Business Writing
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Business Writing |
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Currencies |
In business/trade/banking stories, convert first local currency figure into dollars (in parentheses) using the current rate. After that, all figures can remain in the local currency. An example:
Berlin (dpa) - Germany achieved a 3.1-billion-mark (1.5-billion-dollar) trade surplus in December, an improvement from a 2.7-billion-mark surplus in trade the month before, the Economics Ministry in Berlin said Thursday.
Spell out currencies and place after the figure: As a rule, currency names are lower case: euro, dollars, lire, guilders, marks, forints, yuan, rupees, etc.
krone, plural kroner: Danish and Norwegian currency Daily dollar conversion rates for three dozen currencies are printed in The Financial Times Tuesday to Saturday. For other rates, try the converter on http://www.oanda.com/cgi-bin/ncc or a similar website.
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Units |
A stock market index is a mere number (it does not count points or anything else) but is said to change by a certain number of points, e.g. The Nikkei closed at 18,000, down 35 points, not "closed at 18,000 points, down 35".
We give the gold price by the fine ounce (same as the "troy" ounce). Good usage of the word "compared" is to say what the change was: more, less, up, down, e.g. 1.5200, lower compared to 1.5300 not just "1.5200 compared to 1.5300". See also the Usage Page on the grammar of compared. If something changes from 40 to 44 per cent, it changes by 4 percentage points, but the actual increase is 10 per cent, e.g.: Brewers increased their exports by 33 per cent to reach 8 per cent of total production, means previous exports were just 6 per cent of output. Note also: per cent (two words separated), not percent or % (this rule is on the Spelling Page and Typography Page).
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Corporate Names |
Regardless of how a company likes to refer to itself in its corporate logo, abbreviate Co., Corp., Inc. and Ltd. (note the periods). Sweden's central bank is the Riksbank, not the "Reichsbank". Lloyd's of London (note the apostrophe) is an insurance market, not an insurance company. See Spelling for Rolls-Royce, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, etc.
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Sourcing |
As in any news story, business/economic stories require clear attribution (government, ministries, economic institutes, banks and corporations, etc.) Officials and business executives must be identified by their full names. Note that we do not capitalize the titles of businesspeople. If a story cites a source or sources, then it must be briefly explained why these are not identified (a request for anonymity, etc.) If you are using a story based on a local news report, you should see how it is sourced and report it accordingly. If the report does not attribute where the information came from, then you should point this out as well so editors/readers know how to assess the story. See also the Introduction Page on sourcing. Comparative figures must as a rule always be included in economic stories. Without knowing what the previous figure was (be it unemployment numbers and rates, stock prices, inflation rates, interest rates, trade surpluses/deficits, profits/losses, new orders growth/decline, etc.) for the period under comparison, today's figure has little meaning. If comparative figures are not available, this should be stated.
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