A former regional editorial boss has launched a bid to preserve what he termed the “lost language of newspapers”.

Neil Benson has created a glossary of both current and extinct newspaper production terms after launching an appeal on Facebook for journalists to contribute to it.

The glossary features dozens of terms used throughout the newspaper industry’s history and has been widely shared since being published on his blog.

Neil, pictured, edited the Coventry Telegraph and Newcastle daily The Chronicle before becoming editorial director of Reach plc forerunner Trinity Mirror.

Introducing the glossary, he wrote: “Digital publishing spawned a new language for journalists to learn. How many of us sixty-somethings thought we’d be talking about engagement, Tweetdeck, Facebook Lives or web analytics as part of our everyday life in the newsroom?

“But an older, stranger language – one that was unique to the analogue newspaper – has been rendered virtually obsolete by changes in technology, and is now all but lost. I find that sad.

“Why shed a tear over old terminology? Change happens, the world moves on. Well, because this peculiar language encapsulated 100 years or more of our industry. For generations of journalists, commercial staff, typesetters, compositors and press crews, this was our lingua franca.

“I dredged my memory for those weird terms I learned in my twenties, but soon ran out of gas. So, I posted on the Horny Handed Subs of Toil Facebook page, a kind of online care home for sub-editors of my vintage, to ask for help. Three hundred and sixty eight comments later, I have a substantial but still far-from-exhaustive list.

“With enormous thanks to everyone who contributed to the Facebook thread, and for sharing their newsroom memories and some funny stories, here is my compilation of (some of) The Lost Language of Newspapers.”

Last year, Neil told the story of his 45 years in journalism in a book entitled ‘You Can’t Libel the Dead’.