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Style Guide

@econstyleguide

Avoid: famously (the sentence improved by the inclusion of this word has yet to be written)


Investigations of, not into.


Quantitative easing means increasing the money supply.


Regarded as politically incorrect in some circles, tribe is widely used in Africa and other places. It should not be regarded as derogatory.


Bureaucrats work is always challenging, exciting, key, strategic and often multi-disciplinary.


Avoid the language of spokesmen, businessmen, lawyers, bureaucrats and academics.


Overused words: challenge, community, crisis


"I might be wrong, but I think it will rain later" should be "I may be wrong, but I think it will rain later."


Effectively means with effect; if you mean in effect, say it.


"While" is best used temporally. Do not use it in place of "although" or "whereas".


Some words add nothing but length to your prose.


Do not imagine, either, that you can make an intrinsically dull subject more interesting by using hackneyed phrases.


Avoid: guesstimate


If something really is interesting, you probably do not need to say so.


English, nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter according to whether the objects they denote are male, female or of neither sex.


City centres are not central cities.


Evangelical means pertaining to the Gospel.


Once a neutral word meaning a chosen group or the pick of the bunch, elite is now almost always used pejoratively.


If the prose of our Tokyo correspondent is indistinguishable from the prose of our Nairobi writer, readers are being robbed of variety.


Every agreement, except those of the nod-and-wink variety, is verbal. If you mean one that was not written down, describe it as oral.


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