Economist Style Guide - Redress Information & Analysis

word for the job or if you would have used it in the same context
fi ve or ten years ago, and if not why not:
address, meaning answer, deal with, attend to, look at
care for and all caring expressions – how about look after?
commit to meaning commit yourself to
community (see page 36)
environment – in a writing environment you may want to make
use of your correction fl uid, rubber (or American eraser) or
delete key
famously: usually redundant, nearly always irritating
focus: all the world’s a stage, not a lens
historic: let historians, not contemporary commentators, be the judge
individual: fi ne as an adjective and occasionally as a noun, but
increasingly favoured by the wooden-tongued as a longer
synonym for man, woman or person
inform, when used as a pretentious alternative to infl uence
overseas – inexplicably, and often wrongly, used to mean abroad or
foreign
participate in – use take part in, with more words but fewer
syllables
process – a word properly applied to attempts to bring about peace,
because they are meant to be evolutionary, but now often
used in place of talks
relationship – relations can nearly always do the job
resources
skills
supportive – helpful?
transparency – openness?
wannabes
Such words should not be banned, but if you fi nd yourself
using them only because you hear others using them, not because
they are the most appropriate ones in the context, you should
avoid them. Overused words and off-the-shelf expressions make
for stale prose.
coiffed not coiffured.
collapse (verb) is not transitive. You may collapse, but you may not
collapse something.
colons see punctuation.
clichés > colons
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