german measles (lower-case g)

[sarawilcox]

Also, under C for capitals (and add to section on capitals): "we do not use capital letters for words that have become disassociated from their provenance and part of everyday speech, such as caesarean section, cheddar cheese, champagne (the drink), french fries, german measles, etc."

[sarawilcox]

This issue is also in NHS.UK Jira at SS-800.

[sarawilcox]

Some other lower-case examples to add - not to do with provenance

• type 1 diabetes
• trusts

[sarawilcox]

We didn't get a chance to discuss this at the November Style Council meeting so I've put it on the agenda for December instead.

[marklegassick]

With regards to rubella (German measles) I've done a bit of research and found a number of good quality and well respected sources that use German measles with a capital letter for German. They are:

• CKS: rubella (2018)
• PHE: routine childhood immunisations (2020)
• GOV.UK: rubella (German measles) guidance, data and analysis
• WHO: news story (2018)

In the main GOV.UK and PHE seem to just use 'rubella' on its own as on this latest list of notifiable diseases. Looking at Google Trends, rubella does appear to be the more popular search term, so this could be a possible solution.

[marklegassick]

Looking at the search terms for the past 6 months (see spreadsheet below), rubella is the most popular search term with German measles in second place. Overall, out of 32 searches there are 9 containing rubella and 5 containing German measles.

Rubella page - Last 6 months search queries.xlsx

[sarawilcox]

We'll aim to come back to this issue at the January Style Council meeting.

[marklegassick]

The 'New Oxford Dictionary for Editors and Writers' has an entry for German measles (capitalised) and it also says 'prefer rubella'.

[sarawilcox]

At the December Style Council meeting, there was broad agreement that we would add the following to the style guide:
"Do not use capital letters for phrases like cheddar cheese, french fries or german measles that refer to a geographical area but are now part of everyday speech."

Since the meeting, however, there has been some further discussion about whether or not we should capitalise “german measles” and/or whether we should use “rubella”, the more popular search term. See above. I suggest that we come back to the sentence about french fries, german measles etc at the next Style Council meeting in January.

We also list the following conditions in the section on capitalisation in the style guide:

• cancer of the colon
• multiple sclerosis
• Parkinson's disease
• Alzheimer's disease

We agreed to add “type 1 diabetes” (lower case) and Down’s syndrome (upper case) as further examples. Awaiting clinical approval.

[sarawilcox]

Published the agreed changes but I'm putting this ticket back into In Progress, so that we can resolve the issues around rubella etc.

[sarawilcox]

Some terms that show up as spelling mistakes in automated reports of NHS website content:

• french fries
• german measles
• danish blue
• double gloucester