Editor's view.

On reviewing the contents of this issue of Age and Ageing, I noted that four papers and one book under review included the word 'elderly' in the title, compared with two editorials, one commentary and 10 papers, which used the alternative term 'older'. In a Personal View published in the British Medical Journal (2007: 2007: 316), Marianne Falconer and Desmond O'Neill described the results of a Europe wide survey, where older people expressed a clear preference for the use of the adjective 'older' or 'senior' to describe their age group, rather than terms such as 'elderly', 'aged' and 'old'. Falconer and O'Neill also highlighted that this view was reflected by the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations in the International Covenant on Economic , Social and Cultural Rights, which outlined why the term 'older' should be used. They went on to provide a number of cogent arguments, to justify the use of the term 'older' rather than 'elderly'. Professor O'Neill subsequently published a comparison of the use of the terms 'elderly' and 'old' in four General Medical and three Gerontological journals (JAGS, 2008; 56: 1983-1984). They reported that all but one of these journals used the term 'elderly' more than 'older', but this was particularly marked in the General Medical journals. As I consider my own ageing, I admit that I would prefer to be described as 'older' rather than 'elderly', particularly as the latter is often used to infer frailty, which is not an inevitable consequence of ageing. Readers will be used to debate about the use of terms like 'Geriatric Medicine', 'Care of the Elderly' and 'Medicine for the Elderly', but I would welcome their views on the use of 'elderly' and 'older' in Age and Ageing, through the e-letters facility. Although proportion of older people in the developed and developing world is increasing, the design of the man made environment fails to reflect this. In a cross-sectional observational study, Rose Anne Kenny's group have measured walking speed in 355 community-dwelling people aged 60 years and compared with the minimum walking speeds needed to negotiate standard pelican crossings in Ire-land (pp. 80–86). They report a strong inverse correlation between advancing age and walking speed, such that many pedestrians above the age of 80 years would be unable to negotiate a pelican crossing on a wide road in the time available. It is clearly essential that town planners …