Ian Brunskill - The Times Style Guide - A guide to English usage

Blu-Tackproprietary so must cap

boatis generally used of a small vessel, including fishing boats up to the size of a trawler; a ship is a large seagoing vessel big enough to carry smaller boats. In the Royal Navy, submarines are called boats. All take the pronoun she and the possessive her

Boat Racecaps for the annual Oxford-Cambridge race on the Thames

Bobcatshould not be used in a generic sense as a description of skid-steer loaders or other equipment

Bochederogatory slang for Germans; Bosch , the household appliance or power tools manufacturer

bodylineone word, no quotes for the cricketing tactic; use lower case in general usage such as bodyline bowling but cap for the Bodyline tour (of the 1932–33 Ashes)

boffinavoid as a synonym of scientist , except ironically or in direct quotes

Bogart, Humphreybut (Sir) Dirk Bogarde

bogey(golf, plural bogeys ); bogie (wheels); bogy (ghost); but note bogeyman

Bohemia, Bohemiancap only in specific reference to the geographical entity but lower case bohemia, bohemian metaphorically

Bolshevik

bolshielower case for rebellious; cap in (derogatory) political context

bolt holetwo words

bombs car bomb, fire bomb, nail bomb, petrol bomb, suicide bomb etc; but hyphenate verbal or adjectival use, eg to fire-bomb , a nail-bomb attack

bombshellin metaphorical use, as in “drop a bombshell”, is a cliché. Avoid

bonanzaanother greatly overworked word that should be avoided wherever possible

Bonfire Nightinitial caps; see Guy Fawkes Night

Book of Common Prayer, theroman

bookshop

boomoverused word

Boötespronunciation requires a diaeresis on the name of the constellation, should you ever have to refer to it

borderlower case, even the one between England and Scotland (north of the border); cap the (Scottish) Borders; remember that the border is not marked by Hadrian’s Wall

bored with/bynot of

-bornnormally prefer to use nationality, rather than country, eg English-born, but there are exceptions, eg Singapore-born; for counties, cities etc, normally use the noun, eg London-born, Manchester-born, Dorset-born, but again there are exceptions, eg Cornish-born

born/bornethe second is what you want except when writing about birth. Something to be borne in mind; a theory borne out by the facts; an initiative (or a tree) that has borne fruit; shame borne in silence etc

borstalsno longer exist; they are now young offender institutions

bortschRussian or Polish soup

Bosphorusa strait, not a river

Botoxtrade name, so must cap

bow tieno hyphen

box officeas noun, two words; but hyphenate when adjectival (eg box-office success)

box sets boxed sets may be more logical for the collections of CDs, DVDs etc, but no one says it; we must concede defeat

boy bandtwo words. Note also girl band

boyfriend, girlfriend

boy’s ownas generic phrase, lower case and roman; but the old publication was called The Boy’s Own Paper

braillelower case

brainchildtry to avoid this cliché

branchin police context, eg special branch, anti-terrorist branch, lower case unless there is any risk of confusion

breakthroughavoid describing every bit of medical and scientific progress as a breakthrough — “a significant development or discovery, especially in science”. It isn’t

breakout, breakdown(as noun, each one word); but to break out etc, and break-up (hyphenate as noun)

breastfeed(ing)no longer use hyphen

breaststrokeno longer hyphenate the swimming discipline

Breathalyser(cap, proprietary), but to breathalyse (lower case, generic)

breathtakingno hyphen

breech birth

brevityVerbosity clouds meaning. Brevity is a virtue, in phrases, sentences, whole passages of writing. Even in words. Use short rather than long ones if you can: “be” rather than “exist”, “go” rather than “proceed”, “know” rather than “comprehend”, “do” rather than “perform”, “execute” or “carry out”. Whenever you write a long word, consider a short one instead. When you write a long sentence or paragraph, ask yourself why

BricBrazil, Russia, India and China collectively, all relatively fast-growing developing economies; thus, eg the Bric countries. (The financial wizards who coined Bric are also responsible for Mint: Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. Mercifully, perhaps, this has yet to gain quite the same currency in the wider world; if it has to be used at all, it should be explained)

bridgescap as in Severn Bridge, London Bridge, Southwark Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge

Britainis now widely used as another name for the United Kingdom or Great Britain, and pragmatically we accept this usage. Strictly, Great Britain = England, Wales, Scotland and islands governed from the mainland (ie not Isle of Man or Channel Islands); United Kingdom = Great Britain and Northern Ireland; British Isles = United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man and Channel Islands

British Overseas Territoryeg Anguilla; Bermuda; British Antarctic Territory; British Indian Ocean Territory; British Virgin Islands; Cayman Islands; Falkland Islands; Gibraltar; Montserrat; Pitcairn Islands; South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha; Turks & Caicos Islands. Note that they may have a premier rather than a prime minister, so always check

Britpopnot Brit Pop; and Britart

Broadmoorinmates are patients, not prisoners, as it is a hospital

broadsheetretains some currency as a way to describe the serious British press, even though most British newspapers are now of a smaller format (tabloid, or compact; Berliner etc). Quality, serious or (at a pinch) upmarket may be used as appropriate synonyms

Brobdingnagiancap. Huge, immense, unnaturally large; from Brobdingnag, the imagined land of giants in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels ; use sparingly, for colour and rhetorical force, eg “a politician with a truly Brobdingnagian ego”

brownfield, greenfieldas in building sites. But note green belt (two words)

brownie pointslower case

Brummie(not Brummy), Geordie, Scouse etc, people and dialect, all capped

Brylcreem

BSEbovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow (no need for quotes) disease . See mad cow disease

buddleiathus. Buddleja (cap, note j) is the scientific spelling, after Linnaeus, for the genus of shrubs known commonly as butterfly bush, but despite that, Collins and Oxford dictionaries give buddleia (lower case, note i) as the common spelling, and that is what we must use. See wisteria(what is it with botanists?)