Style guide

lower house of parliament in the Irish Republic, normally just the Dáil

(1904-89) Spanish surrealist

Avoid constructions such as "having died, they buried him"; the pitfalls are nicely highlighted in Mark Lawson's novel Going Out Live, in which a TV critic writes: "Dreary, repetitive and well past the sell-by date, I switched off the new series of Fleming Faces." A particularly exotic example of this that somehow found its way into the Guardian: "Though long-legged and possessing a lovely smile, gentleman journalists aren't looking up her skirt and wouldn't even if she weren't gay ... "

Beware sentences – such as this one – that dash about all over the place – commas (or even, very occasionally, brackets) are often better; semicolons also have their uses. Dashes should be n-dashes rather than m-dashes or hyphens.

takes a singular verb (like agenda); though strictly a plural, no one ever uses "agendum" or "datum"

Our style is 14 December 2008 (day month year; no commas). In the 21st century but 21st-century boy; fourth century BC; AD2007, 2500BC, 10,000BC; for decades use figures: the swinging 60s or 1960s

Think twice before using these terms. Often only the person's father is described and such descriptions can smack of snobbery as well as sexism. Simplistic labels may also be misleading: we published a clarification after calling Captain James Cook the son of a Scottish farm labourer. True enough, but Cook's mother was a Yorkshire woman and he is a famous son of Yorkshire

suffragette who died four days after stepping in front of George V's horse at the 1913 Derby

TM

but month-long, year-long

but night-time

two words, as in the Beatles' Day Tripper

avoid or say "closed ears": the phrase is not just a rather lazy cliche but offensive to many deaf people; for the same reason, do not use "dialogue of the deaf": most deaf people are perfectly capable of conducting a dialogue using BSL and other sign languages

but death row

no accents; like farce and fiasco, to be used sparingly in news reporting

1950s, etc; use figures if you abbreviate: roaring 20s, swinging 60s, a woman in her 70s, the first reader's email of the 00s

nowadays used to mean destroy
see Latin

lc, eg Lacken declaration on the future of Europe

do not give OBE, KCMG or anything similar, after names

of the US

render harmless

spread about

(1834-1917) French artist; no accents

(1890-1970) French military leader and statesman; De Gaulle on second mention

like this: my sons all got firsts, but I only got a second – although it was a 2:1 – and I did go on to a master's

no accents

not Deloittes, Deloitte Consulting, or Deloitte & Touche

"That the sun moves round the Earth was once a delusion, and is still an illusion" (Fowler)

(1881-1959) Hollywood producer and director

not "Democrat party", despite attempts by some Republicans to call it this

not Judy

and Mao Zedong

one who denies, as in "Holocaust denier"; also a unit of weight for fibre, eg 10-denier tights

no accent

British government ministries (but not ministers) take initial caps, as follows:

Cabinet Office (but the cabinet)
Home Office
Foreign Office (abbreviate to FCO – for Foreign and Commonwealth Office – after first mention)
Treasury
Department for Business, Enterprise and
Regulatory Reform (DBERR)
Department for Children, Schools and
Families (DCSF)
Communities and Local Government
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)
Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs (Defra)
Department for Innovation, Universities and
Skills (Dius)
Department for International Development (DfID)
Department for Transport (DfT)
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Department of Health (DH)
Ministry of Defence (MoD)
Ministry of Justice (MoJ)
Office of the Leader of the House of Commons
Northern Ireland Office
Scotland Officenot Scottish Office
Wales Office not Welsh Office

Use the abbreviations in brackets sparingly, especially the clumsy ones: culture and sport department, innovation and skills department, and so on are fine, or just the department, the ministry, etc. The rebranded Communities and Local Government is tricky, having decided to drop "Department" from its name: if we say, for example, "Communities and Local Government yesterday announced a shakeup in council tax" it makes us sound equally silly, so best to call it the communities and local government department (lc) or just communities department or local government department, depending on the story. Departments and ministries of other countries are lc, eg US state department, Iraqi foreign ministry

noun; dependent adjective

person

place

express disapproval

reduce in value

the two Us are de rigueur

not daring-do

not Londonderry

come after ancestors; you wouldn't think we would get this simple thing wrong as often as we do

not dessicated

pudding, but just deserts

TM

use this term in preference to third world

on second mention just Villepin

formerly known as the British Diabetic Association

(1872-1929) Russian impresario; founder of the Ballets Russes

cockney, estuary English, geordie, scouse

TM

but the film series is Die Hard

can be abbreviated to DRM after first mention

not delapidated

means two difficult choices, not any general problem

TM

People we write about are allowed to speak in their own, not necessarily our, style, but be sensitive: do not, for example, expose someone to ridicule for dialect or grammatical errors. Do not attempt facetious phonetic renditions such as "oop north", "fooking" and "booger" when interviewing someone from the north, or "dahn sarf" when writing about south London

not "the disabled"

Use positive language about disability, avoiding outdated terms that stereotype or stigmatise. Terms to avoid, with acceptable alternatives in brackets, include victim of, suffering from, afflicted by, crippled by (prefer person who has, person with); wheelchair-bound, in a wheelchair (uses a wheelchair); invalid (disabled person); mentally handicapped, backward, retarded, slow (person with learning difficulties); the disabled, the handicapped, the blind, the deaf (disabled people, blind people, deaf people); deaf and dumb (deaf and speech-impaired, hearing and speech-impaired)

rotating optical disc: CD, CD-Rom, DVD, etc

rotating magnetic disc: disk drive, floppy disk

not discernable

a patient is discharged, not released, from hospital; a prisoner is released from jail

but discoloration

thwart, readily confused with discomfort, make uncomfortable

circumspect

separate

not disenfranchise

means free from bias, objective (the negative form of interested as in "interested party"); often used incorrectly instead of uninterested, not taking an interest (the negative form of interested as in "interested in football")

(California)

(formerly Euro Disney)

(Florida)

(Commons), dispatched; not despatch, despatched

TM; use aspirin

not disassociate, disassociation

not distributer

not a synonym for crashing: if you ditch a helicopter, you make a controlled landing on the water after an emergency – we have got this wrong several times

a divorced person, male or female

issued by the defence, press and broadcasting advisory committee, "suggesting" that the media do not publish sensitive information

the title of the series; the character's name is the Doctor, and it should never be abbreviated to Dr Who

lc, alsatian, doberman, rottweiler, yorkshire terrier; but Irish setter, old English sheepdog

as Homer Simpson would say (note the apostrophe)

TM

Millennium Dome at first mention, thereafter the dome; now the O2

but doomsday scenario

Former British colony in the Windward Islands, south-west of the Dominican Republic

Independent Spanish-speaking country that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti

kebab
see kebabs

gives money

no accent

former artistic director of English National Opera

(1821-81) Russian novelist

as in Sheffield United may win the double (FA Cup and Premiership)

play down is preferable

say (if relevant) a baby with Down's syndrome, not "a Down's syndrome baby" – we wouldn't say "a cerebral palsy baby". The diagnosis is not the person

don't use to refer to Australia or New Zealand

precisely, not approximately, 12

at first mention for medical and scientific doctors and doctors of divinity (not, for example, a politician who happens to have a PhD in history); thereafter, just use surname except in leading articles

of document

of drawing

not dreamt

two words

this shirt will only get drier after an hour in the tumble dryer (while I use the hairdryer)

past tense drank, past participle drunk: he drinks, he drank, he has drunk

not driver's licence

honeybee whose function is to mate with the queen, and by extension therefore someone who lives off the work of others (the worker bees); however, it seems to be used increasingly to mean something like an obedient, unimaginative worker ("office drone")

not drugs raid, etc

a more accurate and less judgmental term than "drug abuse" or "misuse" (often all three terms have been scattered randomly through the same reports)

not duck tape

Traditionalists argue that rent may be due to the landlord, but unless it is the complement of the verb "to be", "due to" should otherwise be replaced by "because of"; thus:

"The train was late due to leaves on the line" is wrong;
"The train was late because of leaves on the line" is correct;
"The train's late arrival was due to leaves on the line" is also correct.

A rough and ready test is that "due to" is fine if it can be replaced by "caused by", but not when it can be replaced by "because of". This distinction, once routinely taught in primary schools but now assailed on all sides, especially by train and tube announcers, is being lost

of Westminster or wherever, first mention; thereafter the duke

first mention; thereafter Prince Andrew or the prince

do not use when you mean speech-impaired

(1945-87) English cellist, Du Pré at second mention

(1886-1971) French organist and composer

stands for digital versatile disc

plural of dwarf (not dwarfs); but the verb is to dwarf, eg 1

Canada Square dwarfs the surrounding buildings

not dike

plural dynamos

football teams from the former Soviet Union are Dynamo; teams from Romania are Dinamo