Idris Consultancy Ltd.
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About this style guide

This style guide is not concerned with ‘correctness’ in English but with consistency and ease of reading. It first sets out some general principles for generating Plain English and then some specific rules for grammar, punctuation and spelling for writers of formal English to follow.

The style guide recommends simple and direct writing because, though it may be true that we have complex words and grammar to express complex ideas, it does not follow that complex things have to be hard to understand.

 Communicating complex things in a language not your own, and writing with the accuracy of an educated native speaker is a lot to ask for. So, when you don’t have the same intuitive knowledge of English which you have of your own language, logical rules for writing can help with forming good sentences which say what you want them to mean.

A. General principles

George Orwell (1946) provides the following easy to apply guidelines for clear, direct writing:

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never us a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an   everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

B. Specific style rules

When I am uncertain about a point of grammar or usage of a word, I refer to The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers (1954). Gowers’ rules for formal English are based on criteria of clarity. The book is recommended by very respectable sources. It is quite old, (first published in 1948), but subsequent revisions have kept it up to date. A lot of the style rules that follow are drawn from this book.
 

Referencing within the main body of the text
Use methods of referencing such as these:

Carstairs (1970) argued that ...
The system developed by Johnson & Smith (1986) is ...
… as Hamza (1983) claims ...
On the other hand, Fortescue et al. (1988) have reported that ...
Jackson’s (1970) paper argues ...

Adcock (1980, 1983, 1987) has repeatedly argued that ...
This point has been made a number of times (Jones 1980, 1983a, 1987; Brown & Smith 1986; Carson 1970), but ...

Quoting and quotation marks (inverted commas)
Make quotations exactly correspond with the original in wording, spelling, and punctuation.

Use three dots (...) to show omissions.

Separate quotations of more than 50 words from the text with a double space.

Use quotation marks for an odd or ironic usage the first time but not a second time. E.g., This is the ‘good-outcome’ variable, but as it turns out, the good-outcome variable predicts trouble later on . . .

Use single quotation marks throughout but use double quotation marks to mark a quote within a quote.

Referencing in bibliographies
1. Refer to complete books like this:

Jolly, PA (1980), Introduction to E-Commerce: Methuen.
Jolly, PA, Holmes, S & Watson, EP (eds) (1988), Website Design Reconsidered (2nd edition), New York: Wiley.

 (i.e., italicise the title of a published book and name the publisher.)

2. Refer to a chapter in an edited book like this:

Harrison, KA (1988), ‘Visual Operations’, in Johnson, PJ, De Waal, R & Watson, EP (eds), Animal Intelligence (2nd edition), New York: Wiley, pp. 12-34.

(i.e. put the name of the chapter in inverted commas and italicise the book title. Give page numbers and the chapter number.)

3. Refer to an article in a journal like this:

Carson, PR (1970), ‘Life as we know it’, Journal of Marketing 38 (3), 4-11.

(i.e., Put the title of the article in inverted commas and italicise the title of the journal. Don't abbreviate the title of the journal. Put the volume number in bold and write the part number in brackets.)

4. When URLs and email addresses appear within text, enclose them with pointed brackets (< >). E.g., The FSA’s website is at <http://www.fsa.org>.

For websites, give as much information as possible so that the reference can be tracked down if the URL goes out of date. (I.e., Refer to the author and date of 'publication' using information from commands like 'Page Info' in Netscape.

5. Refer to a web page like this:

Cox, P (2004), ‘A Guide to website planning’, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK <http://www.cb.bham.ac.uk/~pxc/refs/refs.html>; email: p.cox@cb.bham.ac.uk.

Capitalisation
Apart from the usual capitalisation at the beginnings of sentences, names of months, days, titles and proper names, use capital letters for the particular and a small letter for the general,

e.g., It is a street leading from the Plaza Gurney.

e.g., I have said something about this in Chapter 1; I shall have more to say in later chapters.

Capitalize official titles.

e.g., This issue has been addressed by the Executive Director of the FSA.

British spellings / American spellings

Though American spellings are now being widely used in Europe by non-native speakers, we should standardise to conventional British spelling – the language is, after all, European, not North American. Though American spellings are often more logical, British English still has some kudos), so use the British spelling (colour rather than color, apologise rather than apologize, cheque rather than check. There is a long list comparing British, Canadian and American spellings at the following website: http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/BritishCanadianAmerican.htm

Numbers
Write the numbers one to nine in words and thereafter use numerals. This is not a rigid rule because you can use numbers in words for a dramatic effect, e.g. There are links to more than six hundred websites.

Use numerals for years, e.g., 1978

Use a space to divide thousands and use a full stop to indicate decimal points, e.g., 4 500 euros and 59.5°c

Use words when a number opens a sentence,

e.g., Five hundred researchers worked for 15 years on a project which …

Write the words million and billion in full.

A billion is different things to different people so to standardise, use a billion (bi meaning two) to be a number with twice as many zeros as a million (i.e., a billion = a million, million).

Use of the first person (I)
It is perfectly OK to use the first person pronouns I and me and it is not too casual to use you because, by addressing the reader directly, it is possible to make your writing feel something like a conversation which makes it more enjoyable and easier to follow.

Contractions
Similarly, there is really nothing wrong with using contractions in formal writing (I’ll, it’s, won’t etc). In fact a lot of writing experts actively encourage it.

Abbreviations
Use abbreviations sparingly. Don’t, for example use things like m for metre – write the word in full.

When you introduce an abbreviation, give the full title first, the abbreviation in brackets and thereafter use the abbreviation,

e.g., Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an information system or process integrating all manufacturing and related applications for an entire enterprise. ERP systems permit organizations to manage resources …

 Extreme euphemisms
Avoid euphemisms which complicate things. Here are some typically dreadful examples;

spousal unit = wife or husband

territory manager = travelling salesman

collateral damage = dead civilians

comfort station = public toilet

free world = all the friends of the United States

reverse engineering = copy

profit taking = selling

downsizing and right-sizing = cutting jobs

disintermediation = cutting out the middle man

reintermediation = bringing the middle man back

Don’t turn verbs into nouns for the purpose of creating impressive sounding words. E.g., diarising, visioning, headquartering, incentivising and corporate alliancing.

Currencies
Write the names of currencies in words, not symbols, e.g.,

45 000 euros

45 000 US dollars

Personal names
When using initials for people’s given names, use them without full stops and without spaces
e.g.,  Mackenzie, PR

Dates
Put the day in numbers first, followed by the month in words and then the year in numbers, e.g., 24th May 1990

Fractions
When using fractions, in an equation, use a slash (/).

Write out common fractions in full,

i.e., One half, a quarter, two third. But, write five sevenths as 5/7

Gender related language
Avoid referring to people in general as he. Devices like he/she are OK, but it is best to rework sentences to avoid this too, e.g.,

Every website designer knows that he must stay up to date with developments in Internet technology. (original)

Every website designer knows how important it is to stay up to date with developments in Internet technology. (possible revision)

Split infinitives and sentences starting with And or But or Because
Rules like ‘never start a sentence with And or But and don’t split infinitives,’ are not very useful. The fact that literature is full of examples of these ‘rules’ being broken* suggests that they are not really working rules at all.

Ending a sentence with a preposition
There is no reason why you can’t end a sentence with a preposition.

Colon and semi colon
Use a colon to introduce items in a list,
e.g., You need the following to get on-line: a well designed website, a URL , a web host and about 100 euros.

Use a colon to introduce sentences in a list.
e.g., There are two important conclusions: Firstly, there are many gaps in our knowledge. Secondly, there is an urgent need for more research.

Use semi colons to link independent clauses.
e.g., The auditors made six recommendations; however, we are only adopting one.

Computer terms
The names of computer software and hardware are capitalised and sometimes, though not always, fully capitalised.
e.g., UNIX, Windows NT, Microsoft Word

Use e-mail and on-line, not email and online.

Exclamation marks (!)
Use them very little. Repeated use of exclamation marks is like swearing a lot – they lose power and look inarticulate.

Apostrophe
This is possibly the most misused of all punctuation. Please only use it to indicate missing letters and sometimes to indicate possession. E.g., It isn’t unusual for … and, The FSA’s guidelines clearly state …

As a matter of interest there is an Apostrophe Protection Society. See, <http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/index.htm >

These are some examples of common wrong use of apostrophes:

1940’s
100’s of bargains
chocolate at it’s best
copy your DVD’s
beauty care that let’s me be me
do’s and don’ts
 

References

Orwell, G ‘Politics and the English Language’, [first published 1946] in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: Penguin Books 1968

Gowers, Sir Ernest (1954) The Complete Plain Words: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (UK)

Bond, K (2005) (http://www3.telus.net/linguistics/BritishCanadianAmerican.htm email: teacherkarenb @ hotmail.com
 
 
 
 

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* William Blake’s poem Jerusalem begins, ‘And did those feet in ancient times…’.