The Spooks' Style Guide: FOIA'd!

The National Security Agency generates lots of reports. Though we do not get to read these communiques, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request we know the standards its authors are expected to maintain. The NSA has a style guide—a Strunk and White for spooks—which we're delighted to publish here for the first time.

Most of the document is an alphabetized compendium of ambiguous, easily-misused or otherwise troublesome words. As style guides go, it's standard fare: more interesting than the grammar tips are clarifications on obscure intelligence terms and the usage examples, which often lean toward military operations, geopolitics, killings and diplomacy.

NSA SIGINT Style Manual 2010

Download the NSA Style Guide

• PDF (Tidied)
• PDF (As released)
• TXT (Beta)

The FOIA request was filed on April 30, 2010 by Government Attic, and it took the NSA almost a year to release it.

Posted above is a version of the guide that we've cleaned up for readability's sake. The version released by the NSA was clearly printed out from a website: pages often have crude graphical headers, denuded hyperlinks and other web-cruft. There are numerous redactions throughout, including--on every page--the URL from which the document was saved or printed before release.

Please note that the text version was simply OCR'd from the cleaned-up PDF: there are many formatting errors and typos.

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civilian

deprecate, depreciate …
(U) Deprecate originally meant ‘protest against.” Today deprecate is used in the sense of “belittle” or “mildly disparage.”
(U) Depreciate originally meant “reduce in value.” Depreciate is used only as a financial term.
====
The programmer in me is sad about this.
civilian

demol ish, dest roy …
(U) Both mean “do away with something.” Purists say completely demolished and totally destroyed are redundant because
demolished and destroyed are absolutes. This is inconsistent because even purists accept partially destroyed and partially
demolished. Go ahead and use the modifiers without fear.
=====
The implication is that: if you misuse grammar, you should fear the NSA.
axlrosen

Whoa – they blanked out the entry for SPECTRE? From the Bond films?
bjacques

“Blowback” does not have an hyphen in it.
dross1260

This has to be for giggles.

“amid …

(U) If you are referring to a location separating specific objects, use between: between the skyscrapers.”
Anonymous

“According to purists, a few adjectives have no comparative or superlative modifiers. These include eternal, fatal, incessant, maximum, minimum, optimum, complete, perfect, and unique.”

“Maximum” is itself a superlative. A good grasp of grammar would suggest that it cannot have a superlative.

“Use an acronym or abbreviation when it is better known than the expansion: laser, radar, sonar, USSR, …”

“USSR” is not an acronym.
- just_my_perspective
  
  The Soviet Union (Russian: Ð¡Ð¾Ð²ÐµÑ‚ÑÐºÐ¸Ð¹ Ð¡Ð¾ÑŽÐ·)
  officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
  Russian: Ð¡Ð¾ÑŽÌÐ· Ð¡Ð¾Ð²ÐµÌÑ‚ÑÐºÐ¸Ñ… Ð¡Ð¾Ñ†Ð¸Ð°Ð»Ð¸ÑÑ‚Ð¸ÌÑ‡ÐµÑÐºÐ¸Ñ… Ð ÐµÑÐ¿ÑƒÌÐ±Ð»Ð¸Ðº, (Ð¡Ð¡Ð¡Ð )
- Gulliver
  
  “USSR” is not an acronym.
  
  *raises eyebrows*
  
  Not anymore anyway:
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussr
Jake0748

Haven’t even read it yet. I just wanted to be the first to bask in the the glory of the phrase: “Strunk & White for Spooks”.

Thanks Rob. :)

Now I’m going to bone up on my spy grammar skillz, and get smart.
amanicdroid

This should assist those curious about blanked out acronyms:

http://www.fas.org/news/reference/terms/acronym.html
Ugly Canuck

Ah yes, back during the Cold War (was it really 25 years ago? More, you say?), being stuck between the USA and the USSR led to some conflicts in our Canadian TV reception from time to time…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv1j9erks2Y
Roy Trumbull

Once upon a time I had a secret clearance and I had a “need to know”. I was less than 5 pages into this secret document when it struck me that it was all full of buzz words to polish up the shine on a project that frankly was a mess. I never made that mistake again. After that I only looked at the company confidential documents. They actually contained useful information.
I would take a guess that the NSA output is loaded with dark matter but no hard facts to modulate their sinusoidal wavering assessment with. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Nadreck

What!! They’re allowing anticipate to be used in the sense of “looking forward to”! Barbarians.
subhan

I guess we can’t blame ‘an historic’ on the spooks anymore. I’d still like to know who’se responsible for that boondoggle.
- shadowfirebird
  
  That would be us — I mean, the British. It’s still technically correct here.
  
  Although the majority of us think it sounds silly, too — probably because we’ve been listening to you yanks for so long. ;)
- kjulig
  
  If you speak one of the British accents/dialects that drops the “h”s, say “an historic.” If you’re one of the other couple hundred million English speakers, it’s “a historic.” If you host a weekday night fake news show on Comedy Central, you say “an historic,” pronounce the “h” very clearly and sound ridiculous.
  
  Simple really.
Brainspore

BRUSH SCRIPT?? The terrorists have already won.
kmoser

When interrogating a suspect, avoid the common interrogative “Who did you give the secrets to?” Instead, use the more grammatically correct “To whom did you give the secrets?”
kjulig

Finally someone who doesn’t succumb to the “an historic” silliness.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I’ll stop using ‘an historic’ the day that someone draws out leviathan with an hook.
  - Anonymous
    
    And how is “a united stand” using a before a consonant sound??
    Grrr.
    - Anonymous
      
      Anon in reply to Antinous / Moderator
      And how is “a united stand” using a before a consonant sound??
      Grrr.
      
      “United” — pronounced “yoo-nigh-ted” — starts with a vowel letter, but it starts with a consonant sound: the sound of “Y” in consonant mode. So you use “a” as in “a united front.”
      
      It’s parallel to the case in which “honorable” — pronounced “ah-ner-uh-bull” — starts with a consonant letter, but with a vowel sound, and therefore you use “an” as in “an honorable man.”
      
      – Stevo Darkly
Gulliver

This greatly reassures me. I find sentences ending in prepositions to be pure torture. And confusing affect with effect, why it’s treasonous!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj6QqCH7g0Q
- millie fink
  
  This greatly reassures me. I find sentences ending in prepositions to be pure torture.
  
  Really? I think you need to boldly go where others have been going to. Free your discourse! From, that is, the really rather random imposition of the rules of Latin grammar onto syntactical arrangements of the English word-hoard.
  
  http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ling009.html
  - Gulliver
    
    Really? I think you need to boldly go where others have been going to. Free your discourse! From, that is, the really rather random imposition of the rules of Latin grammar onto syntactical arrangements of the English word-hoard.
    
    Reminds me of this old Asimov story:
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_Slave
Gulliver

Although the majority of us think it sounds silly, too — probably because we’ve been listening to you yanks for so long. ;)

Hmmm…I think ‘an historic’ sounds slightly better than ‘a historic’, but it’s almost a toss-up…

Aw, crap, I can’t decide. Now I won’t be able to think about anything else.
Gulliver

“Had enough? What’s the target? Tell me! We can do this all night long.”

“No. No! Gurgle. Cough. Cough.”

“Mike, get another bucket for the heavy drinker here.”

“I’ll never talk, infidel!”

“I can see you’re not our ordinary guest. Mike, cancel the bucket. Our friend requires more nuanced attention. You brought this on yourself. Remember, I tried to help you. Mike, get the…dangling participles.”

“Noooooooooooooo!!! Anything but that! I’ll talk, I tell you anything you want to know. In the name of Allah, just don’t mangle the English language!”
- JustOk
  
  Hilarious!!! What’s that a parody of?
  - millie fink
    
    Not sure, but it reminds me of The Comfy Chair–
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnS49c9KZw8
    - JustOk
      
      I wasn’t expecting that.
      - millie fink
        
        Ha! NOBODY expects — okay, we know where that goes, next bit please.
    - Gulliver
      
      Not sure, but it reminds me of The Comfy Chair–
      
      Haha! Monty Python. I was probably latently channeling and old memory of that.
  - Gulliver
    
    Hilarious!!! What’s that a parody of?
    
    I was just trying to get my mind off â€˜an historicâ€™â€¦dammit!
    
    Mikeâ€™s just someone I know with a lot of, uhâ€¦character.
Anonymous

Just quickly glancing at the document I stumbled across an example of the proper usage of the word ACT:
“John Hinkley committed an act of murder by the action of shooting singer John Lennon.”
Surely?