Spelling

Use prefixes without hyphens except as follows:

• Except for cooperate and coordinate, use hyphens if the prefix ends in a vowel and the word that follows begins with the same vowel, e.g. re-establish.
• Use a hyphen if the word that follows a prefix is capped, e.g. trans-Atlantic, anti-Semitic

Note the following: mujahedin (Moslem resistance fighters), Taliban (not "Taleban"), Hamas (not "Hammas") for the Palestinian extremist organization (see also Arab Institutions), CTK (not "Ceteka") for the Czech news agency, Renamo (not "ReNaMo") for the Mozambican party, Scud (not "SCUD") for the R-17 missile. Afghan (national) but afghani (currency).

In copy, this news agency is to be referred to as Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, (i.e. all initials capped except for dpa, with a hyphen between Presse and Agentur, Presse not "Press", no comma before the dpa). See the Leads page for an example of this.

Use the vernacular names for places in Poland: e.g., Torun (not "Thorn"), Gdansk (not "Danzig"), Poznan (not "Posen"), Wroclaw (not "Breslau"), Bydgoszcz (not "Bromberg"). See the full list of English forms of Eastern European Place Names, guidance on river names and some links to online databases of place names.

Names for Korea, Vietnam and Singapore are spelled without hyphens ... President Kim Dae Jung, Ho Chi Minh, Lee Kuan Yew. Some Indonesians have only one name: former president Suharto. See also the List of Asian Name Forms.

For other names, consult The Europa World Year Book or The Times Atlas of the World.

Remember, though, that some words must end in "-ise", whichever spelling convention is being followed. These include:

Note that words with the ending "-lyse", such as analyse and paralyse, should not be spelt "-lyze" in British English, even though they are commonly spelt thus in American English.

Foreign letters (with accents and other diacritical marks), including Turkish and Scandinavian ones, convert to a single standard English letter. Only the three German umlaut letters and es-zett convert to two: ae, oe, ue and ss. See the expanded note with examples in Typography. When rendering Russian names into English from German sources, use the scheme set on the Style Guide's Transcription page or the examples collected on the Russian surnames page.