a or the see grammar and syntax.
Write words in their full form on first appearance:
Trades Union Congress (not TUC), Troubled Asset Relief Programme (not TARP)
unless an abbreviation or acronym is so familiar that it is used more often in full:
AIDS BBC CIA EU FBI HIV IMF NASA NATO NGO OECD UNESCO
or unless the full form would provide little illumination – AWACS, DNA. If in doubt about its familiarity, explain what the organisation is or does. After the first mention, try not to repeat the abbreviation too often; so write the agency rather than the IAEA, the party rather than the KMT, to avoid spattering the page with capital letters. And prefer chief executive, boss or manager to CEO.
There is no need to give the initials of an organisation if it is not referred to again. This clutters both the page and the brain.
Do not use spatterings of abbreviations and acronyms simply in order to cram more words in; you will end up irritating readers rather than informing them. An article in a recent issue of The Economist contained the following:
CIA DCI DNI DOD DVD FBI NCTC NSA
Some of these are well known to most readers and can readily be held in the mind. But unfamiliar abbreviations may oblige the reader to constantly refer back to the first use.
1 when they are part of the name of a company: Procter & Gamble Pratt & Whitney
2 for such things as constituencies, where two names are linked to form one unit:
The rest of Brighouse & Spenborough joins with the Batley part of Batley & Morley to form Batley & Spen.
The area thus became the Pakistani province of Kashmir and the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir.
3 in R&D and S&1.
compass references/readings should be given as 40°N, etc.
definite article If an abbreviation can be pronounced – COSATU, NATO, UNESCO – it does not generally require the definite article. Other organisations, except companies, should usually be preceded by the: the BBC the KGB the NHS the NIESR the UNHCR
Do not sprinkle chemical symbols unnecessarily: they may put readers off. But common abbreviations such as CO2 may sometimes be used for variety.
Different isotopes of the same element are distinguished by raised (superscript) prefixes:
carbon-14 is 14C
helium-3 is 3He
initials in people’s and companies’ names take points (with a space between initials and name, but not between initials). In general, follow the practice preferred by people, companies and organisations in writing their own names, for example: I.M. Pei J.C. Penney J. Sainsbury A.N. Wilson
junior and senior Spell out in full (and lower case) junior and senior after a name:
Douglas Fairbanks junior Douglas Fairbanks senior
lower case Abbreviate:
kilograms (not kilogrammes) to kg (or kilos)
kilometres per hour to kph
kilometres to km
miles per hour to mph
Use m for million, bn for billion and trn for trillion.
Use lower case for kg, km, lb (never lbs), mph and other measures, and for ie, eg; ie should be followed by a comma. When used with figures, these lower-case abbreviations should follow immediately, with no space:
11am 4.30pm 15kg 35mm 100mph 78rpm
Two abbreviations together, however, must be separated: 60m b/d. Use b/d not bpd as an abbreviation for barrels per day.
MPs Except in British contexts, use MP only after first spelling out member of Parliament in full (in many places an MP is a military policeman).
Members of the European Parliament are MEPs (not Euro-MPs).
Members of the Scottish Parliament are MSPs.
Members of the Welsh Assembly are AMs (Assembly Members).
EFTA is the European Free Trade Association.
The FAO is the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The FDA is the Food and Drug Administration.
The IDA is the International Development Association.
NAFTA is the North American Free-Trade Agreement.
The PLO is the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Abbreviations that can be pronounced and are composed of bits of words rather than just initials should be spelt out in upper and lower case:
| Cocom | Nepad | Unicef |
| Mercosur | Renamo | Unprofor |
There is generally no need for more than one initial capital letter, unless the word is a name: ConsGold, KwaZulu, McKay, MiG.
OK (supposedly an abbreviation for “Oll Correct”) is spelled thus, and is not okay when spelled thus.
ranks and titles Do not use Prof, Sen, Col, etc. Lieut-Colonel and Lieut-Commander are permissible. (These should be Commander and Colonel on second mention.) Rev is also permissible, but it must be preceded by the and followed by a Christian name or initial: the Rev Jesse Jackson (thereafter Mr Jackson).
scientific units named after individuals Scientific units, except those of temperature, that are named after individuals are not capitalised when written out in full: watt, joule, etc. When abbreviated these units should be set in capitals, though any attachments denoting multiples go in lower case:
watt is W
kilowatt, 1,000 watts, is kW
milliwatt, one-thousandth of a watt, is mW
megawatt, 1m watts, is MW
gigawatt, 1 bn (109) watts, is GW
terawatt, 1 trn (1012) watts, is TW
petawatt, 1 quadrillion (1015) watts, is PW
megahertz is MHZ
writing out upper-case abbreviations Most upper-case abbreviations are shortenings of proper names with initial capital letters. The LSO is the London Symphony Orchestra. However, there are exceptions:
CAP but common agricultural policy
EMU but economic and monetary union
GDP but gross domestic product
PSBR but public-sector borrowing requirement
VLSI but very large-scale integration
miscellaneous Spell out:
page pages hectares miles
Do not spell out Centigrade, and do not use Fahrenheit for temperature.
Remember, too, that the V of HIV stands for virus, so do not write
HIV virus. Similarly the D of DAB stands for digital, so do not write DAB digital radio.
See measures in Part 3.
absent In Latin absent is a verb meaning they are away. In English it is either an adjective (absent friends) or a verb (to absent yourself). Avoid the American habit of using it as a preposition meaning in the absence of.
accents On words now accepted as English, use accents only when they make a crucial difference to pronunciation: café cliché communiqué éclat exposé façade soupçon But: chateau decor elite feted naive
The main accents and diacritical signs are:
| cute | république |
| grave | grand-mère |
| circumflex | bête noire |
| umlaut | Länder, Österreich (Austria) |
| cedilla | français |
| tilde | señor, São Paulo |
If you use one accent (except the tilde – strictly, a diacritical sign), use all:
émigré mêlée protégé résumé
Put the accents and diacritical signs on French, German, Spanish and Portuguese names and words only:
| José Manuel Barroso | cafèzinho |
| Federico Peña | coñac |
| Françoise de Panafieu | déjeuner |
| Wolfgang Schäuble | Frühstück |
Any foreign word in italics should, however, be given its proper accents. See also italics.
acronym A pronounceable word, formed from the initials of other words, like radar, nimby or NATO. It is not a set of initials, like the BBC or the IMF.
actionable means giving ground for a lawsuit. Do not use it to mean susceptible of being put into practice: prefer practical or practicable. Do not use action as a verb.
adjectives and adverbs see grammar and syntax, punctuation.
adjectives of proper nouns see grammar and syntax, punctuation.
address What did journalists and politicians do in the days, not so long ago, when address was used as a verb only before objects such as audience, letter, ball, haggis and, occasionally, themselves? Questions can be answered, issues discussed, problems solved, difficulties dealt with. See clichés.
aetiology, etiolate Aetiology is the science of causation, or an inquiry into something’s origins. Etiolate is to make or become pale for lack of light.
affect (verb) means to have an influence on, as in the novel affected his attitude to immigrants. See also effect.
affirmative action is a euphemism with little to be said for it. It is too late to suppress it altogether, but try to avoid it as much as possible. If you cannot escape it, put it in quotation marks on first mention and, unless the context makes its meaning clear, explain what it is. You may, however, find that preferential treatment, job preferment or even discrimination serve just as well as alternatives. See euphemisms.
affordable By whom? Avoid affordable housing, affordable computers and other unthinking uses of advertising lingo.
Afghan names see names.
aggravate means make worse, not irritate or annoy.
aggression is an unattractive quality, so do not call a keen salesman an aggressive one (unless his foot is in the door).
agony column Remember that when Sherlock Holmes perused this, it was a personal column. Only recently has it come to mean letters to an agony aunt.
agree Things are agreed on, to or about, not just agreed. See transitive and intransitive verbs.
aircraft see hyphens and italics.
alibi An alibi is the fact of being elsewhere, not a false explanation.
alternate, alternative Alternate (as an adjective) means every other. As a noun, it has now come to mean a stand-in for a director or delegate. Alternative (as a noun), strictly, means one of two, not one of three, four, five or more (which may be options). As an adjective, alternative means of two (or, loosely, more) things, or possible as an alternative.
See Part 2, on British and American usage. To the points made there might be added the following preferred usages in British English (and in The Economist):
and not additionally
the army not the military (noun)
car not automobile
company not corporation
court not courtroom or courthouse
district not neighborhood
normality not normalcy
oblige not obligate
rocket not skyrocket
Back-formations are common in English, so curate, the verb meaning organise or superintend exhibitions of pictures, sculptures and so on formed from curator, is now acceptable in British English. But it is still too soon for gallerist (prefer dealer or, if appropriate, just gallery).
adverbs Put adverbs where you would put them in normal English speech, which is usually after the verb (not before it, which usually is where Americans put them).
avoid nouning adjectives Do not noun adjectives such as:
advisory – prefer warning
inaugural – prefer inauguration
avoid verbing and adjectiving nouns Try not to verb nouns or to adjective them. So do not:
access files (except electronically)
action proposals
author books (still less co-author them)
critique style guides
gun someone down; use shoot
haemorrhage red ink (haemorrhage is a noun)
let one event impact another (try affect)
loan money, still less gift it
pressure colleagues (press will do)
progress reports, or reference them
source inputs
summit a hill
trial programmes
See transitive and intransitive verbs.
Avoid parenting (or using the word) and parenting skills. (See also grammar and syntax.)
Though it is sometimes necessary to use nouns as adjectives, do not call:
an attempted coup a coup attempt
a suspected terrorist a terrorist suspect
the Californian legislature the California legislature
And avoid throwing together several nouns into one adjectival reticule:
Texas millionaire real-estate developer and failed thrift entrepreneur Hiram Turnipseed …
coining words Avoid coining verbs and adjectives unnecessarily. Instead of:
dining experiences and writing experiences, use dining and writing; downplaying criticism, you can play it down (or perhaps minimise it); upcoming and ongoing use forthcoming and continuing.
Why outfit your children when you can fit them out?
Hosting has now entered the language (often to mean acting as host at an event paid for by someone else, otherwise giving would be the right word), but guesting (appearing as a guest on a programme) should be kept at bay, as should gifting.
overuse of American words Do not feel obliged to follow American usage with such words as:
constituency – try supporters
gubernatorial – try governor’s
perception – try belief or view
rhetoric (of which there is too little, not too much) – try language or speeches or exaggeration if that is what you mean
Note that in British usage:
City centres are not central cities.
Companies: call for a record profit if you wish to exhort the workers, but not if you merely predict one. And do not post it if it has been achieved. If it has not, look for someone new to head, not head up, the company.
Countries, nations and states: London is the country’s capital, not the nation’s. If you wish to build a nation, you will bind its peoples together; if you wish to build a state, you will forge its institutions. Deep: make a deep study or even a study in depth, but not an in-depth study.
Grow a beard or a tomato, but not a company (or indeed a salesman: the Financial Times reported on August 8th 2003 that BMW was “to grow its own car salesmen”).
Do not use likely to mean probably.
On-site inspections are allowed, but not on-train teams or in-ear headphones.
Stay outside the door, not outside of it.
Programme: you may program a computer, but in all other contexts the word is programme.
Use power cut or blackout rather than outage.
Keep a promise, rather than deliver on it.
Raise cattle and pigs, but children are (or should be) brought up. Regular is not a synonym for ordinary or normal: Mussolini brought in the regular train, All-Bran the regular man; it is quite normal to be without either.
A religious group sounds better than a faith-based organisation. Do not task people, or meet with them.
Throw stones, not rocks.
Trains run from railway stations, not train stations. The people in them, and on buses, are passengers, not riders.
Use senior rather than ranking.
And only the speechless are dumb and the insane mad.
tenses Choose tenses according to British usage, too. In particular, do not fight shy of the perfect tense, especially where no date or time is given. Thus:
Mr Obama has woken up to the danger is preferable to Mr Obama woke up to the danger, unless you can add last week or when he heard the explosion.
Do not write Your salary just got smaller or I shrunk the kids. In British English Your salary has just got smaller and I’ve shrunk the kids.
See also adjectives of proper nouns, euphemisms, grammar and syntax, and Part 2.
among and between Some sticklers insist that, where division is involved, among should be used where three or more are concerned, between where only two are concerned. So: The plum jobs were shared among the Socialists, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, while the president and the vice-president divided the cash between themselves.
This distinction is unnecessary. But take care with between. To fall between two stools, however painful, is grammatically acceptable; to fall between the cracks is to challenge the laws of physics.
Prefer among to amongst, as while to whilst.
an should be used before a word beginning with a vowel sound (an egg, an umbrella, an MP) or an h if, and only if, the h is silent (an honorary degree). But a European, a university, a U-turn, a hospital, a hotel. Historical and historian are preceded by a whether or not you treat the has silent.
anarchy means the complete absence of law or government. It may be harmonious or chaotic.
animals For the spelling of the Latin names of animals, plants, etc, see Latin names.
annus horribilis, annus mirabilis Annus horribilis is often used, presumably in contrast to annus mirabilis, to describe an awful year, for example by Queen Elizabeth in 1992 (the year of her daughter’s divorce, the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York and a fire at Windsor Castle). It serves its purpose well, but it should be noted that annus mirabilis originally meant much the same thing: 1666, of which it was first used, was the year of the great fire of London and the second year of the great plague in England. Physicists, however, have used the term to describe 1932, the year in which the neutron was discovered, the positron identified and the atomic nucleus first broken up artificially.
anon means soon, though it once meant straight away. Presently also means soon, though it is increasingly misused to mean now. (See also presently.)
anticipate does not mean expect. It means to forestall or look forward to. Jack and Jill expected to marry; if they anticipated marriage, only Jill might find herself expectant.
apostasy, blasphemy, heresy If you abandon your religion, you commit apostasy. If that religion is the prevailing one in your community and your beliefs are contrary to its orthodoxy, you commit heresy. Blasphemy is offending by word or deed against the prevailing orthodoxy.
apostrophes see punctuation.
appeal is intransitive nowadays (except in America), so appeal against decisions.
appraise means set a price on. Apprise means inform.
Arabic The Arabic alphabet has several consonants that have no exact equivalents in English: for example, two kinds of s, two kinds of t, two different (one vocalised, the other not) th sounds. Moreover, there are three sounds: a glottal stop like a hiccup, a glottal sound harsher than this and a uvular trill. Ultra-fastidious transliterators try to reproduce these subtleties with a profusion of apostrophes and hs which yield spellings like Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi. The risk of error and the sheer ugliness on the page are too great to justify the effort, so usually ignore the differences.
Vowels present a lesser problem. There are only three – a, u, i – but each can be lengthened. Do not bother to differentiate between the short and the long a. Occasionally, a spelling is established where the u has been lengthened by using oo, as in Sultan Qaboos. In such instances, follow that convention, but in general go for ou, as in murabitoun or Ibn Khaldoun. The long Arabic i is almost always an i in Roman letters.
Muhammad is the correct spelling unless it is part of the name of someone who spells it differently. (See also names.)
as of say, April 5th or April. Prefer on (or after, or since) April 5th, in April.
assassinate is, properly, the term used not just for any old killing, but for the murder of a prominent person, usually for a political purpose. (See execute.)
as to There is usually a more appropriate preposition, eg about. Or rewrite the sentence.
autarchy, autarky Autarchy means absolute sovereignty. Autarky means self-sufficiency.
avert, avoid, evade To avert something means to head it off. To avoid it means to keep away from it. To evade it means to elude it or escape it artfully. Tax avoidance is legal; tax evasion is not.
avocation An avocation is a distraction or diversion from your ordinary employment, not a synonym for vocation.