Jacob Rees-Mogg’s little learning is an irritating thing

He has made the same mistakes that amateur pedants always make

I am in favour of ministers who care about language. When Michael Gove became education secretary in 2010 he issued a list of banned words and phrases for his civil servants. “Safeguarding” was out, to be replaced by “child protection”. Quite right too.

But I am afraid that Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new leader of the House of Commons, has made a fool of himself with his instructions to his new office for how he would like documents to be written. He has made the same mistakes that amateur pedants always make. Writing as an amateur pedant myself, I feel deep sympathy for him.

His first mistake is to assume that just because he was taught something once, that is how it ought to be. When I learned to touch type in 1980, the convention was to put two spaces after a full stop, because that looks better in typescripts, especially double-spaced ones, which were the norm.