The Prime Minister of France has ordered that so-called “inclusive writing” – an attempt to make French grammar politically correct and gender neutral – cannot be used in official government texts. Mr Edouard Philippe wrote a memo to his cabinet that “the masculine (form) is a neutral form which should be used for terms liable to apply to women,” and added, “State administrations must comply with grammatical and syntactic rules, especially for reasons of intelligibility and clarity”.

The move was in response to new spellings of French words that have been proposed for some masculine-gendered nouns. The new spellings include feminine forms rather than following the rule that plural masculine endings denote both women and men – a practice that the French ministry for gender equality has described as a form of sexual tyranny. The Prime Minister, however, has now firmly come down on the side of French language purists and has ordered all government ministries to follow suit.