Left: geometry of the kpc-scale radio jet in M 51 relative to the disc and to the observer (the inclination of the jet is inferred from Cecil 1988, and the inclination of the disc, from Colombo et al. 2014a,b). Right: orientation and opening angle of the narrow-line region (NLR) from Bradley et al. (2004), assuming that it is aligned with the jet. We follow Cecil (1988) and Bradley et al. (2004) in placing the southern jet closer to us; however, while the inclination of the jet with respect to the disc is well constrained to be low, in the text we discuss the possibility of the northern side of the jet being the one that is closer to us.