P

Contents 1 paedophile, pederast 2 pail, pale 3 palate, palette, pallet 4 Palestine Liberation Organisaton 5 pan 6 panacea 7 Panchen Lama 8 Panjsher 9 Pap smear 10 papal nuncio 11 paparazzo, paparazzi 12 parallel, paralleling, paralleled 13 paraplegia 14 Paris Club 15 Parkinson's disease 16 parliament 17 parliamentarian 18 part time, part-time 19 partial, or broken quote 20 participate 21 participles 22 partner 23 Pashtun 24 passer-by, passers-by 25 past, last 26 passive 27 patrol, patrolling, patrolled 28 payroll 29 peach Melba 30 peal, peel 31 pedal, peddle 32 peer 33 pejorative 34 peninsular 35 per 36 percent 37 percentage 38 perceptible 39 perfect 40 period close quote 41 period of time 42 perk 43 Persian 44 Persian Gulf 45 person, people 46 personal, personally, personnel 47 personal names 48 persuade, convince 49 petrol bomb 50 Petrodollar 51 PGA 52 phase, faze 53 phenomenon 54 phoney 55 phosphorus 56 picket, picketed, picket line 57 picnic, picnicking, picknicked, picknicker 58 pidgin English 59 pigeonhole 60 pilots 61 pileup 62 PIN 63 pious 64 plan ahead 65 plane 66 planets 67 plea bargain 68 plead, pleading, pleaded 69 pled 70 PLO 71 plough, but American style plow 72 plummet 73 plurality 74 p.m. 75 podcast 76 podium 77 poems 78 point-blank 79 pointed out 80 police 81 policymakers 82 Polisario Front 83 political parties 84 politicking 85 Polynesia 86 pooh-pooh 87 Poona 88 Pope 89 populace 90 pore 91 port, starboard 92 Portuguese names 93 posh 94 positive 95 postmarket 96 post mortem 97 postpone 98 postwar 99 potato, potatoes 100 pound 101 pound sign 102 pour, pore 103 practice, practise 104 pre- 105 precautionary measure 106 precondition 107 pre-dawn 108 predominant, predominantly 109 predilection 110 prefixes 111 premarket 112 premier 113 premiere 114 premier league 115 premise, premises 116 pre-owned 117 preplanned 118 prepositional phrases 119 prescribe 120 presently 121 President 122 Presidents Day 123 presidency 124 press conference 125 press reports 126 pressurise 127 prestigious 128 pretax 129 pretence, pretext 130 pretension, pretentious 131 prevaricate, procrastinate 132 prime minister 133 prime rate 134 primeval 135 principal, principle 136 prior to 137 prise apart, not prize. 138 prison officers 139 prisoner of war, prisoners of war 140 pristine 141 prize money 142 private equity firm 143 privilege, privileged 144 proactive 145 process 146 Procter and Gamble 147 proffer, proffered 148 profit 149 profit-sharing 150 profit-taking 151 prognosis 152 program 153 pro-life 154 prone, supine 155 pronouns 156 pronunciation 157 propeller 158 proper names 159 prophecy, prophesy 160 proscribe, prescribe 161 prostate, prostrate 162 protest 163 protester 164 prototype 165 proven 166 proverbial 167 provost marshal, provost marshals 168 public school 169 publications 170 publicly 171 pull back, pullback 172 pull out, pullout 173 punctuation 174 Pune 175 punter 176 purchase 177 push up, push-up 178 pygmy 179 Pyrrhic victory

paedophile, pederast

A paedophile sexually desires children. A pederast has sexual relations with a boy.

pail, pale

Pail is a small bucket. Pale is wan or light in colour.

palate, palette, pallet

Palate is a sense of taste or part of the mouth. An artist mixes his paints on a palette, and a pallet is a mattress or small bed.

Palestine Liberation Organisaton

Not Palestinian. PLO is acceptable on first reference and spell out in a subsequent reference.

pan

The prefix does not usually take a hyphen. For example – panacea, panoply, pantheism. But Pan-American -- hyphenated when referring to the North, Central and South America region, but not in the official title of the Pan America Games. Also pan-African and pan-European.

panacea

A universal medicine or cure.

Panchen Lama

See Dalai Lama, Tibet.

Panjsher

Not Panjshar or Panjshir, Afghanistan.

Pap smear

Capitalise Pap. A smear test for cancer devised by George Papanicolaou.

papal nuncio

The Holy See’s ambassadors around the world are known as papal nuncios and its embassies as nunciatures. If the Holy See does not have formal diplomatic relations with a country the pope’s envoy to the church in that country is an apostolic delegate.

paparazzo, paparazzi

parallel, paralleling, paralleled

paraplegia

The total or partial paralysis of both legs. Quadriplegia is the paralysis of all four limbs.

Paris Club

An informal body of 19 creditor nations plus occasional others. It has met in Paris under the chairmanship of the French Treasury since 1956 to help indebted countries reorganise their finances. It treats debt only for those countries with support agreements with the IMF and does so on the condition that other lenders give comparable terms. See also loans, London Club.

Parkinson's disease

parliament

As a general rule refer to legislative assemblies initially as parliaments, regardless of their formal names. These can be given lower in the story, e.g. Prime Minister Tony Blair told parliament ... Replying to questions in the House of Commons, he said ... In American style, capitalise when the name of a formal body, e.g. The British Parliament.

parliamentarian

Member of parliament preferable, although parliamentarian is becoming more widely accepted.

part time, part-time

Two words for the verb, one word for the adjective.

partial, or broken quote

Try to avoid unless the fragment is vital to understanding the importance of meaning.

participate

Use take part.

participles

There are cases in which an unattached participle is acceptable, e.g. Considering the risks involved, you were right to cancel the trip. Although it is not you who is considering the risks but the writer of the sentence, the sense is clear. But avoid the unattached participle when it makes the sentence absurd, e.g.: Having disarmed, Ruritania’s allies guaranteed its defence. Here the participle having disarmed is wrongly attached to the allies when in fact it is Ruritania that has disarmed. Fetching anything between $16,000 and $40,000, onIy about 2,500 women around the world can afford to buy haute couture dresses. The juxtaposition of fetching and women suggests it is the women not the dresses who are worth $16,000.

partner

Prefer boyfriend, girlfriend or lover.

Pashtun

Not Pushtun, Pushtoon, Pathan. This tribe in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province and areas of Afghanistan speaks Pashto, also one of the main languages of Afghanistan.

passer-by, passers-by

past, last

Usually we mean last when we write past. Last refers to the time up to the present. Past is vaguer. Joe Smith has been injured for the last three games not for the past three games, but Eva Petite relived past glories. Also, check for redundancy in phrases such as past history, past record, past achievements.

passive

Avoid the passive voice. It is longer and clumsier than the active voice and often confuses the reader. Write Police arrested five armed men rather than Five armed men were arrested by police. The active voice allows you to push on with the rest of the story. Police arrested five armed men who had stormed a bank in central Paris. If you write Five armed men, who had taken over a bank in central Paris, were arrested by police… you ask readers to retain a great deal of information before they know fully who did what to whom. The passive voice is unavoidable when the subject of an action is the main point of the story. President Jane Flow was shot and killed by... is better than A gunman shot and killed President Jane Flow.

patrol, patrolling, patrolled

payroll

One word ("non-farm payrolls" -- U.S.).

peach Melba

peal, peel

Peal of bells, orange peel.

pedal, peddle

You pedal a bicycle but peddle your wares. A pedaller rides a bicycle, a pedlar sells goods, or peddles door to door. But use the form drug peddler.

peer

An equal.

pejorative

peninsular

This is the adjective. The noun is peninsula. The Peninsular War was fought on the peninsula.

per

Avoid the Latin. Six dollars each rather than six dollers per item.

percent

One word, but the abbreviation pct is acceptable in alerts and headlines. Use numerals before percent, 4 percent, 6 percent etc. Use percent after both numbers when writing about a change, rose to 5 percent from 4 percent, not rose to 5 from 4 percent. Do not confuse percentage with percentage points. If a bank rate rises from one percent to two percent it is a rise of one percentage point and an increase of 100 percent not one percent. Note that a 100 percent increase is twice the original figure, 200 percent three times, 300 percent four times, etc. It is a common error to write, for instance, that a 400 percent rise means a quadrupling; in fact it means a fivefold increase. To calculate percentages divide the first figure by the second and multiply by 100. For example 70 as a percentage of 350 is: 70/350 x 100 = 20 percent. Use a calculator for complicated figures and express the result to the nearest two decimal places, e.g. 75 expressed as a percentage of 350 is 21.42857142 or 21.43 percent. Always use decimals not fractions in percentages.

percentage

Write many or most rather than a large percentage of.

perceptible

perfect

Do not write more perfect or less perfect because things are either perfect or they are not. You can use less than perfect.

period close quote

Periods (full points, full stops) go inside quotation marks unless it is a broken quote, i.e. a phrase or a single word, in which case they go outside the quotation marks.

period of time

Use one word or the other, not both together.

perk

Shortened form of perquisite. Explain as a fringe benefit.

Persian

Generic name for the language spoken in Iran, Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan. It is also known locally as Farsi in Iran, Tajik in Tajikistan and Dari in Afghanistan, but Persian is the preferred overall name.

Persian Gulf

Use Gulf

person, people

Person singular and people plural. Do not use persons.

personal, personally, personnel

Personal or personally, meaning private or individual, is almost always unnecessary, e.g. He personally took his personal belongings. For personnel use people, staff or workers.

personal names

Check names, and then check them again, and then check them again. Never presume you know how to spell a name, no matter how common and how familiar it may seem. Is it Smith, or Smyth or Smythe or Smif? Use a given name and surname when first identifying people, and the surname alone on second reference. Only if a given name is not available or if it is known that an individual prefers to be identified by his initials (e.g. Former South African President F.W. de Klerk) should you use initials. First names that look unfamiliar or odd to English-speaking readers need no special treatment but first names that look like misprints of familiar names, such as Joh or Jame or Arturk may call for repetition at first reference, e.g. Joh (repeat Joh) Bjelke-Petersen. Do not write Joh (ed:correct) Bjelke-Petersen. Be careful with e.g. Evan/Ewan, Michel/Michael. Sports stories and results follow the same rule. Use given name and surname at first reference and the surname alone for subsequent references. To help readers not familiar with names, use a he/she or his/her at second reference to make clear the gender of someone whose name could be of either sex or whose name is not readily known to a non-native, e.g. Clare, Hilary. If you see a story with the same name spelled in different ways, do not assume that the first use is right, or the most frequent use is right, or any or all of them are right. Check with the author. Write declined to be identified not declined to be named. The source already has a name but does not wish to publicise his identity. See also Chinese, Ethiopian, European, Hispanic, Korean, Portuguese, Thai, Vietnamese names.

persuade, convince

You persuade people to do something, convince them of something or that something is the case. Never write convince to.

petrol bomb

A bottle of petrol with a petrol-soaked rag stuffed into the neck. The rag is set alight and the bottle thrown, resulting in a fiery explosion on impact. Do not use Molotov cocktail.

Petrodollar

PGA

Professional Golfers’ Association

phase, faze

Phase is a stage in growth or development. Faze is to worry or disturb.

phenomenon

Phenomena is the plural form. Do not use phenomenal if you mean extraordinary or remarkable or just big.

phoney

phosphorus

picket, picketed, picket line

picnic, picnicking, picknicked, picknicker

pidgin English

pigeonhole

Both noun and verb.

pilots

Military aircraft other than strategic bombers and transports normally carry only one pilot. Write the two crew not the two pilots when reporting incidents involving fighter-bombers and the like.

pileup

One word as a noun, two words as a verb.

PIN

Personal identification number. PIN number is tautologous.

pious

Avoid describing someone as e.g. a pious Muslim or a pious Christian. Say practising.

plan ahead

Just plan will do.

plane

Use aircraft, but higher plane, not higher plain.

planets

Capitalise the names of planets.

plea bargain

Noun. Plea-bargain is the verb. The verb is only used intransitively, i.e. not The lawyer plea-bargained the case.

plead, pleading, pleaded

pled

Legalese. Use pleaded.

PLO

Palestine (not Palestinian) Liberation Organisation. PLO is acceptable on first reference. Spell out in a subsequent reference.

plough, but American style plow

plummet

Avoid in market reports unless it is a precipitous decline. A 2-percent fall is not a plummet.

plurality

See majority, plurality.

p.m.

Time, e.g. 3 p.m. or 3:45 p.m.

podcast

podium

A speaker stands behind a lectern (a stand for notes) on a podium and in a pulpit. Several speakers can fit on a dais or rostrum or platform.

poems

As in other works of art, capitalise every word in the title apart from conjunctions, articles, particles and short prepositions, e.g. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”, “The Waste Land”.

point-blank

Note hyphen.

pointed out

Avoid this term if the statement is in any way contentious since it suggests that the writer accepts that what the speaker is saying is a fact. Plain said is better.

police

Use police officers, not policemen.

policymakers

One word.

Polisario Front

Algeria-based movement seeking the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco. It fought a low-level war for independence for 16 years after Morocco annexed the territory with the pullout of colonial power Spain in 1975. Its name is the Spanish abbreviation for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro.

political parties

Capitalise the names of political parties and of movements with a specific doctrine, e.g. a Communist official, a Democratic senator. Use lower case for non-specific references, e.g. The communist part of the former Soviet Bloc, but the Communist Party of what was then East Germany; the settlement was run on communist principles; he proposed a democratic vote. The name of a political phlosophy should be lower case as noun or adjective, unless it derives from a proper noun: communism, communist, fascism, fascist, but Marxism, Marxist, Nazi, Nazism.

politicking

Polynesia

Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia are island groups in the Pacific and sub-regions of Oceania.

pooh-pooh

Poona

Use Pune, India.

Pope

Capitalise only as a title before a name, not when referring to "the pope". See religious titles

populace

The common folk. Does not mean the population

pore

Pour liquid and pore over maps and documents.

port, starboard

Port is left, starboard right in nautical parlance. Use left and right.

Portuguese names

Portuguese and Brazilians, like the Spanish, include the family names both of their father and their mother in their full names. Unlike the Spanish, they put the mother’s name before the father’s and they normally retain both names at second reference. Where they use one it would always be the patronymic, i.e. the last name. Thus Jose Cabral Nettim could be either Cabral Nettim or Nettim at second reference.

posh

Slang. Avoid.

positive

Avoid as a synonym for good or fruitful.

postmarket

One word.

post mortem

Needs the word examination afterwards -- a post mortem examination. By itself, post mortem means simply 'after death'.

postpone

Events that are called off but will be held later are postponed. Report the new date if possible. Only those events scrapped completely are cancelled. American style uses cancel,canceled, canceling but cancellation.

postwar

No hyphen.

potato, potatoes

pound

The abbreviation lb (with no full stop and the same in the singular and the plural) is acceptable at all references. To convert to grams roughly multiply by 900 and divide by 2, precisely multiply by 454. To convert to kilograms roughly multiply by 9 and divide by 20, precisely multiply by 0.454.

pound sign

Use pounds rather than the £ sign to denote sums in pounds sterling, thus 420

pour, pore

Pour liquid and pore over maps and documents.

practice, practise

Practice is the noun, practise the verb, but in American style practice is both noun and verb.

pre-

If the second element of a word beginning with pre- starts with an e, hyphenate, e.g. pre-empt.

precautionary measure

Precaution alone will do.

precondition

Tautological. Condition is enough.

pre-dawn

If something happened shortly before dawn, pre-dawn may be technically correct, but it is a cliché to avoided. Never use it to mean merely that something happened during the night.

predominant, predominantly

Not predominate, predominately.

predilection

prefixes

As a general rule do not hyphenate. The exceptions are if the prefix ends in a vowel and the word that follows starts with the same vowel, e.g. pre-eminence and pre-establish. Cooperate and coordinate are exceptions. If the word that follows a prefix is capitalised then use a hyphen, e.g. trans-Panamanian. Transatlantic and transpacific are exceptions.

premarket

One word.

premier

Use premier for heads of government in states that are part of a larger political entity, e.g. the Australian and German states and the Canadian provinces. Reserve prime minister for the heads of government of sovereign states. Premier may be used for brevity in a headline.

premiere

The debut, opening or first showing of a TV show or film.

premier league

The English premier league is not capitalised.

premise, premises

Premises are always plural when referring to property, but legalistic and best avoided. Prefer an exact description – the house, the factory etc. A premise is a proposition supporting an argument.

pre-owned

Use second-hand.

preplanned

Tautological. Planned is enough.

prepositional phrases

Phrases that start and end with a preposition are usually verbose. Avoid expressions like: in order to ... in accordance with ... at this moment ... in respect to ... in receipt of ... with a view to … in connection with ... in the wake of … apprehension as to the outcome.

prescribe

Prescribe is to set down as an order, proscribe is to prohibit.

presently

Use to mean in a short time or soon, rather than now or at present. Present and presently are usually redundant when used to mean what is happening now.

President

Capitalise only when a formal title before a name.

Presidents Day

No apostrophe. Unofficial name of the holiday celebrating George Washington's birthday, and observed on the third Monday in February. This usage comes up in our copy at least one day a year.

presidency

Lower case.

press conference

Use news conference unless broadcast journalists, photographer and camera operators have been excluded.

press reports

When picking up newspaper, radio or television reports, name the source. Do not refer just to press reports. Quoting a news report does not exonerate journalists from responsibility to be accurate, balanced and not defamatory. We should make every effort to check a pick-up – even ... not available to comment... shows an effort was made. Insert relevant background and give some indication of the political stance, reliability and potential for bias of the source.

pressurise

Use press or pressure unless speaking of industrial processes.

prestigious

Avoid this pompous and often tautological word. If something is prestigious, or famous, then we need hardly say so.

pretax

One word, no hyphen.

pretence, pretext

A pretence is a false show, a sham or a false allegation. A pretext is an ostensible motive put forward to conceal the real one. Pretense is the American style.

pretension, pretentious

prevaricate, procrastinate

Prevaricate is to mislead or lie. Procrastinate is to delay or defer.

prime minister

Capitalise the title when it immediately precedes the person’s name. When the title follows the name or is used alone, use lower case, e.g.: French Prime Minister Jacques Dupont; Jacques Dupont, the French prime minister. But The president said: “I would like to welcome the Manchukistan prime minister, Stefan Hartzjand.”

prime rate

In the United States prime rate is a benchmark reference for determining interest rates on short-term loans to high-quality large borrowers. The actual rate could be lower but more often it is higher than the benchmark. Sometimes used erroneously to imply it is the bank’s lowest rate.

primeval

principal, principle

Principle is always a noun, meaning a fundamental basis or truth. Principal can be an adjective, meaning chief, or a noun meaning chief person, as in principal of a school or capital sum, as in debt principal.

prior to

Prefer before.

prise apart, not prize.

prison officers

Not jailers or warders.

prisoner of war, prisoners of war

Hyphenate when a compound modifier: prisoner-of-war camp.

pristine

Pristine means belonging to the earliest period or in its original state. It does not mean just clean.

prize money

Two words.

private equity firm

Three words.

privilege, privileged

Not priviledged.

proactive

Prefer active or energetic.

process

Can usually be excised in phrases such as development process. Prefer active or energetic.

Procter and Gamble

Not Proctor and Gamble.

proffer, proffered

profit

Not profits.

profit-sharing

Hyphenated for both noun and adjective.

profit-taking

Hyphenated for both noun and adjective.

prognosis

Prognosis is forecasting, or a forecast, especially of a disease.

program

Use this spelling only in stories about computers and for stock market program trading. Otherwise progamme. In American style, program is for all uses.

pro-life

Use anti-abortion.

prone, supine

Prone, like prostrate, means lying face down. Supine is face up.

pronouns

Use neuter pronouns for countries, ships, cars, aircraft, animals, etc., e.g. Portugal and its territories, Aboard the liner when it sailed. The occasional bright story may be enhanced by the use of a feminine or masculine pronoun to personalise a machine or animal, but these should be rare exceptions.

pronunciation

When a difficult personal or place name appears on the file for the first time, radio and television subscribers by giving a guide to pronunciation. Assume familiarity with the principles guiding pronunciation of European languages like English, French, German, Italian and Spanish and need not provide guides to pronunciation of most names phonetically transcribed from another script, e.g. Arabic or Japanese. Give guidance in brackets after the name, hyphenating the syllables and capitalising the syllable stressed, e.g. General Michel Aoun (pronounced OW-oon), a rail strike in Bydgoszcz (pronounced BID-gosh).

propeller

proper names

If proper names are in English use the style and spelling as it appears on the organisation’s own nameplate and business cards, e.g. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Scottish Labour Party, U.S. Department of Defense. If proper names are translated into English use the spelling convention of that region.

prophecy, prophesy

I make a prophecy when I prophesy. The noun is prophecy, the verb is prophesy.

proscribe, prescribe

Proscribe is to prohibit, prescribe to set down as an order.

prostate, prostrate

Prostate is a gland, prostrate is lying face down.

protest

Protest against a government or protest about a policy. If it is a solemn declaration rather than an act of disapproval then protest the faith or protest his innocence. Do not write a protest when you are describing a demonstration. American style drops the adverb for the verb of disapproval, protest the policy.

protester

Not protestor. But demonstrator.

prototype

The original model. Do not qualify, as in the first prototype or an early prototype.

proven

Use proved except in two cases: in writing of oil reserves or of the Scottish legal verdict not proven (neither guilty nor not guilty).

proverbial

Best excised. If you are using or describing a proverb then there is no need to say so.

provost marshal, provost marshals

public school

In some countries this term refers to a private or fee-paying school as opposed to a state or government school. Use only when quoting someone and then explain it.

publications

No quotation marks around the title. Capitalise articles and particles in the names of English-language newspapers and magazines, e.g. The New York Times, The News of the World. The names of some non-English language newspapers begin with a word meaning the. In such cases write O Globo/Le Monde/Die Welt not the O Globo/Le Monde/Die Welt newspaper.

publicly

Not publically.

pull back, pullback

Two words for the verb, one for the noun.

pull out, pullout

Two words for the verb, one for the noun.

punctuation

• apostrophes: Use the apostrophe according to the following rules, unless to do so would lead to a word that looked or sounded very strange.

• brackets: If an entire sentence is in brackets, put the full stop (period) inside the closing bracket, e.g. ( ...reported earlier.) If a sentence has a bracketed section at the end, the full stop goes outside the closing bracket, e.g. -reported earlier). If a bracketed section in the middle of a sentence is followed by a comma, it also goes outside the bracket.

• colons: Use a colon before directly quoting a complete sentence and as a signal that you are about to list things advertised in the preceding words, e.g. ... these were: three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. Put the word following a colon in lower case unless the next word is a proper name, a direct quotation or the beginning of a sentence.

• commas: Do not over-punctuate, especially with commas. Any sentence studded with commas could probably benefit from a rewrite. Use commas as a guide to sense, to break a sentence into logically discrete parts, but do not use them to the extent that they break the sentence flow.

• dashes: Use dashes sparingly, never to set off relative clauses in a sentence. For the sake of clarity, dashes should be double (–) and hyphens single (-). Dashes are followed by lower case unless they are used to label sections of a list The study concluded: – Almost half had more exports this year than last. – In 1995, a third had less imports than in 1994. – One in five expects better terms of trade in 1996.

• hyphenation: Use the hyphen if its omission might lead to ambiguity, e.g. three year-old horses is quite different from three-year-old horses. Use caution in headlines: False jailing claim delayed or False-jailing claim delayed?

Pune

Not Poona, India.

punter

Prefer gambler, not bettor which is unfamiliar outside the Americas. Do not use in financial stories as a synonym for investors or speculators unless it is in quotes, in which case explain.

purchase

buy is shorter and better.

push up, push-up

Two words for the verb, one word for the noun.

pygmy

Lower case if you mean small, as in pygmy hippopotamus, but upper case for members of specific human groups in Asia and Africa.

Pyrrhic victory

At great cost to the victor.

Category: The Reuters General Style Guide

This page was last modified 12:24, 10 November 2010.