'Normal' gets a bad rap these days. At best, it carries connotations of the mundane; at worst, if we define something (or someone) as not normal, we're often making implicit judgements about the extent to which it's eligible for inclusion in wider society.

But here's the problem: 'normal' is quite a useful shorthand. I tend to base my experiences and judgements on generalities – as I think most of us do, though perhaps unconsciously – and being able to make reckonings based on what's normal and what's not is a very useful tool. We do it every day, whether it's choosing what clothes to wear or making major lifestyle choices.

My solution is to use 'typical' wherever I might use 'normal'. Yes, I sound like someone trying to coin a new politically-correct term, but I actually think it's much more useful, and genuinely more meaningful in this context, than 'normal'.

Describing something as typical is less loaded than describing something as normal. It's a straight statement of fact: "this act is typical of this group"; "typically, people wouldn't choose to adopt this lifestyle"; "a teenager who choses to watch Postman Pat on continuous loop is not typical."

I think it's a helpful distinction. Do you agree?


[I'm forcing myself to make this site be more than a litany of my whinging. Nobody in their right mind would want to read 24-hourly updates describing What I Did Over The Last 24 Hours, particularly since my days consist largely of eating, commuting and working. Hence a concerted effort on my part to post regularly for a while, and not to indulge in so much navel-gazing.]