Free guides

We have a series of guides which we provide free of charge on this site. The guides are provided in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. If you cannot read PDF files on your computer, you will need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader.

You can also download Drivel Defence, a software application which inspects webpages. All the guides below will open in a new browser window.

We have updated most of our guides, and added a new category of plain English grammar guides (September 2009). We hope that you will find these new guides useful.

General guides

• How to write in plain English (PDF, 100KB)
• The A-Z of alternative words (PDF, 177KB)

Glossaries

• A to Z of financial terms (PDF, 85KB)
• A to Z of legal phrases (PDF, 191KB)
• A to Z of pension terms (PDF, 368KB)

Special subjects

• Bibliographies (PDF, 21KB)
• Design and layout (PDF, 32KB)
• Forms (PDF, 16KB)
• Letters (PDF, 18KB)
• Medical information (PDF, 171KB)
• Proofreading (PDF, 27KB)
• Reports (PDF, 188KB)
• Websites (PDF, 34KB)
• Writing business emails (Opens in a new window)
• Writing CVs (Curriculum Vitae) (PDF, 37KB)

Grammar guides

• Basic grammar - parts of speech (PDF, 23KB)
• Capital letters (PDF, 25KB)
• Punctuating bulleted lists (PDF, 27KB)
• Punctuating sentences (PDF, 39KB)
• Using apostrophes (PDF, 24KB)
• Using hyphens (PDF, 23KB)

We own the copyright to these guides. You are welcome to print out any of the guides or save them to disk for your own use. You must contact us to get our permission if you want to use any of the material in your own publications or on your website. If you wish to use the free guides internally on your company intranet, you can do this for £200.00.