A new edition of the book that Jon Snow describes as 'in a class of its own'
The new edition of Guardian Style has just been published in the UK (American readers will have to wait until 6 December), and already Amazon is offering a 'Used - Like New' copy for just £30.48 (tip: you can buy a new one for £15). Perhaps the optimistic seller was the customer whose review ran: 'If you have ever wondered why the writing in the Guardian is often so appalling, here is your answer. The irritating tone of this guide is snotty and pompous; embodying a kind of Guardian speak faux-piety poorly disguising smug complacency.' We decided against using that quotation on the jacket in favour of one from the broadcaster Jon Snow, who was kind enough to say: 'If you love words, work with them, or simply toy with them – for me Guardian Style is in a class of its own.'
Like its predecessors, the book offers guidance, to our journalists and – we hope – a wider readership, on how to use English to communicate clearly and effectively. This edition, the first for three years, reflects changes in public life (changes of government in Britain, America and elsewhere) and in journalism itself, particularly the astonishing growth of digital media. We now publish our material in every format from printed newspaper to iPhone app, from blogpost to podcast, from millions of words in our Data Store to 140-character tweets: this edition of the book includes the Guardian's social media guidelines and blogging tips, as well as an introduction to the mysteries of the holy grail known as 'seach engine optimisation' – how to increase traffic to your website by ensuring that your content shows up prominently in Google and other online search engines.
If this all sounds a bit serious, we have aimed to provide an enjoyable read rather than a dry style manual. The book includes entertaining and useful contributions from leading Guardian and Observer writers such as John Crace, Ben Goldacre, Hadley Freeman, Simon Hattenstone, Marina Hyde, Simon Hoggart, Simon Jenkins, Lucy Mangan, George Monbiot and many more.
To give a flavour of the new edition, here is a selection from the 3,500-plus entries: A-F today, with more to come in further blogposts over the next week or so.
antidisestablishmentarianism
no hyphens (not recommended for use in headlines)
band names
Bands take a plural verb: Snow Patrol are overrated, the Young Radicals' You Get What You Give was the best single of all time, etc. Try to include diacritical marks if bands use them in their name, no matter how absurd: Maxïmo Park, Mötley Crüe, Motörhead, etc
'big society'
described by Simon Hoggart as 'surely the vaguest slogan ever coined by a political leader. Nobody knows what it means.' Until they do, keep it in quotation marks
brilliant
'a word applied indiscriminately by the Guardian to anything new, no matter how ordinary' (tweet from a reader)
climate change terminology
The term sceptics covers those who argue that climate change is exaggerated, or not caused by human activity.
If someone really does claim that climate change is not happening – that the world is not warming – then it seems fair enough to call them a denier
coalition government
Con-Lib if you are being polite; Lib-Con if you are a sceptic; Con-Dem if you want to be rude
controversial
is overused, typically to show that the writer disapproves of something ('the government's controversial free schools scheme'); like 'famous', it can be safely removed from news stories to allow readers to make up their own minds
curate's egg
Used nowadays to mean good in parts ('this was a curate's egg of a match'), the expression originally, and more subtly, meant to deliberately gloss over the truth – the curate was trying to spare his bishop's feelings, or perhaps his own embarrassment, when served a bad egg, by saying: 'Oh no, My Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!' (cartoon in Punch, 9 November 1895)
Dalek
takes initial cap, whether used literally (as in referring to Doctor Who), or figuratively (as in describing, say, your boss)
Eskimo
a language spoken in Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Note that it has no more words for snow than English does for rain. The people are Inuit (singular Inuk), not Eskimos
exclamation marks
Do not use! (As Scott Fitzgerald said, it is like laughing at your own jokes)
faith schools
may be called religious schools without fear of divine retribution
families
word favoured by politicians to make them sound caring and concerned ('hard-working families'), which doesn't mean we have to do so, as in this 2010 Guardian splash headline: 'Families face nuclear tax on power bills'. As a reader pointed out: 'So don't older people, single people, etc, face the same tax? ... the implicit attitude [is] that those not part of families are of secondary significance.' Quite
finalise
as long as complete and finish survive, and human beings with breath in their bodies to utter them, there will be no need for this word
Guardian Style (3rd edition), published by Guardian Books, is available with a 25% discount from the Guardian Bookshop
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