These handy hints were written primarily for some of the semi-literate dimwits and other primates whose principal accomplishments were the acquisition of fancy titles to embellish the signatures on memoranda. One of my prized possessions is an internal memorandum from our Internal Audit department (you know - those people who are supposed to help us do our jobs properly), which contained no less than fourteen errors. Perhaps, you will begin to understand my immense relief at getting out of there.

You may also be interested in the Plain English Campaign.

If you don't say what you mean, how can you mean what you say?

In practice, or to put it another way, if you don't say what you mean, you will either be misinterpreted or people will not believe that you mean what you say.

So, if you are English, and even remotely proud of your Country and its language, you may find some of the following helpful.

1 Gobbledegook

English / Gobbledegook

· Administer Administrate

· Authority Authorisation

· Certified Certificated

· Circulate Circularise

· Circulation Circularisation

· Conformity Conformance

· Could have Could of (see notes, below)

· Expiry Expiration

· Function Functionality

· Oriented Orientated

· Noted Notated

· Production Productional

· Racism/Racist Racialism/Racialist

· Recur Reoccur

· Sort/Sorting Sortation

· Summary/Summarising Summarization

· Transport Transportation

· Use Utilisation

· Would have Would of (see notes)

2. Misuse

Intended Meaning / Misused Word

· Annoy Aggravate (= to make worse)

· Ask Request (= to ask FOR)

· Criterion Criteria (OK as a plural)

· Expect Anticipate (see notes)

· Formerly Formally (see notes)

· Inform/Tell Advise (see notes)

· Medium Media (OK as a plural)

· Method Methodology (= the study of methods)

· Notes Notation (see notes)

3 Notes

· Ain't: Abbreviation of 'amn't' which, in turn, is an abbreviation of 'am not', and therefore only correctly used in the first person singular, i.e. with the personal pronoun 'I'.

· Advise: To give counsel or guidance.

· Aitch: The only 'h' in 'aitch' is at the end.

· Annotation: Appending notes (See notation)

· Anticipate: Requires doing something about what is expected.

· Apostrophe: Should be used to denote possession or letters missing from a word, NEVER a plural, although the positioning of the apostrophe may denote whether possession is by one or many, as in 'player's shirts' or 'players' shirts'. The only exception is the possessive pronoun, 'its', as distinguished from 'it's' meaning 'it is' (possessive pronouns NEVER have an apostrophe).

· Ask / Request: You ask a question, you request (or ask for) an answer.

· Collective nouns: These days it appears to be acceptable to use a collective noun as if it were a plural noun.

· Could have: The abbreviation 'could've' is often sloppily pronounced as 'could of'. Even worse is the fact that some people actually write it this way, too.

· Data: Should be a plural word, but the singular, datum, is old-fashioned and rarely used.

· Either/Neither: The 'ei' should rhyme with scythe, and not with seethe.

· Formally: According to form.

· Formerly: Previously.

· Full Stop: When used at the end of a sentence, a typed Full Stop is followed by two spaces. This is to differentiate it from the Full Stop used at the end of an abbreviation. Note also that a Full Stop is only used at the end of an abbreviation when the last letter of that abbreviation is NOT the same as the last letter of the word(s) being abbreviated, e.g. after Co. for Company but not after Ltd for Limited.

· Notation: Is OK when referring to symbols, e.g. phonetic, or as on sheet music. Otherwise, appending notes is 'annotation'.

· Resource: This has a page of its own.

· Schedule: the 'sch' should be as in Schweppes, and not ‘k’ as in school.

· Would have: Suffers in the same way as 'could have

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