Therese Coffey has sparked an angry backlash after ordering NHS staff to stop using the Oxford comma.
The new health secretary and deputy prime minister issued the strange decree in an email soon after she took office.
According to a report in the Financial Times, it also told workers to “be positive” and stop using “slang” in their written notes.
But it was her insistence on avoiding the Oxford comma – a punctuation mark used by some before the last item on the list – that had led to criticism of her “patronising” approach.
Unsurprisingly, Twitter users were particularly unforgiving.
One – using the Oxford comma – said: “Therese Coffey can run, bob her head and get in the bin.”
Others said Coffey should focus on improving the performance of the NHS rather than the grammar of staff.
SNP MP Stewart McDonald said the row showed Coffey had “completely lost it”, while others said it was proof the minister was unable to do the job.
It’s not the first time Coffey has made it clear how much he dislikes a comma in Oxford.
In 2015, she tweeted: “I apologize for posting that graphic that included an Oxford comma (one of my pet hates).
And in 2011, she said that she “can’t stand it and constantly takes it off. Grow over”.
