Style guide

noun; saccharine adjective

not sacreligious

seasonal affective disorder

no need to add "desert"

normally preferable to added, commented, declared, pointed out, ejaculated, etc; you can avoid too many "saids", whether quoting someone or in reported speech, quite easily
see reported speech

for the stores; the company's name is J Sainsbury plc

in running text should be spelt in full: Saint John, Saint Paul. For names of towns, churches, etc, abbreviate St (no point) eg St Mirren, St Stephen's church. In French placenames a hyphen is needed, eg St-Nazaire, Ste-Suzanne, Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer

no apostrophe for golf or university

home of Exeter City

home of Newcastle United

royal park in London

not St John's and no longer "Brigade"

London

London

(1835-1921) French composer

in London; not St Thomas's

Japanese rice wine

never the Sally Army

plural salvoes

the organisation has dropped "the" from its name

capital of Yemen

(not sanitarium or sanitorium) plural sanatoriums

mental illness charity

island nation profiled in the Guardian on 1 April 1977

typeface

Milan

Brazilian city, not Sao Paolo

severe acute respiratory syndrome

but satanist, satanism

standard assessment tasks

scholastic aptitude tests (in the US, where they are pronounced as individual letters)

director of the National Gallery

in London

in London, once owned by the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein and used for concerts in the 60s (Jimi Hendrix played there), is now the Odeon Covent Garden cinema

Denmark, Norway and Sweden; with the addition of Finland and Iceland, they constitute the Nordic countries

plural scherzos

use only in a medical context, never to mean "in two minds", contradictory, or erratic, which is wrong, as well as offensive to people diagnosed with this illness; schizophrenic should never be used as a noun

(1874-1951) Austrian-born composer

Alfred Salter primary school, Rotherhithe; King's school, Macclesfield, Eton college, etc

year 2, year 10, key stage 1, etc

former German chancellor

Arnie is acceptable in headlines

Take care: "m" in scientific terms stands for "milli" (1mW is 1,000th of a watt), while "M" denotes "mega" (1MW is a million watts); in such circumstances it is wise not to bung in another "m" when you mean million, so write out, for example, 10 million C
amps A, volts V, watts W, kilowatts kW, megawatts MW, milliwatts mW, joules J, kilojoules kJ

in italics, with the first name (denoting the genus) capped, the second (denoting the species) lc: Escherichia coli, Quercus robur. The name can be shortened by using the first initial: E coli, Q robur (but we do not use a full point after the initial)

some silly cliches to avoid: you might find it difficult to hesitate for a nanosecond (the shortest measurable human hesitation is probably about 250 million nanoseconds, a quarter of a second); "astronomical sums" when talking about large sums of money is rather dated (the national debt surpassed the standard astronomical unit of 93 million [miles] 100 years ago)

TM; say sticky tape

but Scotch argus butterfly

The following was written by a Scot who works for the Guardian and lives in London. Letters expressing similar sentiments come from across Britain (and, indeed, from around the world):

We don't carry much coverage of events in Scotland and to be honest, even as an expat, that suits me fine. But I do care very much that we acknowledge that Scotland is a separate nation and in many ways a separate country. It has different laws, education system (primary, higher and further), local government, national government, sport, school terms, weather, property market and selling system, bank holidays, right to roam, banks and money, churches, etc.

If we really want to be a national newspaper then we need to consider whether our stories apply only to England (and Wales) or Britain, or Scotland only. When we write about teachers' pay deals, we should point out that we mean teachers in England and Wales; Scottish teachers have separate pay and management structures and union. When we write about it being half term, we should remember that there's no such thing in Scotland. When we write about bank holiday sunshine/rain, we should remember that in Scotland the weather was probably different and it possibly wasn't even a bank holiday. When we write a back-page special on why the English cricket team is crap, we should be careful not to refer to it as "we" and "us". When the Scottish Cup final is played, we should perhaps consider devoting more than a few paragraphs at the foot of a page to Rangers winning their 100th major trophy (if it had been Manchester United we'd have had pages and pages with Bobby Charlton's all-time fantasy first XI and a dissertation on why English clubs are the best in Europe).

These daily oversights come across to a Scot as arrogance. They also undermine confidence in what the paper is telling the reader

not Scottish Office

(1846-1932) editor of the Manchester Guardian for 57 years and its owner from 1907 until his death (his uncle, John Edward Taylor, had founded the paper in 1821). Scott, who was editor when the first "Style-book of the Manchester Guardian" – forerunner of this guide – appeared in 1928, is most famous for his statement "comment is free, but facts are sacred"

(1811-78) architect who designed the Albert Memorial and Midland Grand hotel at St Pancras station

(1880-1960) grandson of the above, responsible for red telephone boxes, Bankside power station (now Tate Modern), Waterloo bridge, and the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool

members are MSPs

not scotch; once known as Aberdeen terrier

not "Boy Scouts" (in the UK, at least); the organisation is the Scout Association

system that measures the heat level of chillies

TM

capped up even though generally pronounced "scuzzy"; it stands for small computer system interface

as generally known; but South Korea calls it the East Sea and North Korea the East Sea of Korea

note accents in Irish Gaelic; sean without a fada means old

uc, eg Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Pacific Ocean

spring, summer, autumn, winter all lc

on a watch; but he bought it secondhand

1988 law, widely regarded as homophobic, that said local authorities "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship"; it was repealed in Scotland in 2000 and the rest of the UK in 2003

not sieze

avoid "told the Observer"/"told the Guardian"/"told guardian.co.uk" when "said" will do. There will be exceptions, such as where we wish to underline the exclusivity of our information, but we should use it sparingly

no apostrophe

TM; say sticky tape

Used correctly (which occasionally we do), the semicolon is a very elegant compromise between a full stop (too much) and a comma (not enough). This sentence, from a column by David McKie, illustrates beautifully how it's done: "Some reporters were brilliant; others were less so."
see colon

no longer necessary to cap this

(US)

abbreviate to Sr not Sen or Snr, eg George Bush Sr

(9/11 is acceptable)

The official death toll (revised January 2004) of the victims of the Islamist terrorists who hijacked four aircraft on 11 September 2001 is 2,973. The figure includes aircraft passengers and crews, but not the 19 hijackers. Of this total, 2,749 died in the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre (1,541 have been identified from remains at Ground Zero), 184 were killed in the attack on the Pentagon, and 40 died when their plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania

The hijackers were: Fayez Ahmed, Mohamed Atta, Ahmed al-Ghamdi, Hamza al-Ghamdi, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, Ahmed al-Haznawi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, Majed Moqed, Ahmed al-Nami, Abdulaziz al-Omari, Marwan al-Shehhi, Mohannad al-Shehri, Wael al-Shehri, Waleed al-Shehri, Satam al-Suqami, Ziad Jarrah (though dozens of permutations of their names have appeared in the paper, we follow Reuters style as for most Arabic transliterations)

noun; Serbian adjective: the Serbs ousted the Serbian dictator Milosevic

Sergeant Major Trevor Prescott, subsequently Sgt Maj (not RSM or CSM) Prescott

SFO on second mention

Soca after first mention

(armed forces)

should be confined to those Israeli Jews living in settlements across the 1967 green line, ie in the occupied territories

It is very tempting to use this, especially in headlines, when we think something is going to happen, but aren't all that sure; try to resist this temptation. It is even less excusable when we do know that something is going to happen: one of our readers counted no fewer than 16 uses of the phrase in the paper in two days; in almost every case, the words could have been replaced with "will", or by simply leaving out the "set", eg "the packs are set to come into force as part of the house-selling process".

The first readers' editor of the Guardian put it like this: "The expression 'set to', to mean about to, seems likely to ... is often used to refer to something that, though expected, is not absolutely certain to happen. It is a rascally expression which one of the readers who have learned to groan at the sight of it describes as an all-purpose term removing any precision of meaning from the sentence containing it"

not Sex in the City

From the editor:

Guardian readers would rather we did give them the unvarnished truth – or our best stab at it. It seems obvious enough. But inside many journalists – this goes for desk editors as much as reporters – there is a little demon prompting us to make the story as strong and interesting as possible, if not more so. We drop a few excitable adjectives around the place. We overegg. We may even sex it up.

Strong stories are good. So are interesting stories. But straight, accurate stories are even better. Readers who stick with us over any length of time would far rather judge what we write by our own Richter scale of news judgments and values than feel that we're measuring ourselves against the competition. Every time we flam a story up we disappoint somebody – usually a reader who thought the Guardian was different.

We should be different. Of course we compete fiercely in the most competitive newspaper market in the world. Of course we want to sell as many copies as possible. We've all experienced peer pressure to write something as strongly as possible, if not more so. But our Scott Trust ownership relieves us of the necessity to drive remorselessly for circulation to the exclusion of all else. In other words, we don't need to sex things up, and we shouldn't

no apostrophe

From a reader:

"Can I suggest your style guide should state that homosexual, gay, bisexual and heterosexual are primarily adjectives and that use of them as nouns should be avoided. It seems to me that this is both grammatically and politically preferable (politically because using them as nouns really does seem to define people by their sexuality). I would like to read that someone is 'homosexual', not 'a homosexual', or about 'gay people', not 'gays'. Lesbian is different as it is a noun which later began to be used adjectivally, not the other way round. As an example from Wednesday, the opening line 'Documents which showed that Lord Byron … was a bisexual' rather than 'was bisexual' sounds both Daily Mail-esque and stylistically poor."

1967 album by a popular beat combo of the day; not Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

(capital Xi'an) and Shanxi (capital Taiyuan) are adjacent provinces in northern China

not Shakespearian

Belfast, not Shankhill

Mayfair; Shepherd's Bush west London

or the Shetland Isles but never "the Shetlands"

two branches of Islam (note: not Shi'ite); plural Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims, though Shias and Sunnis are fine if you are pushed for space

massage

dog

not feminine: it ran aground, not she ran aground; no quotes, no italic; you sail in not "on" ships

not shoe-in

not Shoreham on Sea

payment to opposition parties to help them carry out their parliamentary functions, named after Ted Short, the Labour leader of the house who introduced it in 1975

not shrunk, except in the film title Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (and perhaps the occasional piece of wordplay based on it)

do not use: they are conjoined twins

not seige

Tuscan city

pigment

computer chips

breast implants – we have been known to confuse the two, as in "Silicone Valley"

1930-97) English poet, not to be confused with his cousin John Silkin (1923-87), a Labour cabinet minister, as was John's brother Sam Silkin (1918-88)

(it stands for subscriber identity module)

see as or since

in three parts, eg Lee Kuan Yew

not Singing

in headlines (but sparingly), standfirsts and captions

Corporate entities take the singular: eg, The BBC has decided (not "have"). In subsequent references make sure the pronoun is singular: "It [not "they"] will press for an increase in the licence fee."

Sporting teams and rock bands are the exception – Thus "England have an uphill task" is OK, as is "Nirvana are overrated")

past tense sank, past participle sunk: he sinks, he sank, he has sunk

not syphon

a futile or interminable task (Sisyphus had to spend eternity rolling a boulder up a hill)

family-size, fun-size

not skillful

usually only of a trawler