Aviation Minister Theresa Villiers has just announced the government’s proposed reforms to the ATOL system.

ATOL is an Air Tour Organiser’s Licence, granted by the CAA. It offers consumer protection to passengers booking some package holidays, and in some circumstances, booking flights-only. Some tour operators, quite legally, circumvent the regulations by offering holidays which look like a package but aren’t, because the operator invoices elements of the package separately. Their clients aren’t...

Image caption: paying in full for your ticket, and walking away with it, means the CAA considers the transaction unlicensable.

Is it chili con carne, or chilli con carne? Or chile con carne? Is the plural of chilli pepper chillies or chillis? Is the adjective meaning 'from Argentina' Argentine or Argentinian or Argentinean? Which spelling of the mighty falls should we choose to guide people how best to pronounce it – Iguazú, Iguassu or Iguaçu?

From the name Journey Latin America, you might reasonably infer that we spend much of our time planning and delivering travel itineraries in Latin America for our clients, or prospective clients. In fact, a fair bit of that does go on, as well as marketing what we do to the wider world, so that more clients will come to us.

But a significant minority of our time is spent making sure we get our spelling and grammar correct, mainly in English, but accommodating Spanish and Portuguese too, since they’re our destination...

I’ve spent the last day or so updating our Briefing Dossier. In fact, there are three of us that do it: two reading through and correcting, and a third proofing and getting it printed.
It’s the booklet (and online version) we send to all our clients, with advice on how to prepare for a trip.

The bit that always takes the longest is the Health, Vaccinations and Inoculations section. On the face of it, this sort of advice ought to be fairly straightforward. There’s a couple of NHS websites which are pretty comprehensive.  (Links at the bottom)

But...