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This guide is based on the style book which is given to all journalists at The Economist. (See also our Johnson columns.)

Introduction

Metaphors

Short words

Unnecessary words

Active, not passive

Jargon

Tone

Journalese and slang

Americanisms

Syntax

Some dos and don'ts

Some common solecisms

Abbreviations

Accents

Capitals

People

Organisations, acts, etc

Places

Political terms

Historical periods

Trade names

Euro-terms

e-expressions

Miscellaneous (Upper case)

Miscellaneous (Lower case)

Figures

Hyphens

The write stuff

Have you got it? Take a quiz based on The Economist's Style Guide... more

Italics

Plurals

Punctuation

Apostrophes

Brackets

Colons

Commas

Dashes

Full stops

Inverted commas

Question-marks

Semi-colons

Singular or plural?

Spelling

Common problems

Miscellaneous

People

Places

Titles

THE STYLE BOOK WAS WRITTEN BY JOHN GRIMOND.

An expanded hardback version of The Economist Style Guide, with a special section on American and British English, a 64-page fact checker and glossary, and more is available from our online shop. Buy it today.


		More about... Language Websites George Orwell's six elementary rules of writing are outlined in “Politics and the English Language”. (A biography and more essays by Orwell are available here.) Xrefer and Bartleby offer free access to dictionaries, style guides, thesauri and encylopedias. The English-to-American Dictionary, the Dictionary of American and British Usage, and United Kingdom English for the American Novice explain the differences between American and British English. Click to buy from Amazon.co.uk: “A Dictionary of Modern English Usage”, by H.W. Fowler (Amazon.com); “The Complete Plain Words”, by Sir Ernest Gowers.