Eg and etc banned by Government to stop confusing foreigners

LATIN abbreviations such as ‘etc’, ‘ie’, and ‘eg’ will be banned on government websites to avoid confusing non-English speakers.

Officials said they will phase out the terms from gov.uk sites because foreign speakers find them ‘difficult to read’. They even claimed that the phrases could confuse some native English speakers.

Critics branded the move ‘shortsighted’ as Latin has long been part of everyday speech. Gov.uk has millions of visits a month and is the portal for all government departments.

Persis Howe, content manager for the Government Digital Service, said: ‘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. So we’re phasing them out. We’ve changed our style guide as follows, and we’re letting content designers across government know.’

She said software which reads for visually impaired people often mispronounces Latin abbreviations – ‘eg’ can become ‘egg’, which she said was ‘jarring’ for users. ‘There are better, clearer ways of introducing examples,’ Miss Howe added.

But Roger Wemyss Brooks, of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, which teaches Latin language courses, criticised the move.

‘Latin is part of our cultural heritage and it’s part of the basis of English,’ he told the Sunday Telegraph.

‘It unites us with other cultures throughout Europe. It’s a very concise language. It’s short-sighted to be giving it up,’ he added.