I

Use ‘in other words’ instead. If you want to know more, see abbreviations.

See disability.

The person who leads prayers in a mosque or a title for Muslim leaders.

These are all trademarks: only use them if you’re talking about the specific Apple product. If you’re not, use a generic term instead.

Strictly speaking, you’re better off using it as a noun, not as a verb (so you could say ‘the impact of the smash broke the door’ or ‘increasing fees had a significant impact on attendance’ but not ‘the weather might negatively impact on attendance’).

See if ‘affect’ would do the job instead or rephrase to use impact as a noun (for example, ‘the weather might negatively affect attendance’ or ‘the weather might have a negative impact on attendance’).

Both are in the dictionary, though, so don’t lose too much sleep over it.

Not immune from.

To suggest something, rather than saying it explicitly (not to be confused with infer).

When new volunteers join Scouts, they'll have an induction where we'll give them guidance and materials to make sure they've everything they need to feel welcomed, and be successful in their role.

Induction isn't new to Scouts, but the way we do it has changed. We're bringing it altogether in one national process, so everyone should've the same welcoming experience, wherever they decide to volunteer with us.

To conclude something from evidence and reasoning, rather than from an explicit statement (not to be confused with imply).

Don’t use inflammable, even though it means the same thing as flammable. If you want to say something isn’t flammable, it’s non-flammable.

Please see Support Centre.

There’s no hyphen when it’s a noun (for example, ‘we reached the inner city’) but there is one when it’s an adjective (for example, ‘the inner-city group’).

See enquiry.

Are always plural.

Instagram is capitalised. People post on Instagram (you can also use ‘instagram’ as a verb); in the past tense, they posted on Instagram (or instagrammed). The people who use Instagram are called Instagrammers.

When new volunteers join Scouts, we'll perform an Internal Check, which is a check through our internal records system. It forms part of the Personal Enquiry and used to be known as a Confidential Enquiry (CE) Check.

Head to refugees, please.

Lower case, please. 

‘Into’ shows movement or that an action is happening – you could move towards the inside of a place (‘the cat went into the carrier’), move in the direction of (‘don’t look into the light’), or move into a state or condition (‘they got stuck into the activity, but then they got into trouble’ or ‘the caterpillar turned into a butterfly’).

‘In to’ is just when the two separate words end up next to each other. You’d ‘pop in to say hello’ because the ‘to’ means ‘in order to’, it’s not part of the popping in. You also use separate words to avoid confusion – if you ‘turn the criminal in to the police’ you’re handing them over, not transforming them into a police officer. Just so you know, you also ‘log in to’ a website.

Is lower case.

See ensure or insure.

Mean unchanging or never changing. People often use them wrongly when they want to say something rarely changes.

Please keep it lowercase when you talk about ‘investing’ people. 

An Investiture is what we call the ceremony where a young person (or adult) makes their Promise and becomes a member of Scouts. Please capitalise it.

Any of these three are fine. ‘Southern Ireland’ or ‘Eire’ are not.

It isn’t a valid word, even though people use it to mean the same thing as ‘regardless’. The -less on the end of ‘regardless’ already tells us that it means without regard for, so please don’t add an unnecessary ir- too.

This is an old range of merchandise – we’re not making new things with i.Scout on.

Don’t use not -ize at the end of words as we’re in the UK. For example, recognise, organise, compromise, maximise. You may need to check any spellcheckers are set to English (UK) so they don’t ‘help’ by switching it to -ize.

Islam is the religion of Muslims. Their holy book is the Qur’an. Also see Allah and Eid.

If you can, avoid using ‘issue’ when you mean ‘problem’. Strictly speaking, a problem is a matter or situation that’s unwelcome and harmful and needs to be dealt with (or something that’s difficult to achieve), while an issue is an important topic or problem for debate or discussion. It’s OK to use ‘issue’ to avoid saying ‘problem’ too many times, though.

Step away from the italics, please – they just make text harder to read on screen and in print.

Use an apostrophe when shortening ‘it is’ or ‘it has’; don’t use an apostrophe when you’re showing something belonging to it.

For example, ‘it’s lost its bowl’ – it has lost the bowl belonging to it. For more, check out apostrophes.