Full name: Republic of Croatia. Official language: Croatian. Geography Cities, towns, islands Note that many Croatian place names exist in Italian, German, Hungarian and Slovenian. Unless an English name exists (e.g. Dalmatia, not Dalmacija), always use the Croatian name. Both … Read More
2.16 General. In English, proper names are capitalised but ordinary nouns are not. The titles and names of persons, bodies, programmes, legal acts, documents, etc. are therefore normally capitalised: the President of the Council, the Director-General for Agriculture the Commission, … Read More
Full name: Republic of Bulgaria. Official language: Bulgarian. Geography Cities Note the transliteration Sofia for the capital city. Avoid using forms such as Rousse and Bourgas, which, although French, are still sometimes found in English-language texts. Regions БЪЛГАРИЯ BULGARIA … Read More
Full name: Kingdom of Belgium. Official languages: Dutch, French and German. Geography Cities Use the forms Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, Ostend. Flemish vs French forms. Use Flemish names of places in Dutch-speaking areas (e.g. Leuven not Louvain, Kortrijk … Read More
2.14 Confusion between English words. Look out for errors involving the pairs below. dependent (adj. or noun) dependant (noun only) license (verb) licence (noun) practise (verb) practice (noun) principal (adj. or noun) principle (noun) stationary (adj.) stationery (noun) 2.15 Confusion … Read More
Full name: Republic of Austria. Note that the Austrian Bundesländer are called ‘provinces’ in English. Official language: German. Geography Cities Write Vienna for Wien. Otherwise, retain the original spelling, including any accents (e.g. Sankt Pölten). Lakes Write Lake Constance for … Read More
1 British spelling. Follow standard British usage, but remember that influences are crossing the Atlantic all the time (for example, the spellings program and disk have become normal British usage in information technology, while sulfur has replaced sulphur in scientific … Read More
Language usage. The language used should be understandable to speakers of British English (defined in the introduction to this Guide as the standard usage of Britain and Ireland). As a general rule, British English should be preferred, and Americanisms that … Read More
Too many unfamiliar abbreviations can make a document incomprehensible and send your reader to sleep: (ERDF + EAGGF + CAP = ZZZ). If the meaning ofan abbreviation might not be clear to your reader, you should: write them out in … Read More
Jargon is vocabulary used by any group of insiders or specialists to communicate with each other, and is acceptable in documents which are only read by that group. However, outsiders (especially the general public) will have to work harder than … Read More
False friends (or faux amis) are pairs of words in two languages that look similar but differ in meaning. In a multilingual environment like the European Commission, we often mix up our languages. Borrowing between French end English is common. … Read More
Another easy step to dear writing is to useverbs in the active voice (‘the car hit a tree’) rather than the passive (‘a tree was hit by the car‘). Compare these: BAD: New guidelines have been laid downbythe President in … Read More
