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Introduction
This guide is precisely that: it is not a dictionary, thesaurus or grammarian's notebook. It will not tell you how to spell 'accommodation' but will tell you that we prefer 'ageing' to 'aging'. It resolves common errors of meaning, including a few of its editor's own semantic bugbears and, for the first time, some suggestions from readers. Its purpose is not to cramp any writer's style, but to promote both consistency and accuracy in our use of language. The former adds to the newspaper's authority; the latter helps both writers and readers. As one of our regular book reviewers once noted: 'The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.' Orwell's point ('Politics and the English Language', 1946) still stands. Jargon, vagueness and glib phrases are the enemies of clear thought and good writing. In a Sunday newspaper, where often we have a luxury of time that is not granted to dailies, we should have the clearest thinking and best writing.
Orwell also prefers concrete imagery to abstracts, as do we - but for practical as well as philosophical reasons. Writers and editors should remember that we are not only in competition with other Sunday newspapers, but also fighting for a diminishing share of our readers' time. Unfortunately, they now have lots of things to do on a Sunday, so the slow-burning, elliptical headline is less likely to tease readers into a story than to make them hurry on past it and off to the cinema, shopping mall or pub. This applies especially to News and Business. Writers should also note that gratuitous adjectives do not make a story more exciting - they just make it unnecessarily long. Genuine wit and sustained, excellent writing are, of course, excepted - and expected. 'Hackneyed phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse' (Orwell again) should be demolished.
Of course, conventions on language should be challenged and even disregarded - as long as you know the rules, and why they are there, in the first place. Which is why the last of Orwell's six maxims on the subject is the most important:
'Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.'
Campbell Stevenson
Chief Revise Subeditor
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