-
OAPs, old age pensioners
Do not use: they are pensioners or old people; do not use old or elderly to describe someone under 75 (the editors reserve the right to increase this upper limit, as appropriate) -
obbligato
not obligato -
Obiang
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, president of Equatorial Guinea since 1979; Obiang on second mention -
obliged
not "obligated" -
O'Brian, Patrick
author of Master and Commander -
obtuse
means "mentally slow or emotionally insensitive" (Collins); often confused with abstruse (hard to understand) or obscure -
Occam's razor
philosophical principle, attributed to the 14th-century English friar William of Ockham, that broadly means prefer the simplest explanation, adopting the one that makes the fewest assumptions and "shaving away" the rest -
occupied territories
Gaza and the West Bank -
occurred
two Rs -
Oceania
a preferable term to Australasia, it is sometimes divided into Near Oceania and Remote Oceania, and comprises, according to the UN:
Australia/New Zealand
Melanesia (Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu)
Micronesia (Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau)
Polynesia (American Samoa, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Niue, Pitcairn, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Wallis and Futuna Islands) -
oceans, seas
capped up, eg Atlantic Ocean, Red Sea -
octopus, platypus
plural octopuses, platypuses, not the cod Latin octopi, platypi -
Odisha
Indian state formerly known as Orissa -
OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development at first mention -
oedipal complex
the female equivalent is electra complex -
Ofcom
Office of Communications – the broadcasting and telecommunications regulator -
Offa
eighth-century king of Mercia, best known for Offa's Dyke, a giant earthwork that separated the kingdom from Powys -
Offa
Office for Fair Access (to higher education) -
offbeat, offhand, offside
-
Office for National Statistics
ONS on second mention -
Office of Fair Trading
OFT on second mention -
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
replaced in May 2006 by the Department for Communities and Local Government, which dropped the "Department for" a year later
See departments of state -
off-licence
-
Ofgem
regulates the gas and electricity markets in Britain -
Ofsted
Office for Standards in Education, but normally no need to spell out -
Ofwat
regulates the water and sewerage industry in England and Wales -
Oh
not O except in phrases of invocation or hymn titles, eg O God, Our Help in Ages Past -
oilfield, oilwell
-
oil painting
-
oil production platform
for production of oil -
oil rig
for exploration and drilling -
oilseed rape
-
OK
is OK; okay is not -
Old Etonian
-
old Labour
but New Labour -
old master
lowercase for paintings as well as ageing schoolteachers -
Old Testament
-
olé!
needs the accent to stop it reading like "ole" -
O-levels
GCE O-levels and CSEs were combined in 1986 to become GCSEs -
Olympic Games
or just Olympics, or the Games -
omelette
not omelet -
omertà
code of silence; note accent -
on board
rather than aboard, except in the phrase "All aboard!" -
one
one should find an alternative, preferably you (unless one is making fun of one's royal family) -
one another
if more than two; each other two only -
one in six, one in 10
etc should be treated as plural. There are good grammatical and logical reasons for this. Compare "more than one in six Japanese is 65 or older … " with "more than one in six Japanese are 65 or older … "
Grammatically, we are talking not about the noun "one" but the noun phrase "one in six", signifying a group of people. Logically, the phrase represents a proportion – just like "17%" or "one-sixth", both of which take plural verbs. "Two out of every seven" and "three out of 10" take plurals too, functioning identically.
"One in six is … " is also unnecessarily (and possibly misleadingly) specific, implying that of any six people from the group you take, exactly one will be as described. "One in six" means one-sixth on average over the whole group, and a plural verb better reflects this. We wouldn't say "Only 1% of Republican voters is able to point to Iraq on a map" just because there's a "one" in there -
one nation Tory
-
Onetel
UK telecom company, not One.Tel, which is Australian -
ongoing
jargon word that can normally be removed without making any difference to the story; if you need to, replace with continuous or continuing -
online
-
only
can be ambiguous if not placed next to the word or phrase modified: "I have only one ambition" is clearer than "I only have one ambition"; however, be sensible: do not change the song title to I Have Eyes for Only You.
Say "the only" or "one of the few" rather than "one of the only", which has found its way into the paper -
on side or onside?
The referee kept the home crowd on side by ruling the goal onside -
on to
not onto
Kingsley Amis, perhaps slightly overstating the case for this, argued: "I have found by experience that no one persistently using onto writes anything much worth reading"
See into -
Op 58, No 2
for classical music -
Opec
Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, but not necessary to spell out -
opencast mine
-
ophthalmic
-
opossum
-
opposition, the
-
or
need not be used when explaining or amplifying – rather than "the NUT, or National Union of Teachers" say "the NUT (National Union of Teachers)" or, even better, "the National Union of Teachers" at first mention and then just "the NUT" or "the union" -
orangutan
one word -
ordinance
decree -
Ordnance Survey
Britain's national mapping agency (ordnance because such work was originally undertaken by the army) -
oriented, disoriented
not orientated, disorientated -
Orkney
not "the Orkney Isles" or "the Orkneys" -
Ottakar's
bookshop taken over by Waterstones -
O2, the
(cap O, not the number 0) is the name of the former Millennium Dome -
Ötzi the Iceman
Europe's oldest natural human mummy (dated to about 3300BC), found in the Alps in 1991 -
Ouija
TM; the generic name most commonly used, though not very satisfactory, is "talking board" -
outback
(Australia) -
outed, outing
take care with these terms: if we say, for example, that a paedophile was outed, we are equating that with a gay person being outed; use exposed or revealed instead -
outgrow, outgun, outmanoeuvre
-
outpatient
St Thomas' hospital in south London boasts the following styles, all on signs within a few yards of each other: Out Patients, Out-Patients, Outpatients, and outpatients. Across London, Barts adds Out-patients and OUTPATIENTS to the eclectic mix.
In a further development, the NHS has all but eradicated the apostrophe -
outre
no accent -
outside
not "outside of" -
outward bound
outdoor adventure or adventure training are safer terms: we have been sued twice for reporting that people have died on "outward bound" courses that were nothing to do with the Outward Bound Trust -
over
not overly -
overestimate, overstate
are frequently confused with underestimate or understate -
overreact, override, overrule
and most other words with the prefix "over" do not need a hyphen -
oxen
not oxes is the plural of ox -
Oxford comma
a comma before the final "and" in lists: straightforward ones (he ate ham, eggs and chips) do not need one, but sometimes it can help the reader (he ate cereal, kippers, bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade, and tea), and sometimes it is essential:
compare
I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis, and JK Rowling
with
I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis and JK Rowling -
oxymoron
does not just vaguely mean self-contradictory; an oxymoron is a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms are used in conjunction, such as bittersweet, compassionate conservatism, "darkness visible" (Paradise Lost), "the living dead" (The Waste Land); one of Margaret Atwood's characters thought "interesting Canadian" was an oxymoron -
Özil, Mesut
