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Comment by davidgay | Hacker News Reader

The use of "Britons" sounds tone deaf to me, and hence a rather bad choice given that they presumably actually want to stop this (British, but more confused than anything).

http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/engl...

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I wrote the headline; I'm British. It's always a little awkward to pick a term here, as we don't usually like to refer to ourselves at all much. "Brits" was too informal for this. UK citizens would have sounded a bit too Airstrip One. Britons has a nice newspaperly ring, but I agree with you that it is potentially a little corny, so I believe we only use it for this particular page.

I also have to deal with the trickiness that the text has to simultaneously address UK people wanting to take action, and explain the action to curious people outside of the UK.

For instance, the main action uses different language:

https://act.eff.org/action/tell-britain-s-lords-don-t-let-th...

> UK citizens would have sounded a bit too Airstrip One

Which probably would have been fitting in this context.

> Loyal Citizens of Eurasia and Subjects of Big Brother, Act now!

Something like that?

I'm nitpicking, I know, but "act" ought to be amended "bill" in the third paragraph. Apologies for being such a pedant.

Fixed. Thanks!

Briton is the correct demonym for a citizen of the United Kingdom[0]. Britons is the preferred way to speak about all residents of the British Isles without having to use a qualifier, e.g. British people, People of Britain.

Compare Finland, Denmark, Scotland.

[0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demony... [1] I'm a British Citizen

This is news to me and I have a problem with the term as it does not include citizens of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of The UK(Great Britain and NI), yet not part of Great Britain(England, Scotland and Wales) or Britain(England and Wales). The Irish, amongst others, do not refer to the islands as the British Isles due to the association with Britain.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles#cite_note-postwar...

Yeah, there are a lot of subtleties and disagreements. To cite another example, do you include the Isle of Man? They've long been though of as a seperate people.

In addition, 'Irish' could mean a number of things (Northern or Southern/Eire, or in some parts of the world just of Irish descent).

The tumultuous political, military, and colonial history of the British Isles, Ireland, and the surrounding smaller islands has contributed to some very confusing nomenclature when talking about the places and people belonging to them.

It's pretty commonly used: https://www.google.com.au/webhp?ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Brit...

The definition you linked doesn't seem to support your claim. I have no connection to the EFF, but I'm curious what a better word would be for a short call to action.

http://grammarist.com/usage/briton/

This link supports the opposite of davidgay's comment (sources within).

I can't say I've ever heard someone say "Briton" without the adjective "ancient".

It is a very common way of identifying someone as British. e.g. headlines such as "8 hostages, including 2 Britons", "X million Britons now live in <popular location>" are common.

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