Telegraph Style Book: Introduction

Last Updated: 1:58PM BST 09/06/2008

The official guide to house style for The Daily Telegraph, its supplements and magazines; The Sunday Telegraph, its supplements and magazines; and Telegraph.co.uk.

Basic principles | Grammar and syntax | Banned words | Important rules | Style A-Z

Why have a house style? We need one to provide conformity not just in our newspapers but on our website, and to ensure that we are all speaking the same language.

The style should help to imbue all our media with individuality.

To echo the introduction to a previous style book: "Its aims are accuracy, immediacy, clarity and readability. And the greatest of these is not clarity but accuracy."

There will be slight variations between news, features and sports style, and these will be dealt with later.

For the most part, though, usages will be common to the whole of both newspapers and to the Telegraph website.

This style book for the moment is a work in progress, and will be on the website for a consultation period of around three months. A pdf version is being designed and will soon be available for download here.

It will then be published as a hard copy.

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