Next time someone tells you the BBC is a bastion of The Liberal Media, here’s yet another not-so-radical reporting convention to point out. Compare and contrast.

According to my OED:

casualty … noun … person killed or injured in war or accident.</p> But, as an e-mail from BBC news online reported by Atrios makes clear, the word’s definintion in the BBC stylebook doesn’t derive from the OED:

From: “NewsOnline”
Date: Mon Oct 20, 2003 7:57:46 AM US/Eastern
To: [x]
Subject: RE: Factual Error report.

Dear Sir/Madam
Thank you for your email. We use US Central Command’s definition of casualties in the war in Iraq, which only refers to those who have been killed. Thank you for your interest in the BBC News website.