Let’s lock the ‘gate’ and throw away the key

The hashtag #Capitolgate has been trending on Twitter since a herd of flag-waving bison crashed their way into the US legislature on January 6. This is hardly surprising. Twitter demands that catchy little nicknames be appended to almost everything, and Capitolgate is easier to spell than, say, “subhumanmoronsdeclarethemselvesmoralguardiansoftheuniverse”. 

Handy hashtags help people find others who are talking about the same thing, so they need to be simple. No word exists that cannot be misspelt, however. “Capitalgate” appears more frequently than it should in this seething stew of opinion.

The difference between a capital and a capitol (or a capitalised Capitol) is easy. ..