuck’d])
- may someday be lower case (not “lowercase”)
Notes
Canadian Press editor James McCarten put out a call for additions to its periodically-issued CP Caps and Spelling reference book. (It’s also an online resource to which one may subscribe. I do not.) McCarten put that call out on the medium where all Canadian journalists spend the majority of their time, Twitter. This in part explains why Canadian journalists are interchangeable and lousy at their jobs: What they do all day is RT each other.
But of course a lexeme like RT would never be included in CP Caps and Spelling. We write the Queen’s English for print newspapers, do we not? Further, Twitter is overrun with junior (mostly female) hacks who have barely read professionally-edited copy in their lives and would not even have a viable opinion on whether or not “professionally-edited” is hyphenated in the foregoing context.
I spent weeks trying to get McCarten’s attention by E‑mail (not “email,” though that is CP style). He eventually begrudgingly responded to the wrong half of my message, vaguely insinuating that mighty CP ignores messages due to civility or tone. As I told him later, as descriptivists we must approach every term without fear or favour. If the topic is productive use of Xy McXface (e.g., Boaty McBoatface), and the lexeme before us is Cunty McCuntface, we have no choice but to deal with it neutrally.
Stated another way, rather than receive a hundred or more additions from a trained and informed person, McCarten literally tone-policed.
Bias remediation
As a linguist and copy-editor who goes back 30 years in typography, my list of additions addresses biases.
Canadian journalists are far-left and cannot be bothered to read right-wing outlets because right-wing assholes offend them morally. To the extent possible, left-wing Canadian hacks (the phrase is tautological) want their enemies dead, and actually they’re putting a lot of effort into that. Still, on the whole, Canadian hacks either wilfully insulate themselves from right-wing neologisms and usage or pretend horror and offence once such neologisms are pushed into their faces (e.g., incel).
As a descriptivist, I include left-wing terminology. Everyone deserves good copy.
Canadian hacks spend all day online, as do their readers, but the founding myth holds that print newspapers are real while the Internet, in every form, is something else. That something else is best ignored; we should pretend, say, that YouTube simply does not exist. Hacks pretend not to know what a YouTuber is or that Twitter shadowbans its conservative users. They do know that, and those words, being real, need to be rendered correctly.
Punchline
I consistently misrendered CP Caps and Spelling as using an ampersand until just now. All complaints about copy errors contain them.
2018.09.07, 2021.10.28
