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Shock! Horror! The Economist has updated its guide to good writing 

Our in-house Style Guide has been refreshed but retains its traditional principles

“ON ONly TWO scores can The Economist hope to outdo its rivals consistently. One is the quality of its analysis. The other is the quality of its writing.” So began a short document sent to all staff journalists more than 40 years ago. Originally called the “Style sheet”, the list of dos and don’ts has since become the veritable soul of the newspaper and the source of its reputation for eloquent writing with clarity and concision.

Now, much expanded, the Style Guide is still issued to all correspondents and consulted on deadline by overworked, underpaid editors. A thoroughly revised edition was released last year. The update loosens some strictures while maintaining its conservative ethos that unabashedly constrain writers out of respect for readers.

In it are five new chapters on what writers should do, not merely what they shouldn’t—a “tools, not rules” approach. For instance, try to use concrete nouns (workers, not human resources) and vivid verbs (actions you can picture in your mind: a dog barks, it doesn’t demonstrate barking behaviour). There is an expanded guide to grammar (such as the proper use of whom). And there’s a more forceful injunction to honour the power of the full stop to keep your prose sharp and clutter-free. Yet despite the rejuvenation, its philosophy remains the same as in the 40 years and 12 previous editions since the book was first made available to the public.

That view of good writing owes much to George Orwell. In his essay “Politics and the English Language”, cited at the start of the guide, he offered simple guidance, such as “never use a long word when a short one will do” and “if you can cut a word out, always cut it out.” Hence the guide urges let, buy and get rather than permit, purchase or obtain. It warns journalists to avoid jargon, foreign words and clichés that are as dead as a doornail. [pls reword; ed.]

Yet earlier editions contained somewhat oddball restrictions. It frowned on complex in favour of complicated. It forbade address for issue or concern, allowing it only for an envelope. These dictats were lifted. But peculiarities remain. Health care is two words in The Economist where everywhere else on Earth it’s one.

And some rules remain priceless. It still rails against overused words that from repetition have lost their sting. Hence, generations of editors have cut key unless it is musical or opens locks, preferring main, chief or central. Must everything be a challenge these days?, a former editor and custodian of the Style Guide, Johnny Grimond, was known to sigh in despair. He, and still today we, urge replacing the term with difficulties, problems or concerns.

One of the controversial changes involves the loosening of a classic grammatical dictum and the bane of schoolchildren. The first Style sheet stated: “it is quite easy never to split an infinitive” (ie, placing a word between “to” and a verb, such as to never split an infinitive). Later editions acknowledged that this was a misguided superstition—based on a faulty analogy with Latin—but argued that the rule should be observed anyway, to avoid annoying readers who do observe it. The latest edition, however, has fully scrapped the rule; there was never anything wrong with a split infinitive.

For a publication whose name evokes numeracy, another consequential change is that “data” may now be used as a singular or a plural, depending on the sense. (When a mass or a concept is implied it is singular; when an imaginable number of discrete figures, it is plural). The change occasioned a few letters and a minor in-house revolt—the suffix -a in Latin denotes plural. But like other changes, it is settling in, and about time: singular “data” is already the majority usage in the wider world.

Language change happens slowly, but inexorably; it is hard today to believe that “to host” was considered a horrid new verb in the Style sheet from 1985. That earlier guide also reflected the attitudes of the times that ring off-key today: “You can avoid offending women without using chairperson, humankind or Ms. Prefer chairman (for a man) or in the chair, mankind, so long as the context is not offensive, and the precision of Mrs or Miss wherever you can.”

There are other ways that the newspaper’s writing offers a portrait of its period. “Everyone should have a courtesy title”—like Mr, Dr, etc—“except the dead...and, in time of war, the King’s enemies,” the style sheet from 1952 instructs. (Articles during the second world war referred to “Premier Stalin”—the Soviet Union was one of the allied powers—and “Hitler”.)

The Economist’s Style Guide is legendary among white-collar wordsmiths. It was featured in an advertising campaign in the mid-1980s (reproduced at the top of this article). It won awards and proved so popular that many readers wrote in asking to get a copy of the entire document. Sensing an opportunity, the company printed copies to sell to the public. Since then, more than 1m have been sold, helping executives, students and writers of all sorts hone their work.

The Economist may not be fashion-forward in its adoption of new terms like fashion-forward. But it has always believed in reason and progress, and this is why changes that do no harm, or even do good, can be welcomed into the language—and our journalism.

“Clarity of writing usually follows clarity of thought,” the guide reminds our journalists. But we are liberals by nature: open-minded, tolerant and with a dash of mischievousness. “Break any of these rules,” the guide counsels (citing Orwell’s final writing rule), “rather than say anything outright barbarous.”

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