Guardian and Observer style guide: G
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
G7
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States
Gaddafi, Muammar
former Libyan leader rather than president (he held no government office and was generally known in Libya as “leader of the revolution”); Gaddafi on second mention
Gaelic
when referring to the Scottish language, but use Irish and Welsh for the native languages of those countries
gaff
hook or spar, also slang for house; blow the gaff give away a secret
gaffe
blunder
gaffer tape
Galápagos
Gallagher
Oasis brothers (Noel and Liam)
Gallaher
cigarette company
gallery
takes an initial cap when it forms part of the name of the gallery, eg National Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, but lowercase otherwise, eg the White Cube gallery
Gambia, the
not Gambia
gambit
an opening strategy that involves some sacrifice or concession; so to talk of an opening gambit is tautologous - an opening ploy might be better
Game Boy
gamechanger, gamechanging
gameplan, gameshow
Gandhi
not Ghandi
gang-rape
García Lorca, Federico
(1898-1936) Spanish writer
García Márquez, Gabriel
Colombian novelist
Garda Síochána
Irish police force; garda (plural gardaí) police officer
garotte
not garrotte or garrote
garryowen
up-and-under (rugby union)
Garryowen
Irish rugby club that gave the garryowen its name
gases
plural of gas, but the verb is gasses
gatecrash
Gategate
The hapless quintet who broke into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington DC in 1972 can have had no idea of the forces they were unleashing – forces that in due course led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and began a proud tradition of inane journalism that shows no sign of diminishing 40 years later.
Examples range from the mildly droll – Gatecrashergate, Henry Gatesgate (also known as Stupidgate) – to the utterly feeble (Sexy Photo Gate).
Among numerous other instances are Bertiegate, Betsygate, Billygate, Camillagate (not to be confused with Dianagate, also known as Squidgygate), Cheriegate, Closetgate, Contragate, Fajitagate, Flakegate, at least two Grannygates, Hobnobgate, Irangate, Iraqgate, Irisgate (it is compulsory for stories about this to be headlined “And here’s to you, Mrs Robinson... “), Katrinagate, Koreagate, Monicagate, at least two cases of Nannygate, Nipplegate, Partygate, Smeargate, various Strippergates, Toiletgate, three different outbreaks of Troopergate, and Whitewatergate.
Sporting gates include Beachballgate, Bloodgate, Buttongate, Chicanegate, Crashgate, Handgate/Henrygate/Thierrygate, Liargate, Pizzagate, Tevezgate and, of course, Tigergate.
Occasionally, as with Climategate or Plebgate, such an ephithet may be useful as a way to pull together a lot of material on the same subject, but most gates are lazy and more likely to put readers off than engage them
Gatt
general agreement on tariffs and trade
Gaudí, Antoni
(1852-1926) Catalan architect
Gauguin, Paul
(1848-1903) French painter
gay marriage
equal marriage, same-sex marriage, or simply marriage are preferable
gay village
Gaza City
not Gaza city
Gaza Strip
not Gaza strip. Do not call Gaza an enclave; it is better to call it a territory. Don’t call Palestinians in Gaza “Gazans”. Some Gaza placenames: Beit Hanoun (not Hanun), Beit Lahiya (not Lahia), Deir al-Balah, Gaza City, Jabaliya (not Jabalia), Khan Younis
Gb
gigabits; GB gigabytes
GCSE grades
for grades in England use figures: grade 9, grade 1 etc
G’day
Australian greeting
Geldof, Bob
has an honorary KBE but, as an Irish citizen, is not eligible to use the style Sir so please don’t call him “Sir Bob Geldof”
gender issues
Our use of language reflects our values, as well as changes in society. Phrases such as career girl or career woman, for example, are outdated (more women have careers than men) and patronising (there is no male equivalent).
So we use actor or comedian for women as well as men, not actress or comedienne (but waiter and waitress are acceptable – at least for the moment); firefighter, not fireman; PC, not WPC (police forces have abandoned the distinction), postal workers, not postmen, etc.
Avoid terms such as businessmen, housewives, male nurse, woman driver, woman (lady!) doctor, etc, which reinforce outdated stereotypes. If you need to use an adjective, it is female and not “woman” in such phrases as female bishops, female MPs, female president.
Do not gratuitously describe a woman as a “mother-of-three”: family details and marital status are only relevant in stories about families or marriage.
Use humankind or humanity rather than mankind, a word that, as one of our readers points out, “alienates half the population from their own history”. Similarly, avoid man hours or man years, instead say eg the equivalent of one person working for 1,000 years.
Never say “his” to cover men and women: use his or her, or a different construction; in sentences such as “a teacher who beats his/her pupils is not fit to do the job”, there is usually a way round the problem – in this case, “teachers who beat their pupils ...”
Men (rarely women – funny, that) who occasionally question our policy and accuse us of “political correctness” may care to reflect on the fact that Fowler’s used to list such “established feminine titles” as adventuress, authoress, editress, executrix, giantess, huntress, inspectress, Jewess, poetess, procuress, quakeress, songstress, tailoress, wardress; it also proposed new ones such as danceress and doctress (“everyone knows the inconvenience of being uncertain whether a doctor is a man or a woman”)
gender reassignment
Use instead of “sex change”. Gender reassignment is one of the nine protected characteristics under the 2010 Equality Act. The others are: age, disability, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation
general election
General Medical Council
(GMC), doctors’ disciplinary body
General Strike
of 1926
General Synod
but synod after first mention
generation X/Y/Z/Alpha
there is no consensus about the exact dates when generations begin and end, but broadly speaking generation X applies to people born between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s; generation Y (millennials) to those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s; generation Z to those born between the mid-1990s and early-2010s and generation Alpha for those born since. Abbreviate to gen X, gen Y, gen Z or gen Alpha
Geneva conventions
(not convention); four treaties, last revised and ratified in 1949, which with three more recently adopted protocols set out international standards for the humanitarian treatment of prisoners of war and civilians caught up in war.
The refugee convention of 1951, though signed in Geneva, is not part of the Geneva conventions. It is the key legal document in defining who is a refugee, their rights and the legal obligations of states
genocide
the UN convention approved in 1948 defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”
geoengineering
geography
distinct areas are capped up: Black Country, East Anglia, Lake District, Midlands, Peak District, Potteries, West Country, etc; but areas defined by compass points are lc: the north, the south-east, the south-west, etc
geordie
noun and adjective; refers to people from Tyneside, and their accent
geriatrics
branch of medicine dealing with elderly people, not an amusing way to describe them in an attempt to make yourself sound cool
german measles
but rubella is preferable
German nouns
capped up, as they are in German
gerund
Nothing to be frightened of. Think of it as a verb used as a noun: I like running, smoking is bad for your health, etc. You are supposed to use a possessive: I was worried by his smoking, rather than I was worried by him smoking. In practice, many people – yes, even journalists – don’t bother
ghetto
plural ghettoes
ghoti
alternative spelling of the word “fish” (gh as in trough, o as in women, ti as in nation) sometimes attributed to George Bernard Shaw, although there is no evidence that he ever said or wrote it
giant
We know that BP and Vodafone are big companies, so don’t need to be told that they are “the oil giant” or “the telecoms giant”
giantkiller, giantkilling
no hyphen
Gibraltar
overseas territory or dependency, not a British colony; also referred to as the Rock; its inhabitants are Gibraltarians
gif
stands for graphics interchange format. When CompuServe introduced it in 1987, it was pronounced with a soft G as in giraffe, although it is also widely pronounced with a hard G as in goat
gift
not a verb (unless, perhaps, directly quoting a football manager or player: “We gifted Barnsley their fifth goal”)
gigawatts
abbreviate as GW; 1GW is equal to 1bn watts. Gigawatt hours are abbreviated as GWh
gin and tonic
plural gin and tonics; abbreviation G&T, plural G&Ts
girl
female under 18
girlie
noun (only when quoting someone); girly adjective (eg girly clothes); girlish behaviour
giro
banking; gyro navigation aid
Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry
former French president, Giscard on second mention
Giuliani, Rudolph
or Rudy (not Rudi) former New York mayor
Giuseppe
regularly misspelt as Guiseppe; this is sloppy
GLA
Greater London authority, not “Greater London assembly”.
The GLA comprises the mayor, who runs it, and the London assembly, which holds the mayor to account
glamour
but glamorous
Glasgow kiss
a head-butt
glasnost
GlaxoSmithKline
GSK on second mention and in headlines
Glen Coe
Highlands valley where the MacDonalds were massacred
Glencoe
the nearby village
“global Britain”
at first mention; global Britain thereafter
“global gag rule”
Use in quotes at first mention to make clear it is not the actual name of the policy. It is called the Mexico City policy and wherever relevant this, along with a brief description of the policy, should be included in articles eg The “global gag rule”, officially called the Mexico City policy, bans US federal funding for NGOs in foreign countries that provide abortion services or abortion advocacy.
global heating
preferable to global warming
globish
a form of simple English used by non-native English speakers
GM crops, GM food
normally no need to write genetically modified in full; avoid the term “Frankenstein food”
GMT
Greenwich mean time: the ship ran aground at 8am local time (0700 GMT)
goalline, goalpost
goat’s cheese
gobbledegook
not gobbledygook
gobsmacked
is best used only if directly quoting someone
God
but he, him etc rather than He, Him
godchild, godfather, godmother, godparents, godson, goddaughter
God particle, Higgs boson, Large Hadron Collider
going forward
unappealing jargon when employed as an alternative to “in the future”
goldmine
Goldsmiths, University of London
comma but no apostrophe and no “college”
golf holes
are given as numbers: 1st, 2nd, 18th, etc
‘golliwog’
unless you are quoting someone directly, please use a less offensive term such as golly or golly doll
go native
a phrase that carries derogatory connotations about Indigenous cultures. Avoid
gong
strikes the wrong tone in reporting about awards and medals (for example we had people winning “gongs” at the RIBA architecture awards); can be effective used disparagingly (“the more gongs the prime minister doles out to donors and party hacks, the more he stands accused of cronyism”)
González Durántez, Miriam
González Durántez after first mention; do not call her Miriam Clegg or Mrs Clegg
Good Friday agreement
goodness, for goodness sake
goodnight
goody bag, goody-goody, oh goody!
but goodies
Google
takes initial cap, even when used as a verb (“I Googled myself”); named after googol, the number 1 followed by 100 zeros
Gorbachev, Mikhail
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci
“the most ridiculous crap name we could think of”, according to the band
Gormley, Antony
go-slow
noun; go slow verb
Goths
(uc) Germanic tribe that invaded the Roman empire
goths
(lc) Sisters of Mercy fans who invaded the Shepherd’s Bush Empire
government
lc in all contexts and all countries; resist the awful trend to say such things as “Lord Browne fended off accusations of being too close to government” – it should be the government.
Like other collective nouns, government can be singular or plural, depending on context: “the government is on the rocks”, but “when the government say ‘we’re all in this together’ they mean the Old Etonian Association”
government departments
See departments of state
governor general
(plural is governor generals; see attorney general)
graffiti
are plural; the singular is graffito
gram
not gramme; eg kilogram, microgram etc
grammar
“It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear”
(William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 2)
Ambrose Bierce defined grammar as “a system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man”. He had a point. Generations of schoolchildren were taught grammar as an arbitrary set of dos and don’ts laid down by people who knew, or thought they knew, best.
Nowadays, grammar might be more helpfully defined as the set of rules followed by speakers of a language: for example, why in English we say “I went out” and not “I out went”. Using correct grammar is a way to communicate effectively, not to feel superior to other people because you know what a conjunction is.
Don’t feel too downhearted if you were taught grammar badly, or not at all; as the linguist Steven Pinker says: “A preschooler’s tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual”
Grammer, Kelsey
actor fondly remembered as Dr Frasier Crane
grandad
but granddaughter
grandee
has become a cliche applied to almost any long-serving politician (though not, so far, to John Prescott); it sounds vaguely, and inappropriately, deferential
grandparent
Mention this status only when relevant: leave “battling grannies” and similar examples of ageism and sexism to the tabloids; in particular we should avoid such patronising drivel as “How this 55-year-old granny came to earn $25m a year” (on the front page of the paper) – just in case anyone still didn’t get the message, the front of G2 said: “She’s five foot two, she’s a grandmother and she earns $25m a year”.
Our policy on this matter prompted the Spectator columnist Rod Liddle to ask: “Why Has The Word ‘Grandmother’ Been Banned By The Guardian?” It hasn’t
grand prix
plural grands prix; cap up individual races, eg British Grand Prix
grand slam
(lc) a term originating in contract bridge, now used in various sports, notably golf and tennis – in both of which it refers to winning all four major tournaments in the same year – and rugby union, where it involves beating all five opponents in the Six Nations championship
grassroots
one word
gravadlax
great-aunt, great-grandfather, great-great-grandmother, etc
Great Britain
England, Wales and Scotland; if you want to include Northern Ireland, use Britain or the UK
Great Leap Forward
Mao Zedong’s ill-fated attempt to modernise Chinese agriculture and industry from 1958-61
Great Train Robbers, Great Train Robbery
of 1963
Great War
with initial caps if quoting someone, but first world war or 1914-18 war is normally preferable
Greek placenames
We normally use generally accepted anglicised names:
Andros, Cephalonia, Corfu (not Kerkira), Ithaca, Kos, Paxos, Rhodes, Santorini (not Thira), Symi (with a Y); but note Lefkada (not Lefkas), Peloponnese (not Peloponnessus), Thessaloniki (not Salonika)
Greek royalty
As the Greek monarchy was abolished in 1973 we should avoid using titles such as king, queen, crown prince and princess, even though family members continue to do so. We can, however, refer to Constantine as the former king. The family does not have an official surname so other individuals can either be referred to as “Alexia/Pavlos, the daughter/son of the former king, Constantine II” or, if necessary, the name Glücksburg can be used as this is the royal house to which they belong
green
a green activist, the green movement, but uc when referring to so-named political parties, eg the Green party
green belt
designated areas around cities subject to strict planning controls, not open countryside in general
greenfield site
one that has not been built on before, in contrast to a brownfield site
greengrocer’s apostrophe
See apostrophes
greenhouse effect
Energy from the Earth’s surface is trapped in the lower atmosphere by gases that prevent it leaking into space, a natural phenomenon that makes life possible, whose enhancement by natural or artificial means may make life impossible. Not the result of the hole in the ozone layer, whose thinning in the upper atmosphere is due to CFCs;the connection is that CFCs are also greenhouse gases
Green Investment Bank
green line
marks the boundary between Israel and the West Bank and between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Do not describe it as a border
green paper
grill
on an oven
grille
on a car or a gate
grisly
gruesome
grizzly
bear
Grossman, Loyd
TV presenter and chef with his own brand of pasta sauces, singer with Jet Bronx and the Forbidden (reunited in 2009 as the New Forbidden)
groundbreaking
groundwater, rainwater; flood water, flood waters, drinking water
Ground Zero
initial caps for the former site of the World Trade Centre in New York; lc when referring to the exact location of explosions, eg ground zero at Hiroshima in 1945
grow
flowers may grow but companies don’t “grow profits” and governments don’t “grow economies”; horrors such as “grow the business” should only be used when quoting someone
grownup, grown up
You become a grownup when you have grown up
Grub Street
G-spot
Guantánamo Bay
Guernica
but the Tree of Gernika
guerrilla
Guevara, Che
(1928-67) Argentinian-born revolutionary
Guggenheim Museum
cap M if you use the word, although it is not normally necessary. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim in New York, Frank Gehry the one in Bilbao (and another proposed for Abu Dhabi). We have sometimes confused the two
Guides
not “Girl Guides”; the organisation is Girlguiding
Guildhall
(City of London), not “the Guildhall”
Guinea
formerly French Guinea, a republic in north-west Africa that became independent in 1958; do not confuse with Equatorial Guinea, French Guiana, Guinea-Bissau, or Guyana
Guinea-Bissau
formerly Portuguese Guinea, independent since 1974, lying on the coast to the north-west of Guinea
guinea pig
guineas
Younger readers may not be aware that a guinea was worth £1 1s (£1.05) unless they buy or sell racehorses (the buyer still pays the auction house in guineas, and the auction house then gives the vendor the same number of pounds, thus netting the auctioneer their 5% commission)
Guinness World Records
formerly the Guinness Book of Records
gulag
a forced labour camp; but the Gulag for the government agency that ran the gulags in Soviet Russia
Gulf, the
not the Persian or Arabian Gulf
Gulf Stream
Gulf war
the first Gulf war is now known as the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88); 1991 was the Gulf war: 2003 was the Iraq war
gull
not “seagull”
gun battle
not gunbattle or firefight
Guns N’ Roses
may be abbreviated to GNR after first mention
Gurkha
GUS
the former Great Universal Stores split into the credit rating agency Experian and Home Retail Group in 2006
guttural
not gutteral
Guyana
formerly British Guiana, a nation in South America that gained its independence in 1966; not to be confused with French Guiana or the three African states of Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau; its inhabitants are Guyanese (noun and adjective), not Guyanan
gymnasium
plural gymnasiums
Gypsies
with an initial cap, also Irish Travellers
