Green ink

In British journalism, green ink is used to describe written correspondence from self-aggrandising pedants, cranks, charlatans and eccentrics, or from the clearly mentally ill. The term derives from correspondents who enclose cuttings from the newspaper they are writing to, with contentious points ringed or underlined in coloured ink.
Regardless of the colour of ink used (there is little evidence of correspondence actually in green ink), it is common to refer to correspondence of any kind (including email and webpages) as being in "green ink", if it broadly fits the following identifying characteristics of Stridency, Impertinence, Unreasonableness, Unrealism, Fancifulness and Obsessiveness. Writers and correspondents who fit this general profile are referred to as "Green Inkers" or as members of the "Green Ink Brigade" (GIB). The term "Green Biro Brigade" is also used occasionally.
Common comorbid characteristics include irrelevant capitalisation, religious mania overuse of exclamation marks and veiled threats or warnings directed at the recipient.
The "letters" guidelines for the British newspaper The Observer (semi-humorously) stipulate avoidance of green ink.
Possible origins
Sir Mansfield Cumming, the first chief of MI6, would only write memoranda and communications in green ink - a tradition that has been continued by all subsequent placeholders.
Green ink was also the way in which the guardian of an underage Roman Emperor would sign his charge's correspondences.

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