Appendix 2

The A–Z of alternative words

Calling all writers

This guide gives hundreds of plain English alternatives to the pompous words and phrases that litter official writing. On its own the guide won’t teach you how to write in plain English. There’s more to it than just replacing ‘hard’ words with ‘easy’ words, and many of these alternatives won’t work in every situation. But it will help if you want to get rid of words like ‘notwithstanding’, ‘expeditiously’ and phrases like ‘in the majority of instances’ and ‘at this moment in time’. And using everyday words is an important first step towards clearer writing.

Copyright

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