dadaism, dadaist

Dáil Éireann
lower house of parliament in the Irish Republic, normally just the Dáil

DaimlerChrysler

Dalí, Salvador
(1904-89) Spanish surrealist

dancefloor

dangling participles
Avoid constructions such as "having died, they buried him"; the pitfalls are nicely highlighted in Mark Lawson's novel Going Out Live, in which a TV critic writes: "Dreary, repetitive and well past the sell-by date, I switched off the new series of Fleming Faces."

A particularly exotic example of this that somehow found its way into the Guardian: "Though long-legged and possessing a lovely smile, gentleman journalists aren't looking up her skirt and wouldn't even if she weren't gay ..."

dark ages

dashes
(InCopy) - alt-shift-hyphen in copy; alt-hyphen in headlines

Beware of sentences - such as this one - that dash about all over the place - commas (or even, very occasionally, brackets) are often better; semi-colons also have their uses

data
takes a singular verb (like agenda); though strictly a plural, no one ever uses "agendum" or "datum"

dates
Our style is July 21 2008 (no commas), and has been since the first issue of the Manchester Guardian on May 5 1821 (it is occasionally alleged that putting month before date in this way is an "Americanisation").

In the 21st century but 21st-century boy; fourth century BC; AD2007, 2500BC, 10,000BC; for decades use figures: the swinging 60s or 1960s

daughter of, son of
Think twice before using these terms. Often only the person's father is described and such descriptions can smack of snobbery as well as sexism. Simplistic labels may also be misleading: we published a clarification after calling Captain James Cook the son of a Scottish farm labourer. True enough, but Cook's mother was a Yorkshire woman and he is a famous son of Yorkshire

Davison, Emily
suffragette who died four days after stepping in front of George V's horse at the 1913 Derby

daybreak, daydream

Day-Glo
TM

daylong
but month-long, year-long

daytime
but night-time

day trip
two words, as in the Beatles' Day Tripper

D-day

deaf ears
Avoid or say "closed ears": the phrase is not just a rather lazy cliche but offensive to many deaf people; for the same reason, do not use "dialogue of the deaf": most deaf people are perfectly capable of conducing a dialogue using BSL and other sign languages

deathbed
but death row

debacle
no accents; like farce and fiasco, to be used sparingly in news reporting

debatable

decades
1950s, etc; use figures if you abbreviate: roaring 20s, swinging 60s, a woman in her 70s, the first reader's email of the 00s

decimate
nowadays used to mean destroy
see Latin

declarations
lc, eg Lacken declaration on the future of Europe

deep south
of the US

defensible

defuse
render harmless; diffuse spread about

Degas, Edgar
(1834-1917) French artist; no accents

de Gaulle, Charles
(1890-1970) French military leader and statesman; De Gaulle on second mention

degrees
like this: my sons all got firsts, but I only got a second - although it was a 2:1 - and I did go on to a master's

deja vu
no accents

Deloitte
not Deloittes, Deloitte Consulting, or Deloitte & Touche

delphic

delusion or illusion?
"That the sun moves round the Earth was once a delusion, and is still an illusion" (Fowler)

DeMille, Cecil B
(1881-1959) Hollywood producer and director

Democratic party
not "Democrat party", despite attempts by some Republicans to call it this

Dench, Dame Judi
not Judy

denier
one who denies, as in "Holocaust denier"; also a unit of weight for fibre, eg 10-denier tights

De Niro, Robert

denouement
no accent

departments of state
UK government ministries (but not ministers) take initial caps as follows:
Cabinet Office (but the cabinet)
Home Office
Foreign Office (abbreviate to FCO - for Foreign and Commonwealth Office - after first mention)
Treasury
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR)
Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)
Communities and Local Government
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (Dius)
Department for International Development (DfID)
Department for Transport (DfT)
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Department of Health (DH)
Ministry of Defence (MoD)
Ministry of Justice (MoJ)
Office of the Leader of the House of Commons
Northern Ireland Office
Scotland Office (not Scottish Office)
Wales Office (not Welsh Office)

Use the abbreviations in brackets sparingly, especially the clumsy ones: culture and sport department, innovation and skills department, and so on are fine, or just the department, the ministry, etc.

The rebranded Communities and Local Government is tricky, having decided to drop "Department" from its name: if we say, for example, "Communities and Local Government yesterday announced a shakeup in council tax" it makes us sound equally silly, so best to call it the communities and local government department (lc) or just communities department or local government department, depending on the story.

Departments and ministries of other countries are lc, eg US state department, Iraqi foreign ministry

dependant
noun

dependent
adjective

dependence

depositary
person

depository
place

deprecate
express disapproval; depreciate reduce in value

the Depression

de rigueur
the two Us are de rigueur

derring-do
not daring-do

Derry, Co Derry
not Londonderry

descendants
come after ancestors; you wouldn't think the Guardian would get this simple thing wrong as often as we do

deselect

desiccated
not dessicated

despoil, despoliation

dessert
pudding, but just deserts

detente

Dettol
TM

developing countries
Use this term in preference to third world

devil, the

DeVito, Danny

Diabetes UK
formerly known as the British Diabetic Association

Diaghilev, Sergei
(1872-1929) Russian impresario; founder of the Ballets Russes

dialects
cockney, estuary English, geordie, scouse

diaspora

DiCaprio, Leonardo

Dictaphone
TM

diehard
but the film series is Die Hard

dietitian
must be trained and qualified in dietetics, and registered with the Health Professionals Council; not the same as a nutritionist, a less precise term (although some nutritionists are also registered dietitians)

different from
or to, not different than

digital rights management
can be abbreviated to DRM after first mention

dignitary, dignitaries

dilapidated
not delapidated

dilettante

dim sum

Dinky Toys
TM

diphtheria

diplomatic service

director general

direct speech
People we write about are allowed to speak in their own, not necessarily the Guardian's, style, but be sensitive: do not, for example, expose someone to ridicule for dialect or grammatical errors. Do not attempt facetious phonetic renditions such as "oop north", "fooking" and "booger" when interviewing someone from the north, or "dahn sarf" when writing about south London

disabled people
not "the disabled"

Use positive language about disability, avoiding outdated terms that stereotype or stigmatise. Terms to avoid, with acceptable alternatives in brackets, include victim of, suffering from, afflicted by, crippled by (prefer person who has, person with); wheelchair-bound, in a wheelchair (uses a wheelchair); invalid (disabled person); mentally handicapped, backward, retarded, slow (person with learning difficulties); the disabled, the handicapped, the blind, the deaf (disabled people, blind people, deaf people); deaf and dumb (deaf and speech-impaired, hearing and speech-impaired)

disc
rotating optical disc: CD, CD-Rom, DVD, etc; disk rotating magnetic disc: disk drive, floppy disk

discernible
not discernable

discharged
a patient is discharged, not released, from hospital; a prisoner is released from jail

discolour
but discoloration

discomfit
thwart, readily confused with discomfort, make uncomfortable

discreet
circumspect

discrete
separate

discretionary hyphens
command-hyphen
Use a dishy to fix an awkward break, or place one in front of a word to turn the whole word into the next line. Soft returns (shift-return) are no substitute: if a later change shortens the paragraph ahead of a soft return, a short line is usually the result - and these can be extremely ugly in justified copy. (The soft return is useful in tabulation and other complex bits of setting but it should almost never be used in ordinary running text)

disfranchise
not disenfranchise

disinterested
means free from bias, objective (the negative form of interested as in "interested party"); often used incorrectly instead of uninterested, not taking an interest (the negative form of interested as in "interested in football")

Disneyland
California

Disneyland Paris
formerly Euro Disney

Disney World
Florida

dispatch, dispatch box
(Commons), dispatched; not despatch, despatched

Disprin
TM; use aspirin

dissociate, dissociation
not disassociate, disassociation

distributor
not distributer

ditching
not a synonym for crashing: if you ditch a helicopter, you make a controlled landing on the water after an emergency - we have got this wrong several times

divorcee
a divorced person, male or female

D notices
issued by the defence, press and broadcasting advisory committee, "suggesting" that the media do not publish sensitive information

Dr
Use at second mention for medical and scientific doctors and doctors of divinity, not, for example, a politician who happens to have a PhD in history

Doctor Who
the title of the series; the character's name is the Doctor, and it should never be abbreviated to Dr Who

docudrama, docusoap

dogs
lc, alsatian, doberman, rottweiler, yorkshire terrier; but Irish setter, old English sheepdog

D'oh!
as Homer Simpson would say (note the apostrophe)

Dolby
TM

doll's house

dome, the
Millennium Dome at first mention, thereafter the dome; now the O2

Domesday Book
but doomsday scenario

Dominica
lies in the Windward Islands, south-west of the Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic
shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti

doner
kebab
see kebabs

donor
gives money

doppelganger
no accent

Doran, Seán
former artistic director of English National Opera

dos and don'ts

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich
(1821-81) Russian novelist

Dostum, General Abdul Rashid
Afghan minister and warlord who led the Uzbek faction of the Northern Alliance

dotcom

double, the
as in Sheffield United may win the double (FA Cup and Premiership)

dover sole

Dow Jones industrial average

downmarket, upmarket

downplay
play down is preferable

Down's syndrome
Say (if relevant) a baby with Down's syndrome, not "a Down's syndrome baby" - we wouldn't say "a cerebral palsy baby". The diagnosis is not the person

down under
Don't use to refer to Australia or New Zealand

dozen
precisely, not approximately, 12

Dr
Use at first mention for medical and scientific doctors and doctors of divinity (not, for example, a politician who happens to have a PhD in history); thereafter, just use surname except in leading articles

draconian

draftsman
of document

draughtsman
of drawing

dreamed
not dreamt

dressing room
two words

drier, dryer
this shirt will only get drier after an hour in the tumble dryer (while I use the hairdryer)

drink
past tense drank, past participle drunk: he drinks, he drank, he has sunk

drink-driver, drink-driving, drunk-driving

driving licence
not driver's licence

drone
honeybee whose function is to mate with the queen, and by extension therefore someone who lives off the work of others (the worker bees); however, it seems to be used increasingly to mean something like an obedient, unimaginative worker ("office drone")

drug companies, drug dealer, drug raid, drug squad, drug tsar
not drugs raid, etc

drug enforcement administration
(US, not agency); DEA at second mention

drug use
a more accurate and less judgmental term than "drug abuse" or "misuse" (often all three terms have been scattered randomly through the same reports)

druid

drum'n'bass

drunkenness

DSG International
formerly Dixons; owns Currys and PC World (Dixons should now only be seen on the internet)

dub
Avoid such tabloidese as "he has been dubbed the nation's leading expert on style" (even if true)

duct tape
not duck tape

due to
Traditionalists argue that rent may be due to the landlord, but unless it is the complement of the verb "to be", "due to" should otherwise be replaced by "because of"; thus:
"The train was late due to leaves on the line" is wrong;
"The train was late because of leaves on the line" is correct;
"The train's late arrival was due to leaves on the line" is also correct.

A rough and ready test is that "due to" is fine if it can be replaced by "caused by", but not when it can be replaced by "because of".

This distinction, once routinely taught in primary schools but now assailed on all sides, especially by train and tube announcers, is being lost

dugout

Duke of Westminster
or wherever, first mention; thereafter the duke

Duke of York
first mention; thereafter Prince Andrew or the prince

dumb
Do not use when you mean speech-impaired

du Pré, Jacqueline
(1945-87) English cellist, Du Pré at second mention

Dupré, Marcel
(1886-1971) French organist and composer

dutch courage

DVD
stands for digital versatile disc

DVLA
Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency; not normally necessary to spell out

dwarves
plural of dwarf (not dwarfs); but the verb is to dwarf, eg 1 Canada Square dwarfs the surrounding buildings

dyke
not dike

dynamo
plural dynamos

Dynamo
football teams from the former Soviet Union are Dynamo; teams from Romania are Dinamo

dyslexia
Write "Paul has dyslexia" rather than labelling him "a dyslexic" or saying he "suffers from" dyslexia