Mother, I'm home

I am delighted beyond measure to have discovered The Economist style guide online. In its printed form, this has been Mr P's favourite resource for at least the last eight years or so, since he was employed to write for them, so it's particularly satisfying to finally have access to it myself. What I love about these style guides is not so much the house rules they lay down - I'm not desperate to write in Economist fashion - but the opportunity they provide for digging out what's really useful and glossing over what isn't. For instance, I've no intention of following this one:

Note that only The Economist has The italicised. Thus the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times, the Observer, the Spectator (but Le Monde, Die Welt, Die Zeit)

Really, I feel no need to give the Economist any special italicised treatment, though of course you would understand why the magazine itself would want to.

There is a lot to digest in here so I may have to come back to it another time - you have been warned (a misuse of the hyphen in itself). In the meantime, to get started, there are unnecessary words to consider.

I hold my hand up to numerous sins in this area, with a tendency to get over-excited and then rather verbose. I am particularly pleased to note it picks up on a bête-noire of mine, the phrase "to meet with", which is not only a cursed Americanism but a tautology. If nothing else it should make us think about what we're writing and judge the usefulness of every word:

In general, be concise. Try to be economical in your account or argument ("The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out"—Voltaire). Similarly, try to be economical with words. "As a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give to your style." (Sydney Smith) Raymond Mortimer put it even more crisply when commenting about Susan Sontag: "Her journalism, like a diamond, will sparkle more if it is cut."

There's some scary advice in there - such economy from The Economist - but it's something to argue about at the very least.