Colin Inman, the author of the first FT Style Guide, has died at the age of 87.
Roger Blitz of The Financial Times writes, “As author of the first FT Style Guide, the newspaper’s in-house bible, Inman set the template for grammar in every article: how journalists should use words and phrases, abbreviations, proper names, punctuation, idioms, financial terms, and how to spell certain names and places.
“The 230-page guide is a glossary of hundreds of entries. For example, under the entry for ‘fewer’, the guide says: ‘Refers to countable nouns: fewer books, fewer children. Less refers to uncountable nouns: less air, less dedication. However, we should not write fewer than two years or no fewer than 15 minutes; less than two years, no less than 15 minutes are preferable because no fewer looks overly pedantic.’
“As he observed in his introduction to the guide, ‘accurate use of language is vital in maintaining the paper’s quality’. He counsels journalists to ‘make every word count’, limit paragraphs to no more than 40 words and ‘keep abstract nouns to a minimum’, but also to be wary of imposing a uniform style on stories. ‘Good writing should be recognised — and left as it is.'”
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