Editorial style guide

These guidelines do not cover everything so you should aim at least to be consistent within your own pages. Avoid jargon - but if you use a number of terms regularly in your own pages that may not be common elsewhere, it’s a good idea to add these to form your own guidelines, which you and other content providers in your area can refer to.

Abbreviations	Wrong	Right
Use of abbreviations should be kept to a minimum. When they are used punctuation should also be kept to the minimum — see examples on the right.	eg. or e.g. ie. or i.e. etc. or e.t.c. pp. or p.p.	eg ie etc pp viz. et al.
Measurements should be treated similarly, with no full stops	m.p.h. a.m. p.m. cm. mm. min. hr.	mph am pm cm mm min hr
Geographical abbreviations follow a similar style	U.K. U.S.A. U.A.E.	UK USA UAE
Points of the compass should not be abbreviated in straight text and generally carry lower-case initials (see also Area names)	North, South, East, West N, S, E, W n, s, e, w	north south east west
Acronyms	Wrong	Right
Acronyms should be set in capitals and should have no full stops and spaces between letters. Acronyms should be avoided, where possible and where the acronym may not be familiar to the reader or confusion may arise, the name should be written in full the first time it is used followed by the acronym in brackets	B.B.C. N.A.L.G.O. D.I.Y.	BBC NALGO DIY
Addresses	Wrong	Right
Addresses should be written in full (no abbreviations) and carry the postcode. Do not use punctuation between post town/city and postcode. Do not use punctuation at the end of each line of a stacked address, but when the address appears in continuous text, use commas where the lines would normally break. Full stops should not be used in postcodes	LMU 31 Jewry Street London EC3N 2EY London Metropolitan University, 166-220 Holloway Road, London, N7 8DB.	London Metropolitan University 31 Jewry Street London EC3N 2EY London Metropolitan University 166-220 Holloway Road London N7 8DB
Area names	Wrong	Right
Area names including points of the compass should carry a capital initial	south Yorkshire the west midlands western Australia	South Yorkshire the West Midlands Western Australia
Points of the compass not used as part of an area name should not carry a capital initial	the South of Scotland	the south of Scotland
Times and dates	Wrong	Right
Dates should not be abbreviated in straight prose. Do not follow the number of the day with ‘th’, ‘st’ or ‘nd’. If including the number and name of day, separate them with a comma.	22^nd July 2002 July 22^nd 2002 22^nd July ’02 July 22 2002	22 July 2002 Monday, 22 July 2002
Times should be written respecting the provisos concerning measurements and space. Nor should numbers be written or feature O'Clock.	5 O'Clock 5 pm	5pm
Use the minimum number of digits when referring to years. When referring to an academic or financial year, use an oblique (/). When referring to a span across two calendar years use a hyphen without spacing	2001/2002 2001-02 2001 — 2002 2001/2002	2001/02 2001-02
In straight prose, write out centuries in full, and hyphenate when they are used as adjectives	19^th century 17^th-century armour	nineteenth century seventeenth-century armour
Use spaces when referring to BC or AD	200BC AD1993	200 BC AD 1993
When referring to a particular decade use, eg ‘sixties’ or ‘1960s’ (no apostrophe)	1960’s	Sixties 1960s
Department names	Wrong	Right
The names of the academic departments can be found on the departments webpage. Please use these names in full, do not use abbreviations (DASS, DASD etc) unless you are in this department and it is agreed as part of your department’s marketing strategy.Note capitalisation.	DASS Department of applied social sciences DASD Dept of Architecture & Spatial Design	Department of Applied Social Sciences Department of Architecture and Spatial Design
Full stops	Wrong	Right
Full stops should not be used after headings, subheadings, paragraph headings etc	Page heading.	Page heading
Minimise use of full stops in abbreviations. Use only for clarification or to avoid misinterpretation, eg, ‘no’ meaning ‘no’ and ‘no.’ meaning ‘number’.	e.g. e.g	eg
Hyphenation	Wrong	Right
Keep hyphenation to the minimum needed to avoid ambiguity. Distinguish between ‘a man-eating tiger’ and ‘a man eating tiger’; ‘four year-old children’ and ‘four-year-old children’. Words such as ‘makeup’ and ‘childcare’ can be run together and written without a hyphen. ‘Part-time’ and ‘full-time’ need hyphens (both as nouns and adjectives), but ‘postgraduate’ and ‘undergraduate’ do not.	Part time Full time student Post-graduate Under-graduate student	Part-time Full-time student Full- and part-time students Postgraduate Undergraduate student
Italics	Wrong	Right
Italicise Latin names, foreign words, ship names and titles of periodicals, works of art, films, plays, newspapers and books in preference to using quotation marks	‘The Times’ War and Peace	The Times War and Peace
Use italics (not underlines) to emphasise occasional words in text	Do not run.	Do not run.
Numbers	Wrong	Right
Numbers up to nine should normally be spelled out in full, ie there are eight students, but print ‘9 to 100’, not ‘nine to 100’. However, figures should be used for statistics, money, weight, measurements and ages	There are 29 schools, 1 college and 9 universities.	There are 29 schools, one college and 9 universities. You will receive either £75.50 or £92. The child is 6 years old.
‘Per cent’ should be written as two words in full except in diagrams and tables	90%	90 per cent
In non-scientific text four figure numbers should carry a comma	There were 4285 students.	There were 4,285 students.
Million should be written in full	15m	15 million
Decimal points should be preceded by a digit	.345	0.345
For currency, use either £ or p, but not both	£3.50p	£3.50 56p
Spaces should normally appear between figures and abbreviated measurements	5mm 10cm 3fl oz	5 mm 10 cm 3 fl oz
Do not use spaces for %, temperatures or times	6 % 30° F 50° C 9 am	6% 30°F 50°C 9am
Qualifications	Wrong	Right
Titles and qualifications should not carry full stops or spaces within them. Where qualifications appear after a name, they should be separated by a space but no comma.	B.A. BSc. Ph.D Pg Cert. Pg Dip.	BA BSc PhD PgCert PgDip Mr Ms Prof Esq Ltd BSc(Hons) FRICS
As a noun use ‘A level’ (lower-case ‘l’ and no hyphen), but as an adjective use ‘A-level’ (with a hyphen).		A level A-level courses
Quotation marks	Wrong	Right
Use the correct open/closed inverted commas/quotation marks. Use single inverted commas in preference to doubles, but use doubles when one quotation appears within another (see Italics)	"quotation" He said: "We are doing all we can to make her say ‘yes’ to her mother."	‘quotation’ He said: ‘We are doing all we can to make her say "yes" to her mother.’
Specific points	Wrong	Right
The abbreviation LMU is not allowed. The name of the University should be used in full at all times	LMU	London Metropolitan University
When referring to the University in body text without using the full name, the word ‘university’ should carry an initial capital, but when referring to universities in general use lower case.	the university	the University
Note use of capitals and hyphen for the title ‘Vice-Chancellor’	Vice chancellor Vice-chancellor	Vice-Chancellor
Do not use hyphens in telephone numbers. Use brackets only for clarification of alternative digits in international dialling codes	020-7133 2789 (020) 7133 2789	020 7133 2789 +44 (0)20 7133 2789
Keep email or web address hyperlinks as a single entity wherever possible.If it’s unavoidable to break them across rows, break after the forward slash and never insert hyphenation to reflect a break as the hyperlink will misfunction	www.londonmet.ac.uk/interation -al	www.londonmet.ac.uk/international
Do not include ‘http://’ in web addresses unless the address doesn’t begin with www in which case ‘http://’ must be prefixed	thc.londonmet.ac.uk/	http://thc.londonmet.ac.uk/
Express ‘email’ as one word (no hyphen), using upper case ‘E" only when at the start of a sentence. Email can be used as both a verb and noun	E-mail e-mail	Email email
Express ‘online’ as one word	on-line	online
Express ‘website’ as one word with lower-case initial.	web site Web site web-site	website
Do not underline words. Use italics to differentiate Latin names, foreign words, ship names and titles of periodicals, works of art, films, plays, newspapers and books. Italicise ‘the’ only if it is part of the name/title	HMS Hercules	HMS Hercules
Avoid the use of fully capitalised headings/text — capitals are harder to read and impede comprehension. Use bold or italic to emphasise text and/or increase the size of the heading	HARD-TO-READ HEADING THIS TEXT IS HARD TO READ AND THE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS IMPEDES COMPREHENSION	Easy-to-read heading This text is much easier to read as readers recognise the words more easily by their shapes
Abbreviations ‘ie’ and ‘eg’ do not carry punctuation but are preceded with a comma and space	The book is long i.e. over 3000 pages.The book is long ie. over 3000 pages.	The book is long, ie over 3000 pages.