A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
each other or one another?
Some traditionalists say the former should apply only to two people (“Iniesta and Xavi hugged each other”) and the latter to more than two (“all 11 Spanish players hugged one another”). HW Fowler was unimpressed by this argument and in practice very few people make the distinction.
The possessive is singular: they shook each other’s hand
EADS
European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company; the group includes the aircraft manufacturer Airbus and is the major partner in the Eurofighter consortium
earlier
often redundant: “they met this week” or “it happened this month” are preferable to “they met earlier this week” or “it happened earlier this month” and will save space
Earl’s Court
station and district
Earls Court
exhibition centre
earn
rather than learn that a banker or footballer earns, say, £15m a year, readers have indicated that they would prefer us to say “is paid £15m a year” or “receives £15m a year”
earned
not earnt
earring, earshot
no hyphen
Earth
when talking about the planet, but earth in such idioms as down to earth, what on earth? etc
east Africa
East Anglia
east Asia
or south-east Asia rather than the far east
east coast mainline
runs from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh. The principal operator is now London North Eastern Railway (LNER)
East End
inner east London north of the river; the equivalent district south of the Thames is south-east London
EastEnders
TV soap; in real life, people from the East End are East Enders
Easter
The day between Good Friday and Easter Day is Holy Saturday, not Easter Saturday, which falls a week later
eastern Europe
East Jerusalem
East Midlands
East Riding of Yorkshire council
easyCouncil
approach to local government favoured by some Conservative authorities, modelled on the no-frills approach of budget airlines such as easyJet
Easy Street
Ebacc
English baccalaureate
eBay
but Ebay if you cannot avoid starting a sentence or headline with it
ebike
strictly speaking, to qualify as an ebike, or electric bike, the bike must have pedals that can be used to propel it, its motor must have a maximum power output of 250 watts and should not be able to propel the bike at speeds of more than 15.5mph. Anything else is legally classed as a motorcycle or moped, although some models and adaptations blur the distinction
Ebola
a virus and a disease, Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF)
ebook, email
but e-cigarette, e-commerce, e-learning, e-petition, e-reader
eccles cake
ecclesiastical titles
Most Rev (archbishop), Right Rev (bishop), Very Rev (dean or provost), the Ven (archdeacon), the Rev John (or Joan) Smith – not “Rev John Smith”, “Rev Smith”, “the Revs Smith and Jones”. Surname only on subsequent mentions, except in leading articles
Eccleston, Christopher
actor
Ecclestone, Bernie
former Formula One boss
e-cigarette
E coli
It is not normally necessary to use the full name, Escherichia coli. As with other taxonomic names, italicise in copy but use roman in headlines and standfirsts; no full point.
Note that E coli is a bacterium, not a virus
eco-friendly
but ecohome, ecosystem, ecotown, ecowarrior
ecstasy
state and drug
ecu
European currency unit, superseded by the euro
Ecuadorian
Edinburgh festival
comprises the following:
Edinburgh international festival
Edinburgh festival fringe (not fringe festival, but the fringe is OK)
Edinburgh international book festival
editor
lc: editor of the Observer, editor of the Bromley, Bexley and Eltham Leader series, etc
editors
An editor is to newspaper or website as a captain is to ship.
“Editors are craftsmen, ghosts, psychiatrists, bullies, sparring partners, experts, enablers, ignoramuses, translators, writers, goalies, friends, firemen, wimps, ditch diggers, mindreaders, coaches, bomb throwers, muses and spittoon – sometimes all while working on the same piece” (Gary Kamiya, Salon.com).
“Trust your editor, and you’ll sleep on straw” (John Cheever)
educationist
not educationalist
-ee endings
-ee means something happens to you; -er means you do something: so employee, invitee (if you must), refugee but attender, escaper, etc, rather than attendee, escapee, etc
eerie
weird; Erie North American lake; eyrie of eagles
effect or affect?
See affect
effectively
This adverb is best kept simply to describe how something was done: “Anna managed the department effectively.” Confusion arises when it is used instead of “in effect”, which describes something that has the effect of, even if the effect was unintended or unofficial: “Her boss was off, so in effect Anna was the manager of the department” is clearer than “Her boss was off, so effectively Anna was the manager of the department.”
Sometimes effectively is used in neither of these ways, but just to pad out a sentence in a feeble attempt at adding emphasis, in which case it can be safely deleted
effete
The traditional meaning is exhausted, spent or worn out, but nowadays you rarely see this word used to mean anything other than effeminate or foppish. Baroness Orczy used it in this sense in The Scarlet Pimpernel as long ago as 1905: “Those happy days of courtship, before he had become the lazy nincompoop, the effete fop, whose life seemed spent in card and supper rooms”
efficacy or effectiveness?
in scientific terms, efficacy relates to the performance of an intervention, eg a vaccine, under ideal and controlled circumstances, whereas effectiveness relates to the performance of an intervention under real-world conditions
efit
(electronic facial identification technique) program used to create police drawings
eg
no full points
EGM
extraordinary general meeting
Eid al-Adha
(Festival of Sacrifice) Muslim festival laid down in Islamic law, celebrates the end of the hajj. Note that eid means festival, so it is tautologous to describe it as the “Eid festival”
Eid al-Fitr
Muslim festival of thanksgiving laid down in Islamic law, celebrates the end of Ramadan (al-fitr means the breaking of the fast)
eid mubarak
not a festival but a greeting (mubarak means “may it be blessed”)
Eiffel Tower
Eire
no: say Republic of Ireland or Irish republic
Ekaterinburg
not Yekaterinburg
eke out
This used to mean making a small amount go further, as in “she eked out her rations by serving string instead of spaghetti”. It was a bit extra – note that eke meant “also” as used by Chaucer.
The word has come to mean something rather different, namely scraping by, as in “she eked out a living doing the occasional subbing shift at the Sunday Times”
elan
no accent
ElBaradei, Mohamed
former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ElBaradei after first mention
elderly people
or older people, not “the elderly”; do not use to describe anyone under 75
El Dorado
fabled city of gold
Eldorado
fabled flop of a TV soap
Electoral Reform Society
campaigns for “a democracy fit for the 21st century”; the related company Electoral Reform Services provides an independent balloting and polling service to political parties, trade unions and other organisations
electra complex
the female equivalent of oedipal complex
electric vehicles
can be referred to as EVs at second mention
electrocution
serious injury or death by electric shock
elegy
poem of mourning; eulogy speech of praise.
The adjective elegiac, sometimes misspelt “elegaic”, is very popular with writers on upmarket newspapers seeking an alternative to “sad”
elemental
basic; elementary simple
Elephant and Castle
area; Elephant & Castle station
elephant in the room
Like governments and reality TV series, metaphors that we once welcomed into our lives as refreshing can become all too familiar, to the point of tedium – and this cliche is a fine example.
At its height, elephants were not only in the room, but had taken over the whole house: “elephants in the room” included trade figures, policy, lack of policy, climate change, Iraq, the US, Europe, anti-Americanism, men, women, single women, a new French football league, race, religion, Islam, Catholicism, Tessa Jowell, Andrew Neil, Jimmy Greaves, fatness, thinness, Stalinism, Hitler and Tony Blair’s departure from office.
The phrase seemed destined for the elephants’ graveyard but there is evidence that, used imaginatively, it may still be effective: “There’s only so long they can ignore this elephant in the room [the Iraq war] before it takes a dump on the carpet” (Gary Younge, 5 July 2010); and, from the same writer: “Money in American politics was already an elephant in the room. Now the supreme court has given it a laxative, taken away the shovel, and asked us to ignore both the sight and the stench” (30 January 2012)
11-plus
11th hour
not eleventh hour
Elfbar
vaping company
elision
means omission, not the conflation of one or more thing
elite
ellipsis
Use a space before and after ellipses, and three dots (with no spaces between them), in copy and headlines: “She didn’t want to go there ... ” There is no need for a full point
Élysée Palace
emanate
is intransitive; use exude if you need a transitive verb
Embankment, the
in London; the tube station is just Embankment
embargo
plural embargos
embarrass, embarrassment
embassy
lc, eg British embassy; not necessarily an excuse to use the Ferrero Rocher joke yet again
emigrate
leave a country; immigrate arrive in one.
Hence emigrant and immigrant, emigration and immigration
émigré
Emin, Tracey
emoji
plural emojis
emotional
showing emotion; emotive causing emotion.
“Badger culling is an emotive issue. No wonder people get emotional about it.”
“Tired and emotional” is a euphemism for drunk
Empire State Building
empires
British empire (but British Empire Medal), Roman empire, etc
employment tribunal
not industrial tribunal
EMS
European monetary system
Emu
economic and monetary union
emulate
The traditional meaning of emulate is to attempt to equal or surpass, so “try to emulate” is strictly tautologous. But nowadays if you say “he emulated Thatcher”, everyone will think you mean that he succeeded, so you do need to qualify it: “He sought to emulate Thatcher, but ended up doing a poor imitation of Major”
enamoured of
not by or with
enclave
a piece of land totally surrounded by a foreign territory, eg San Marino and Vatican City, both enclaved within Italy; an exclave is politically attached to a larger piece of land but not physically conterminous with it because of surrounding foreign territory, eg the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichivan, which is is bounded by Armenia, Iran and Turkey
encyclopedia
not encyclopaedia
endgame
enervate
to deprive of strength or vitality
enforce, enforceable
England, English
should not be used when you mean Britain or British, unless you are seeking to offend readers from other parts of the UK (we published a map of England’s best beaches, with the headline “Britain’s best beaches”)
English Heritage
Charity now solely responsible for care of 400-plus sites across England. Not to be confused with Historic England
English Nature
is now Natural England
English PEN
Enlightenment, the
en masse
Ennahda
Tunisian political party
enormity
It might sound a bit like “enormous”, but enormity refers to something monstrous or wicked, such as a massacre, and is not just another word for “big”
enquiry
use inquiry
enrol, enrolling, enrolment
en route
not on route
en suite
two words, whatever estate agents might claim
ensure
make certain; insure against risk; but you can assure someone’s life by taking out an insurance policy
enthral, enthralling
entr’acte
E.ON
epicentre
point on the Earth’s surface directly above the focus of an earthquake or underground explosion; frequently misused to mean the centre or focus itself and is also not a synonym for “dead centre”.
After one of our misuses in 2010 a reader (for more than 60 years) wrote: “How is it that so many highly educated people, whose business is words and communication, do not understand that a prefix such as epi is there for a purpose: it changes the meaning of the root word”
epilepsy
A person with epilepsy might have a seizure, rather than a fit.
Seizures are epileptic, people are not – we do not define people by their medical condition; so say (if relevant) “Joe Bloggs, who has epilepsy” not “Joe Bloggs, an epileptic”
epinephrine autoinjector
device for injecting epinephrine (adrenaline), most often used for the treatment of anaphylaxis; normally abbreviated to EpiPen
epithalamium
poem written for the bride on her way to the marital chamber, such as the poem by Andrew Motion, his first as poet laureate, on the marriage of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999
EPO
erythropoietin, a hormone produced by the kidneys that controls red blood cell production. Erythropoietins produced by cell culture are used for treating anaemia resulting from chronic kidney disease and other conditions.
In sport, EPO is a banned substance used to enhance performance in cycling and other endurance sports
equable
unvarying; equitable fair
“His temperament, like the climate, was equable. None the less, he demanded a more equitable share of the proceeds”
Equality and Human Rights Commission
body created in 2007 to bring together the work of the Commission for Racial Equality, the Disability Rights Commission, and the Equal Opportunities Commission; may be called EHRC, or simply the commission, after first mention
equator, the
Equatorial Guinea
formerly Spanish Guinea, a country in central Africa that became independent in 1974; do not confuse with Guinea or Guinea-Bissau, other African former colonies
Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip
Turkish politician, elected prime minister in 2003
ere or e’er?
ere long (soon), ere now (before); e’er, which you might come across in an old poem, is an abbreviation of ever
Eriksson, Sven-Göran
ERM
exchange rate mechanism, the system that preceded Emu and the single currency
Ernie
electronic random number indicator equipment: the machine that picks winning premium bond numbers
erupt
burst out; irrupt burst in
escapers
not escapees, despite the apparently unstoppable advance of the -ee suffix (can it be long before readers become “readees”?)
Eskimo
is 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”
especially or specially?
The former means particularly (“he was especially fond of crab”) or in particular (“this policy is aimed at Ukip voters, especially those in marginal seats”).
The latter means for a special reason (“she made crab sandwiches specially for him”). If a company claims a product has been designed “especially for you”, it hasn’t
esport
but Esport at the beginning of a sentence
espresso
not expresso
establishment, the
estuary English
Eswatini
formerly Swaziland, which is worth mentioning at the first reference
Eta
Basque separatists; ETA estimated time of arrival
etc
no full point
Ethio-jazz
Ethiopian and Eritrean names
Ethiopian and Eritrean people are usually given a first name followed by their father’s first name. As such, the second name does not function in the same way as a western surname and people should be referred to by their first name on second mention, eg the athlete Kenenisa Bekele becomes Kenenisa thereafter. There can be exceptions to this – a person may always be referred to by their first and second names together – so it is worth checking. Also, people are sometimes given their grandfather’s first name as a third name, but this tends to function in a similar way to a western middle name and is not included in everyday usage
ethnic
never say ethnic when you mean ethnic minority, which leads to such nonsense as “the constituency has a small ethnic population”
EU
European Union (no need to spell out at first mention); formerly EC (European Community); before that EEC (European Economic Community)
EU presidents
There are three, so don’t say “EU president” or “president of the union” without making clear which you mean: president of the European Commission (currently Ursula von der Leyen), president of the European parliament (currently Roberta Metsola), or president of the European Council (sometimes referred to as president of the EU), appointed for a two-and-a-half-year term with the possibility of renewal once (currently Charles Michel).
To add to the confusion, there is also a presidency of the Council of the European Union, held by a national government, which rotates among member states every six months
EU27
not EU-27 or EU 27
euro
currency; plural euros and cents
Euro
should not be used as a prefix to everything European, but Euro-MP is an acceptable alternative to MEP
Euro Disney
runs what is now called Disneyland Paris
Eurogroup
euroland, eurozone
Europe
includes Britain, so don’t say, for example, something is common “in Europe” unless it is common in Britain as well; to distinguish between Britain and the rest of Europe the phrases “mainland Europe” or “elsewhere in Europe” may be useful
central Europe, eastern Europe, western Europe
European Commission
the commission after first mention; do not abbreviate to EC
European convention on human rights
European Council/Council of the European Union (EU Council for short)/Council of Europe
all different institutions so ensure the correct name is being used. The European Council is made up of the heads of state or government of EU member states and considers the general political direction of the EU; the EU Council is made up of government ministers from member states, grouped by policy area, and works on EU laws; the Council of Europe is not an EU body but an organisation set up to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law across Europe
European court of human rights
nothing to do with the EU: it is a Council of Europe body; sits in Strasbourg. To avoid confusion, call it the “Strasbourg court” or the “human rights court” after first mention rather than the “European court”
European court of justice
the highest court in the European Union in matters of EU law; sits in Luxembourg
European Economic Area
European parliament
European Space Agency (Esa)
not ESA
European stability mechanism
ESM for short
Eurosceptic
sceptical about Europe, not just the euro
Eurovision song contest
evacuate
You can evacuate a place, or people from a place. So “the islands were evacuated of thousands of people” and “thousands of people were evacuated from the islands” are both correct
evangelical
fundamentalist wing of Christianity
evangelist
someone who spreads the gospel
Evening Standard
no longer the London Evening Standard
eventually
often unnecessary, as in “the FTSE 100 drifted back, eventually closing 33.9 points lower at 5244.2”; the stock market always closes eventually
every day
adverb meaning daily: it happens every day
everyday
adjective meaning commonplace: an everyday mistake
every parent’s nightmare
avoid this cliche
evoke or invoke?
If you invoke the spirit of Picasso, you’re trying to summon his soul up from the grave; if your paintings evoke the spirit of Picasso, it means their style reminds viewers of that artist’s work
Ewok
exalt
praise someone; exult rejoice
“Tony Blair was exalted as exultant New Labour supporters exulted”
exceptional
above average; exceptionable something you take exception to
“The roast beef was exceptional, the yorkshire pudding exceptionable”
exchequer, the
exclamation marks
Use sparingly! (As Scott Fitzgerald said, it is like laughing at your own jokes)
exclusive
term used by tabloid newspapers to denote a story that is in all of them
execution
the carrying out of a legally authorised death sentence, so a terrorist or soldier, for example, does not “execute” someone
exhausting
tiring; exhaustive thorough
ex officio
by right of position or office; ex parte on behalf of one party only
exorcised
having had evil spirits removed; often used erroneously for exercised having one’s passions inflamed by something
expat, expatriate
not ex-pat or expatriot; this is “ex” meaning “out of” (as in export, extract), not “ex-” meaning “former” (as in ex-husband).
The term is redolent of the days of empire and used only to describe Brits abroad, who might more accurately be termed emigrants
explained
“said” is normally sufficient
exploitative
rather than exploitive
Export Credits Guarantee Department
ECGD at second mention
exposé
extracurricular, extramarital, extraterrestrial, extraterritorial
“extrajudicial killing”
should be used only when quoting someone
extrovert
not extravert
eye level
no hyphen
eyes
is being used increasingly for “considers”, but it doesn’t mean that. You might get away with “BoS eyes up Abbey” meaning considers it as a takeover target, but not “BoS eyes online insurance” meaning BoS is considering setting up an online sales operation
eye-watering
The pace at which a fresh metaphor becomes a tired cliche seems to have increased in recent years; this one saw a huge increase in 2009 – although curiously, while “eye-watering” is only ever applied to money (“eye-watering sums”), its adverbial near relative is more versatile (“an eye-wateringly beautiful woman”, “an eye-wateringly sharp sauvignon” and so on). The danger, as ever, is that the expression loses its force from overuse
eyewitness
one word, but witness is preferable, except in the Guardian’s Eyewitness picture spread
Eyjafjallajökull
Icelandic volcano that brought peace to the skies for a short time in 2010