Headquarters is in Washington.

Use Newfoundland in datelines after the name of a community. Specify in the text that it is in Labrador.

Lowercase in plural uses: lakes Erie and Ontario; Canandaigua and Seneca lakes.

The word last is not necessary to convey the notion of most recent when the name of a month or day is used:

Preferred: It happened Wednesday. It happened in April. Correct, but redundant: It happened last Wednesday.

But: It happened last week. It happened last month.

Wrong: Only the late senator opposed this bill. (The senator was not dead at that time.)

Use these forms to express degrees of latitude and longitude: New York City lies at 40 degrees 45 minutes north latitude and 74 degrees 0 minutes west longitude; New York City lies south of the 41st parallel north and along the 74th meridian west.

An attorney is someone legally appointed or empowered to act for another, usually, but not always, a lawyer. An attorney at law is a lawyer.

A barrister is an English lawyer who is specially trained and appears exclusively as a trial lawyer in higher courts. He is retained by a solicitor, not directly by the client. There is no equivalent term in the United States.

Counselor, when used in a legal sense, means a person who conducts a case in court, usually, but not always, a lawyer. A counselor at law is a lawyer. Counsel frequently is used collectively for a group of counselors.

A solicitor in England is a lawyer who performs legal services for the public. A solicitor appears in lower courts but does not have the right to appear in higher courts, which are reserved to barristers.

A solicitor in the United States is a lawyer employed by a governmental body. Solicitor is generally a job description, but in some agencies it is a formal title.

Solicitor general is the formal title for a chief law officer (where there is no attorney general) or for the chief assistant to the law officer (when there is an attorney general). Capitalize when used before a name.

Do not use lawyer as a formal title.

Lie indicates a state of reclining along a horizontal plane. It does not take a direct object. Its past tense is lay. Its past participle is lain. Its present participle is lying.

When lie means to make an untrue statement, the verb forms are lie, lied, lying.

Some examples:

PRESENT OR FUTURE TENSES:

Right: I will lay the book on the table. The prosecutor tried to lay the blame on him.

Wrong: He lays on the beach all day. I will lay down.

Right: He lies on the beach all day. I will lie down.

IN THE PAST TENSE:

Right: I laid the book on the table. The prosecutor has laid the blame on him.

Right: He lay on the beach all day. He has lain on the beach all day. I lay down. I have lain down.

WITH THE PRESENT PARTICIPLE:

Right: I am laying the book on the table. The prosecutor is laying the blame on him.

Right: He is lying on the beach. I am lying down.

As popularly used today, particularly abroad, leftist often applies to someone who is merely liberal or believes in a form of democratic socialism.

Ultra-leftist suggests an individual who subscribes to a communist view or one holding that liberal or socialist change cannot come within the present form of government.

The bacterium believed to be responsible is found in soil and grows in water, such as air-conditioning ducts, storage tanks and rivers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that 25,000 people a year in the United States get the disease, whose pneumo-nialike symptoms begin two-to-three days after exposure.

FIRST REFERENCE FORM: Use Rep., Reps., Sen. and Sens. as formal titles before one or more names in regular text. Spell out and capitalize these titles before one or more names in a direct quotation. Spell out and lowercase representative and senator in other uses.

Spell out other legislative titles in all uses. Capitalize formal titles such as assemblyman, assemblywoman, city councilor, delegate, etc., when they are used before a name. Lowercase in other uses.

Add U.S. or state before a title only if necessary to avoid confusion: U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum spoke with state Sen. Hugh Carter.

FIRST REFERENCE PRACTICE: The use of a title such as Rep. or Sen. in first reference is normal in most stories. It is not mandatory, however, provided an individual’s title is given later in the story.

Deletion of the title on first reference is frequently appropriate, for example, when an individual has become well known: Barry Goldwater endorsed President Ford today. The Arizona senator said he believes the president deserves another term.

SECOND REFERENCE: Do not use legislative titles before a name on second reference unless they are part of a direct quotation.

CONGRESSMAN, CONGRESSWOMAN: Rep. and U.S. Rep. are the preferred first-reference forms when a formal title is used before the name of a U.S. House member. The words congressman or congresswoman, in lowercase, may be used in subsequent references that do not use an individual’s name, just as senator is used in references to members of the Senate.

Congressman and congresswoman should appear as capitalized formal titles before a name only in direct quotation.

ORGANIZATIONAL TITLES: Capitalize titles for formal, organizational offices within a legislative body when they are used before a name: Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill, Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, Minority Leader John J. Rhodes, Democratic Whip James C. Wright, Chairman John J. Sparkman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, President Pro Tem John C. Stennis.

Retain capitalization when the state name is dropped but the reference is specifically to that state’s legislature:

Capitalize legislature in subsequent specific references and in such constructions as: the 100th Legislature, the state Legislature.

Although the word legislature is not part of the formal, proper name for the lawmaking bodies in many states, it commonly is used that way and should be treated as such in any story that does not use the formal name.

If a given context or local practice calls for the use of a formal name such as Missouri General Assembly, retain the capital letters if the name of the state can be dropped, but lowercase the word assembly if it stands alone. Lowercase legislature if a story uses it in a subsequent reference to a body identified as a general assembly.

Lowercase legislature when used generically: No legislature has approved the amendment.

Use legislature in lowercase for all plural references: The Arkansas and Colorado legislatures are considering the amendment.

In 49 states the separate bodies are a senate and a house or assembly. The Nebraska Legislature is a unicameral body.

Those entitled to a state funeral are a president, a former president, a president-elect or any other person designated by the president.

Members of Congress may lie in state, and a number have done so. The decision is either house’s to make, although the formal process normally begins with a request from the president.

Those entitled to an official funeral, but not to lie in state, are the vice president, the chief justice, Cabinet members and other government officials when designated by the president.

Lowercase and spell out in all other uses.

Use like as a preposition to compare nouns and pronouns. It requires an object: Jim blocks like a pro.

The conjunction as is the correct word to introduce clauses: Jim blocks the linebacker as he should.

No hyphen in words that have meanings of their own:

Lineage is ancestry or descent.

Lincoln was born Feb. 12. His birthday is not a federal legal holiday.

Use it to mean the whole of something, or the best and biggest portion.

Do not use it to mean majority.

It takes 1,000 milliliters to make a liter.

A liter is equal to approximately 34 fluid ounces or 1.06 liquid quarts. A liter equals .91 of a dry quart. The metric system makes no distinction between dry volume and liquid volume.

To convert to liquid quarts, multiply by 1.06 (4 liters x 1.06 equals 4.24 liquid quarts).

To convert to dry quarts, multiply by .91 (4 liters x .91 equals 3.64 dry quarts).

To convert to liquid gallons, multiply by .26 (8 liters x .26 equals 2.08 gallons).

It is published by Lloyd’s Register of Shipping Trust Corp. Ltd. in London.

Irrelevant: The injured were taken to a local hospital.

Better: The injured were taken to a hospital.

Lowercase local standing alone in plural uses: The local will vote Tuesday. He spoke to locals 2, 4 and 10.

In other uses, hyphenate only when used as a compound modifier: She traveled a long distance. She made a long-distance trip.

Confine L.A. to quoted matter.

Headquarters is in Cologne, Germany.

The three major Lutheran bodies in the United States merged on Jan. 1, 1988, into a new organization, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with about 5.3 million members in more than 11,000 congregations.

The Lutheran Church in America was the largest and most geographically spread of the three and was formed in 1962 from a merger of four bodies with Danish, Finnish, German and Swedish backgrounds. It merged with the American Lutheran Church, a mostly Midwestern group formed in 1960 through a merger of four bodies with Danish, German and Norwegian backgrounds, and the relatively small west-central Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, founded in 1847, has 2.6 million members and is a separate and distinct body.

Lutheran teachings go back to Martin Luther, a 16th-century Roman Catholic priest whose objections to elements of Roman Catholic practice began the movement known as the Protestant Reformation.

Members of the clergy are known as ministers. Pastor applies if a minister leads a congregation.

On first reference, use the Rev. before the name of a man or woman. On second reference, use only the last name of a man; use Miss, Mrs., Ms., or no title before the last name of a woman, depending on her preference.

Johnson Space Center is acceptable in all references.

In datelines: