Word Choice Guidelines

This was an early piece of advice by "Rules Mother" and charter player Theresa Carey, written in 1989, in response to a single controversial choice of word. There were several debates on the subject over the following decades, which you will find summarized in the comments to Rule 1(a) of The “Real'”Rules . Those are not guidelines, because they record divergent opinions: they do not give you unambiguous instructions about what to do, only an account of what was said and done in the past. Even so, you will probably find them more helpful than the brief note below.