Wasn’t ‘pill’ very old, very posh slang for someone who was a bit of a bore? He might have read it in Wodehouse. And ‘pillock’ was from a very different slang – he wondered who’d written this passage. There was something about the style guide that appealed to the academic manqué in Will, particularly the remnants of older versions still extant within it. The first had apparently been written when the paper was founded in the 1890s, and subsequent generations of subs had altered and edited it to match their times. You could still peel apart some of the layers. The word for such a thing broke free and floated up to him from a previous life: a palimpsest.

He imagined much of the style guide had been revised into blandness when it was computerized in the eighties. But, since it was unlikely that anything was ever de-prohibited, he opened the folder of Banned Words, which turned out to be compendious:

‘Argie – A white-van man’s coarsely jingoistic term for the Argentine. Do not use. Britannia is gracious in victory.’

‘Choke back tears – A bizarre mix-up of eyes with throat.’

‘Disgraced paedophile – Who used to be what? One of the most respected paedophiles in Britain?’

‘Evacuation – Since almost no one is capable of using this word correctly, please avoid unless you are both confident and right. See also: enormity, mutual, pristine.’

‘Filly – You are not a landowner and women are not horses (despite your desire to ride them).’

‘Frog, for French. Also Krauts (Germans), Nips (Japanese), Micks (Irish), Spics (Hispanics), Taffies (the Welsh), Wops (Mediterraneans), Yanks (Americans), to say nothing of nig-nogs, gollywogs, Sambos, “our dusky cousins”, “the Hottentot MP for Tottenham” and all the rest of it. No mention, however jocular, must ever be made of “Wogs begin at Calais”. Jocks (the Scots) is probably all right in light-hearted copy.’

‘Impacted – Management speak. If you want to write like this, get a job in PR. The word you’re looking for is “affected”.’

‘Rumours – the Daily Beast does not report rumours. On occasion, however, it may report speculation.’

‘Socialist – For MPs, say Labour, NOT Socialist NOR Red NOR atheist.’

He looked up from the guide. The Sport subs, men his age to whom he would never speak, marked out by their mutton chops and young beer bellies, were beginning to bash their heavy fingers on their keyboards as the first results came in.

To his left, Turkish Anna and her deputy were chatting while they flicked through pictures on her screen. The deputy said, ‘You know the whole band’s full of nancies. Even that Freddy Giles.’

‘So he prefers cock? Maybe he’s not as stupid as he looks.’

‘No, but they say he never wears a rubber, because he’s shooting blanks.’

Anna was amused. ‘You can tell him to stop taking me up the arse then.’