Regular readers of this blog, most notably 'Off the Record Dick' and my late departed mate Figs,will be surprised and fascinated to learn that I developed one such style guide for the members of the IBM consulting and professional services organisation in the early 90's. The Company was just branching out into the consulting arena and it was considered important to ensure our reports and the presentation material surrounding them were of a consistent format, hence the need for some grammatical guidelines. I must admit to lax usage of the apostrophe and comma, however it is very interesting to look back at some of the guidelines presented at that time. Here are a couple:
Issue: Avoid using the word issue unless referring to a paper or journal. Use problem or concern instead.
Simplistic: Use simple-minded or naive, or simple if that is what you mean
Verbs: Do not use nouns as verbs; for example, 'IBM solutioned the problem'
One of the great sources of style was produced by The Economist for its journalistic staff. It is interesting that Boris himself was the editor-in-chief for this organ for many years!!
This guide was later published and sits on my bookcase along with 'The Complete Plain Words' , 'Big Elephants Are Useful', a compendium of mnemonics and idioms and 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' a modern punctuation bible.
Can any or all of them solve the greatest grammatical challenge regarding what people from Argentina are called? Answer, from The Economist is that they are Argentines not Argentinian. Phew! glad we cleared that up.
