UK Edition
Government bans Latin abbreviations on its websites to avoid confusion
The government is to ban all Latin abbreviations on all its websites to avoid confusing non-English speakers, it has been announced.
Phrases such as etc, ie, and eg will be phased out from all GOV.UK sites because foreign speakers find them “difficult to read”.
A spokesman added the phrases could even confuse English speakers who were "under stress or in a hurry". Campaigners said the decision was to give up Latin was “short-sighted” because they have been part of common parlance for hundreds of years.
But the Government Digital Service (GDS) said the move was designed to promote “plain English”.
GOV.UK includes the websites of all government departments as well as several other agencies and public bodies. The website receives millions of hits every month.
Writing on the blog Inside GOV.UK, GDS content manager Persis Howe explained: "We promote the use of plain English on GOV.UK. We advocate simple, clear language. Terms like eg, ie and etc, while common, make reading difficult for some.
"Anyone who didn’t grow up speaking English may not be familiar with them. Even those with high literacy levels can be thrown if they are reading under stress or are in a hurry - like a lot of people are on the web."
She added that programs that read the content for visually impaired people also mispronounced Latin abbreviations.
She said: "We’ve found that several programs that read webpages for those with visual impairment read ‘e.g’ incorrectly, so we’re updating the style guide.
“There are better, clearer ways of introducing examples for all users.”
Roger Wemyss Brooks of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, which teaches Latin language courses, condemned the move.
He said: “Latin is part of our cultural heritage and it’s part of the basis of English. It unites us with other cultures throughout Europe and the world who have a connection with the Romance languages.
"It’s a very concise language which is used specifically for its precision and I think it’s short sighted to be giving it up.”