XYZ

Xerox

A trademark, never a verb. Use photocopy.

yard

To convert to metres multiply by 9 and divide by 10, precisely multiply by 0.914

yardstick

year ends

Financial, fiscal (tax), company and crop years rarely coincide with calendar years so explain clearly in the text which year is referred to, e.g. The budget target deficit for the financial year ended March 2002 was... or Cocoa production rose 14 percent to 100,000 tonnes in the year ended September 2001. Take care with crop-year dates as the old crop can be harvested and the new crop planted in the same year. To refer to the 2002 crop can be dangerously ambiguous. Also, Commodity producers sometimes also have marketing years for produce that differ from the crop year. In such cases spell out the year referred to and when each starts and ends. Organisations such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the International Coffee Organisation produce statistics, based on different years.

yoke, yolk

Yoke for oxen and yolk of an egg.

youth

Boys and girls aged 13 to 18.

zero, zeros

Zuider Zee

Not Zuyder Zee, Netherlands.

ZULU

A term used by Western military forces to mean GMT.

Category: The Reuters General Style Guide