Pakistani names see names.
palate, pallet, palette Your palate, the roof of your mouth (or your capacity to appreciate food and drink), is best not confused with a pallet, a mattress on which you may sleep or a wooden frame for use with fork-lift trucks, still less with a palette, on which you may mix paints.
panacea Universal remedy. Beware of cliché usage. See also journalese and slang.
parliaments Do not confuse one part of a parliament with the whole thing. The Dail is only the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, as the Duma is of Russia’s and the Lok Sabha is of India’s.
passive see grammar and syntax (active, not passive).
peer (noun) is one of those words beloved of sociologists and eagerly co-opted by journalists who want to make their prose seem more authoritative. A peer is not a contemporary, colleague or counterpart but an equal.
per capita is the Latin for by heads; it is a term used by lawyers when distributing an inheritance among individuals, rather than among families (per stirpes). Unless the context demands this technical expression, never use either per capita or per caput but per head or per person. See also figures.
per cent is not the same as a percentage point. Nothing can fall, or be devalued, by more than 100%. If something trebles, it increases by 200%. If a growth rate increases from 4% to 6%, the rate is two percentage points or 50% faster, not 2%. See also figures.
percolate means to pass through, not up or down.
place-names In most contexts, favour simplicity over precision. Use Britain rather than Great Britain or the United Kingdom, and America rather than the United States. (“In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.” Dr Johnson)
Sometimes, however, it may be important to be precise. Remember therefore that Great Britain consists of England, Scotland and Wales, which together with Northern Ireland (which we generally call Ulster, though Ulster strictly includes three counties in Ireland) make up the United Kingdom.
Americans: Remember too that, although it is usually all right to talk about the inhabitants of the United States as Americans, the term also applies to everyone from Canada to Cape Horn. In a context where other North, Central or South American countries are mentioned, you should write United States rather than America or American, and it may even be necessary to write United States citizens.
EU is now well enough known (like the UN) to need no spelling out on first mention as the European Union. Europe and Europeans may sometimes be used as shorthand for citizens of countries of the European Union, but be careful: there are plenty of other Europeans too.
Europe: Note that although the place is western (or eastern) Europe, euphony dictates that the people are west (or east) Europeans.
Holland, though a nice, short, familiar name, is strictly only two of the 12 provinces that make up the Netherlands, and the Dutch do not like the misuse of the shorter name. So use the Netherlands.
Belgian place-names should be Dutch or French according to which part they are in.
Ireland is simply Ireland. Although it is a republic, it is not the Republic of Ireland. Neither is it, in English, Eire. North and south should not have capitals in the Irish context. And always prefer Northern Ireland to Ulster.
Madagascar: Malagasy is its adjective and the name of the inhabitants.
Roma is the name of the people; they may also still be called gypsies in non-political contexts.
Scandinavia is primarily Norway and Sweden, but the term is often used to include Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which, with Finland, make up the Nordic countries.
USA and US are not used in The Economist (if they were, they would spatter the paper), except in charts, as part of an official name (eg, US Steel, US attorney), and sparingly in the Americas section to differentiate official bodies (the US Border Patrol).
Do not use the names of capital cities as synonyms for their governments. Britain will send a gunboat is fine, but London will send a gunboat suggests that this will be the action of the people of London alone. To write Washington and Moscow now differ only in their approach to Havana is absurd.
Washington, DC may shed the DC wherever there is no risk of confusion with Washington state, which is most of the time.
Note that a country is it, not she.
changes of name Where countries have made it clear that they wish to be called by a new (or an old) name, respect their requests. Thus:
Burkina Faso
Myanmar (though Burmese is acceptable for its people in general)
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Zimbabwe
Zaire has now reverted to Congo. In contexts where there can be no confusion with the ex-French country of the same name, plain Congo will do. But if there is a risk of misunderstanding, call it the Democratic Republic of Congo (never DRC). The other Congo can be Congo-Brazzaville if necessary. The river is now also the Congo. The people of either country are Congolese.
Former Soviet republics that are now independent countries include:
Belarus (not Belorus or Belorussia), Belarusian (adjective)
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Moldova (not Moldavia)
Tajikistan Turkmenistan (see Turk, Turkic, Turkmen, Turkoman, pages 115–16)
Kyrgyzstan is the name of the country. Its adjective is Kyrgyzstani, which is also the name of one of its inhabitants. But Kirgiz is the noun and adjective of the language, and the adjective of Kirgiz people outside Kyrgyzstan.
Follow local practice when a country changes the names of rivers, towns, etc, within it. Thus:
Almaty not Alma Ata
Balochistan, not Baluchistan
Chemnitz not Karl-Marx-Stadt
Chennai not Madras
Chernigov not Chernihiv
Chur not Coire
Kolkata not Calcutta
Lvov not Lviv
Mumbai not Bombay
Nizhny Novgorod not Gorky
Papua not Irian Jaya
Polokwane not Pietersburg
St Petersburg not Leningrad
Tshwane is the new name for the area around Pretoria but not yet for the city itself.
Yangon not Rangoon
But two exceptions: Ivory Coast, not Côte d’Ivoire, and East Timor, not Timor-Leste. The previous form should be preserved in historical contexts (the Black Hole of Calcutta). If the names are very dissimilar, add (now xx).
definite article Do not use the definite article before:
Krajina
Lebanon
Piedmont
Punjab
Sudan
Transkei
Ukraine
But:
the Caucasus
the Gambia
The Hague
Le Havre
the Maghreb
the Netherlands
La Paz
English forms are preferred when they are in common use:
Andalusia
Archangel (not Archangelsk or Arkhangelsk)
Cassel (not Kassel)
Castile
Catalonia (catalan)
Cologne
Cordoba
Corinth
Corunna
Cracow
Dagestan
Dnieper
Dniester (but Transdniestria)
Dusseldorf (not Düsseldorf)
East Timor
Florence
Geneva
Genoa
Hanover
Ivory Coast
Kiev
Majorca
Milan
Minorca
Minsk
Munich
Naples
Nuremberg
Odessa
Pomerania
Salonika (not Thessaloniki)
Saragossa
Saxony (and Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt)
Sebastopol
Seville
Turin
Zurich (not Zürich)
Use British English rather than American – Rockefeller Centre, Pew Centre for Research – unless the place-name is part of a company’s name, such as Rockefeller Center Properties Inc.
The final s sometimes added by English-speakers to Lyon, Marseille and Tangier now seems precious, so use the s-less form.
Abkhazia
Ajaria (not Adjaria)
Argentina (adj and people Argentine, not Argentinian)
Ashgabat
Azerbaijan
Baden-Württemberg
Baghdad
Bahamas (Bahamian)
Bahrain
Basel
Belarus
Bengalooru
Beqaa
Bermuda, Bermudian
Bern
Bophuthatswana
Bosporus (not Bosphorus)
British Columbia
Brittany, Breton (but Britannia, Britannic)
Cameroon
Cape Town
Caribbean
Catalan
Chechnya
Cincinnati
Colombia (South America)
Columbia (university, District of British)
the Comoros
Cracow
Cusco
Czech Republic; Czech Lands
Dar es Salaam
Derry/Londonderry (use in this full dual form at least on first mention; afterwards, plain Derry will do)
Dhaka
Djibouti
Dominica (Caribbean island)
Dominican Republic (part of another island)
East Timor
El Salvador, Salvadorean
Falkland Islands (not Malvinas)
Falluja
Gaza Strip (but Gaza City)
Gettysburg
Gothenburg
Grozny
Guantánamo
Gujarat, Gujarati
Guyana (but French Guiana)
Gweru (not Gwelo)
Hanover
Hercegovina
Hong Kong (unless part of the name of a company which spells it as one word)
Ingushetia
Issyk-Kul
Ivory Coast, Ivorian
Jeddah
KaNgwane
Kathmandu
Kiev
Kinmen (not Quemoy)
Kolkata
Kuwait City
KwaZulu-Natal
Kwekwe (not Que Que)
Laos, Lao (not Laotian)
Livorno (not Leghorn)
Ljubljana
Londonderry (Derry also permissible)
Luhansk
Luxembourg
Lyon
Macau
Mafikeng
Mauritania
Middlesbrough
Mpumalanga (formerly Eastern Transvaal)
Mumbai (not Bombay)
Nagorno-Karabakh
Nepal, Nepali (not Nepalese)
New York City
north Caucasus
North Rhine-Westphalia
Ouagadougou
Philippines (the people are Filipinos and Filipinas)
Phnom Penh
Pittsburgh
Port-au-Prince
Putumayo
Pyrenees, Pyrenean
Quebec, Quebecker (but Parti Quebecois)
Reykjavik
Rheims
Romania
Rwanda, Rwandan (not Rwandese)
St Petersburg
Salonika (not Thessaloniki)
Sana’a
Salzburg
San Jose (Costa Rica)
San Jose (California)
Sao Paulo
Sea of Japan (East Sea) (give both names thus)
Sindh
Srebrenica
Strasbourg
Suriname
Taipei
Teesside
Tehran
Tigray, Tigrayan
Timbuktu
Transdniestra
Uffizi
Ulaanbaator (not Ulan Bator)
Uzbekistan
Valletta
Yangzi
Zepa
Zepce
Zurich
See also capitals (places).
Turk, Turkic, Turkmen, Turkoman, etc
Turk, Turkish: noun and adjective of Turkey.
Turkoman, Turkomans: member, members, of a branch of the Turkish race mostly living in the region east of the Caspian sea once known as Turkestan and parts of Iran and Afghanistan; Turkoman may also be the language of the Turkmen and an adjective.
Turkic: adjective applied to one of the branches of the Ural-Altaic family of languages – Uighur, Kazan Tatar, Kirgiz.
Turkmen: Turkoman or Turkomans living in Turkmenistan; adjective pertaining to them.
Turkmenistani: adjective of Turkmenistan; also a native of that country.
plants For the spelling of the Latin names of animals, plants, etc, see Latin names.
plurals see spelling. For plural nouns, see grammar and syntax.
political correctness Avoid, if you can, giving gratuitous offence (see euphemisms): you risk losing your readers, or at least their goodwill, and therefore your arguments. But pandering to every plea for politically correct terminology may make your prose unreadable, and therefore also unread.
So strike a balance. If you judge that a group wishes to be known by a particular term, that the term is widely understood and that using any other would seem odd, old-fashioned or offensive, then use it. Context may be important: Coloured is a common term in South Africa for people of mixed race; it is not considered derogatory. Elsewhere it may be. Remember that both times and terms change: expressions that were in common use a few decades ago are now odious. Nothing is to be gained by casually insulting your readers.
But do not labour to avoid imaginary insults, especially if the effort does violence to the language. Some people, such as the members of the Task-force on Bias-Free Language of the Association of American University Presses, believe that ghetto-blaster is “offensive as a stereotype of African-American culture”, that it is invidious to speak of a normal child, and that massacre should not be used “to refer to a successful American Indian raid or battle victory against white colonisers and invaders”. They want, they say, to avoid “victimisation” and to get “the person before the disability”. The intent may be admirable, but they are unduly sensitive, often inventing slights where none exists.
Thomas Bowdler provides a cautionary example. His version of Shakespeare, produced in 1818 using “judicious” paraphrase and expurgation, was designed to be read by men to their families so that no one would be offended or embarrassed. In doing so, he gave his name to an insidious form of censorship (bowdlerism).
Some people believe the possibility of giving offence or perpetuating prejudice to be more important than stating the truth. They are wrong. Do not self-bowdlerise your prose. You may be neither Galileo nor Salman Rushdie, but you too may sometimes be right to cause offence. Your first duty is to the truth.
populace is a term for the common people, not a synonym for the population.
practical, practicable Practical means useful; practicable means feasible.
pre- is often unnecessary as a prefix, as in pre-announced, precondition, pre-prepared, pre-cooked. If it seems to be serving a function, try making use of a word such as already or earlier: Here’s one I cooked earlier.
Pre-owned is second-hand.
premier (as a noun) should be confined to the first ministers of Canadian provinces, German Länder and other subnational states. Do not use it as a synonym for the prime minister of a country.
prescribe You do not prescribe someone something; you prescribe something for someone.
presently usually means soon, not at present. (“Presently Kep opened the door of the shed, and let out Jemima Puddle-Duck.” Beatrix Potter.) However, the second use may be acceptable, as in “She dislikes the praise presently heaped upon her.” Consider the rhythm and placing of the word in the sentence.
press, pressure, pressurise Pressurise is what you want in an aircraft, but not in an argument or encounter where persuasion is being employed – the verb you want there is press. Use pressure only as a noun.
prevaricate, procrastinate Prevaricate means evade the truth; procrastinate means delay. (“Procrastination” – or punctuality, if you are Oscar Wilde – “is the thief of time.”)
pristine means original or former; it does not mean clean.
proactive Not a pretty word: try active or energetic.
process Some writers see their prose in industrial terms: education becomes an education process, elections an electoral process, development a development process, writing a writing process. If you follow this fashion, do not be surprised if readers switch off.
prodigal If you are prodigal, that does not mean you are welcomed home or taken back without recrimination. It means you have squandered your patrimony.
proofreading see Part 3.
propaganda (which is singular) means a systematic effort to spread doctrine or opinions. It is not a synonym for lies.
protagonist means the chief actor or combatant. If you are referring to several people, they cannot all be protagonists.
protest By all means protest your innocence, or your intention to write good English, if you are making a declaration. But if you are making a complaint or objection, you must protest at or against it. See transitive and intransitive verbs.
pry Unless you mean peer or peep, the word you probably should be using is prise.
public schools in Britain, the places where fee-paying parents send their children; in the United States, the places where they don’t.
punctuation Some guidelines on common problems.
apostrophes
1 With singular words and names that end in s use the normal possessive ending ’s:
boss’s
caucus’s
Delors’s
Jones’s
St James’s
Shanks’s
2 After plurals that do not end in s also use ’s: children’s, Frenchmen’s, media’s.
3 Use the ending s’ on plurals that end in s: Danes’, bosses’, Joneses’.
And on plural names that take a singular verb: Barclays’
Cisco Systems’
Reuters’
4 Some plural nouns, although singular in other respects, such as the United States, the United Nations, the Philippines, have a plural possessive apostrophe:
Who will be the United States’ next president?
In general, however, try to avoid Texas’s, Congress’s, and all such formations which are horrible to read silently, and even worse aloud.
5 Lloyd’s (the insurance market): try to avoid using as a possessive; like Christie’s and Sotheby’s, it poses an insoluble problem.
6 Achilles heel: the vulnerable part of the hero of the Trojan war.
7 Decades do not have apostrophes: the 1990s.
8 Phrases like two weeks’ time, four days’ march, six months’ leave need apostrophes. So do those involving worth, when it follows a quantity or other measurement: three months’ worth of imports, a manifesto’s worth of insincerity (see also hyphens, page 70).
9 People:
people’s = of (the) people
peoples’ = of peoples
See also grammar and syntax (false possessive).
brackets If a whole sentence is within brackets, put the full stop inside. Square brackets should be used for interpolations in direct quotations: “Let them [the poor] eat cake.” To use ordinary brackets implies that the words inside them were part of the original text from which you are quoting.
colons Use a colon “to deliver the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words” (Fowler).
They brought presents: gold, frankincense and oil at $100 a barrel.
Use a colon before a whole quoted sentence, but not before a quotation that begins in mid-sentence.
She said: “It will never work.” He retorted that it had “always worked before”.
commas Use commas as an aid to understanding. Too many in one sentence can be confusing.
1 It is not always necessary to put a comma after a short phrase at the start of a sentence if no natural pause exists: That night she took a tumble.
2 But a breath, and so a comma, is needed after longer passages:
When day broke and she was able at last to see what had happened, she realised she had fallen through the roof and into the Big Brother house.
3 A comma is also needed in shorter sentences where a but changes the direction of travel: He won the election, but with a reduced majority.
4 Use two commas, or none at all, when inserting a parenthetical clause in the middle of a sentence. Thus, do not write:
Use two commas, or none at all when inserting … or
Use two commas or none at all, when inserting …
Similarly, two commas or none at all are needed with constructions like:
And, though he denies it, he couldn’t tell a corncrake from a cornflake …
But, when Bush came to Shuv, he found it wasn’t a town, just a Hebrew word for Return.
5 American states: commas are usual after the names of American states when these are written as though they were part of an address: Kansas City, Kansas, proves that even Kansas City needn’t always be Missourible (Ogden Nash). But do not do so where it offends against grammar, as before “and”, or where it produces too many commas for the sentence to stand. Apply your discretion.
6 For sense: commas can alter the sense of a sentence. To write Mozart’s 40th symphony, in G minor, with commas indicates that this symphony was written in G minor. Without commas, Mozart’s 40th symphony in G minor suggests he wrote 39 other symphonies in G minor.
7 Lists: do not put a comma before and or or at the end of a sequence of items unless one of the items includes another and. Thus:
The doctor suggested an aspirin, half a grapefruit and a cup of broth. But he ordered scrambled eggs, whisky and soda, and a selection from the trolley.
8 Question-marks: do not put commas after question-marks, even when they would be separated by inverted commas: “May I have a second helping?” he asked.
9 Quotations: within a sentence a quotation needs to be preceded by a comma, or a colon, or a word such as that (or if, because, whether etc), if it is an entire sentence. The first quoted word should also have an initial capital. Thus The doctor responded, “You’ll probably be better in the morning, or dead,” before sampling a crème caramel. If the words quoted are not an entire sentence, neither comma nor capital is needed: The doctor responded that he would “probably be better in the morning, or dead,” before sampling a crème caramel. In this example, it is known that the final quoted word was followed by a punctuation mark – a full stop, converted in the quotation into a comma – so the final comma is placed within the inverted commas. If, however, it is not known whether the quoted words constituted a full sentence, assume that the quotation is unpunctuated and put the appropriate punctuation mark outside the inverted commas: Having impaled himself with a handle-bar in the back of the cab, he was heard to say he “now realised what was meant by fatal attraction”.
If you want to quote a full sentence and precede it with the word that (etc), no comma is needed before the inverted commas, but the first quoted word still needs an initial capital: On learning that he was only scratched, her comment was that “Next time I hope Cupid’s dart will be tipped with curare.”
See also inverted commas below.
dashes You can use dashes in pairs for parenthesis, but not more than one pair per sentence, and ideally not more than one pair per paragraph.
“Use a dash to introduce an explanation, amplification, paraphrase, particularisation or correction of what immediately precedes it. Use it to gather up the subject of a long sentence. Use it to introduce a paradoxical or whimsical ending to a sentence. Do not use it as a punctuation maid-of-all-work.” (Gowers)
Do not use a parenthetical dash as a catch-all punctuation device when a comma, colon, etc could be used. The much-reviled semicolon is often worth an airing, too.
full stops Use plenty. They keep sentences short. This helps the reader. Do not use full stops in abbreviations or at the end of headings and subheadings.
inverted commas (quotation marks) Use single ones only for quotations within quotations. Thus:
“When I say ‘immediately’, I mean some time before April,” said the builder.
For the relative placing of quotation marks and punctuation, follow Oxford rules. Thus, if an extract ends with a full stop or question-mark, put the punctuation before the closing inverted commas.
His maxim was that “love follows laughter.” In this spirit came his opening gambit: “What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison?”
If a complete sentence in quotes comes at the end of a larger sentence, the final stop should be inside the inverted commas. Thus: The answer was, “You can’t wash your hands in a buffalo.” She replied, “Your jokes are execrable.”
If the quotation does not include any punctuation, the closing inverted commas should precede any punctuation marks that the sentence requires. Thus:
She had already noticed that the “young man” looked about as young as the New Testament is new. Although he had been described as “fawnlike in his energy and playfulness”, “a stripling with all the vigour and freshness of youth”, and even as “every woman’s dream toyboy”, he struck his companion-to-be as the kind of old man warned of by her mother as “not safe in taxis”. Where, now that she needed him, was “Mr Right”?
When a quotation is broken off and resumed after such words as he said, ask yourself whether it would naturally have had any punctuation at the point where it is broken off. If the answer is yes, a comma is placed within the quotation marks to represent this. Thus:
“If you’ll let me see you home,” he said, “I think I know where we can find a cab.”
The comma after home belongs to the quotation and so comes within the inverted commas, as does the final full stop.
But if the words to be quoted are continuous, without punctuation at the point where they are broken, the comma should be outside the inverted commas. Thus:
“My bicycle”, she assured him, “awaits me.”
Do not use quotation marks unnecessarily:
Her admirer described his face as a “finely chiselled work of art”; she wrote in her diary that it looked more like a “collapsed lung”.
Note that the Bible contains no quotation marks, with no consequent confusions.
question-marks Except in sentences that include a question in inverted commas, question-marks always come at the end of the sentence. Thus:
Where could he get a drink, he wondered?
Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?
semi-colons Use them to mark a pause longer than a comma and shorter than a full stop. Don’t overdo them.
Use them to distinguish phrases listed after a colon only if commas will not do the job clearly. Thus:
They agreed on only three points: the ceasefire should be immediate; it should be internationally supervised, preferably by the AU; and a peace conference should be held, either in Geneva or in Ouagadougou.