(Aug. 25) -- There's a gentleman's agreement among language masterminds at some public agencies in Britain that writing this sentence would put a black mark on your record.
Dozens of taxpayer-funded organizations have ordered workers not to use certain common terms because they might offend some people, according to London newspapers. The National Gallery warned that "gentleman's agreement" is sexist. The same goes for "right-hand man." (Could that be seen as a slap at southpaws, too?)
Britain's South West Regional Development Agency is among those trying to rub out "black mark," "black sheep" and other phrases that cast black in a negative light. Skills should be "perfected," not "mastered," according to the Learning and Skills Council. Newcastle University even has a problem with "master bedroom," The Sunday Times of London reported.
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Author Anthony Horowitz thinks the push for politically correct language has gone too far.
"A great deal of our modern language is based on traditions which have now gone but it would be silly — and extremely inconvenient — to replace them all," Horowitz told the Times. "We know what these phrases mean and we can find out from where they were derived. Banning them is just unnecessary."
But language constantly changes and author Rosalie Maggio sees nothing wrong with finding alternatives to these troublesome phrases.
"Almost all of them are cliches," Maggio told AOL News. "They're outdated. They have no more meaning.
"For me, language that is inclusive or unbiased is actually fresher," said Maggio, whose books include 'The Dictionary of Bias-Free Usage' and 'The Nonsexist Word Finder.' "A 'fireman' could be a guy on a train. 'Firefighter' tells you -- it's an action verb. ... It tells you what they do. A mail carrier carries mail. A firefighter fights fires."
It's not just the Brits. Americans argued over words such as "snowperson" and "personhole" decades ago, Maggio recalled, with talk radio whipping up the debate over political correctness.
"It brings back the '80s to me," writer/composer/satirist Christopher Cerf agreed. "I always thought this was a movement that became comical. And though it was well-intended at first, it probably did more harm than good in some ways because it made people make fun of sensitive speech instead of actually trying to be sensitive.
"There is insensitive speech, but I'm not sure that the example of a 'gentleman's agreement' is really doing a whole lot of harm to the women's movement," Cerf said in an AOL News interview.
Cerf, who wrote 'The Official Politically Correct Dictionary' with Henry Beard, recalled the story of a Long Island feminist in the 1970s who tried to change her name from Ellen Donna Cooperman to Ellen Donna Cooperperson.
"And she's a better person for it," Cerf laughed. "Except that she forgot that 'person' has the word 'son' in it."
People can use whatever words they choose, said Maggio, but there's no reason to fall back on ones that carry "unintended baggage."
"As a writer, I don't want stupid words like 'spokesperson.' I think it's awkward and lumpy," she said. "How can you have really elegant English and have it be accurate and clear? You have to work a little bit.
"The right word is a lot of work."
