Two-Page House Style Guide

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Two-page house style guide

‘A publisher’s house style embodies their stated preference for how copy is produced and set; this allows the efficient output of texts that are as internally consistent and error-free as possible.’ Oxford Style Manual. Ed. R M Ritter, Oxford University Press (2003), p.43.

It would be helpful if you could take note of the following when preparing your text:

Abbreviations and acronyms: WriteAbbreviations and acronyms in full at first mention, so we know what they stand for.

American usage: English (UK) rather than English (US) conventions of usage and spelling should be used. For example,- ise rather than –ize.

Ampersand (&): Use the word ‘and’ in publication titles, headings and normal text, except if: a) it is part of a company’s name; b) when writing references, in which case use the ampersand if it appears in the original work.

Bullet points: Our bullet symbol is square  and aligned left, not indented; keep points short and punchy. Begin bullet points with a capital letter, but do not end with a full stop unless the bullet points contain more than one sentence.

Dates: Write as: Tuesday 1 April 2007 or 1 April 2007 or 1 April. When abbreviating use 1.4.07, and when using periods of years express them as 2007–08 using an en rule – not a hyphen - (Shortcut = CTRL+Number pad symbol -).

Email addresses: Use lower case letters. We express email as one word (no hyphen), capitalising the initial letter at the beginning of a sentence – Email.

Internet: Capitalise ‘I’ in specific references, when you mean the International Network (we are linked to theInternet) but lower case ‘i’ in more generic references (an internet-basedresource). Use lower case for ‘worldwide web’ (worldwide as one word) and ‘website’, unless the word starts a sentence and takes an initial capital.

Italics: Use for the titles of books, newspapers, magazines, etc; titles of plays, films, TV and radio series, CDs; titles of paintings, sculptures, other works of art; individual names of ships, trains, aircraft, spacecraft, other means of transport; foreign words or phrases that are not naturalised (eg, arriviste)

Numerals: Use words for numbers from one to ten (inclusive) and figures for all numbers over ten. Figures are also used for decimal fractions and percentages. Do not start a sentence with a figure; write the number in words instead. Million and billion are spelt out as words, whether referring to people, objects or sums of money (eg, five million people, five million donations, £5 million).

Paragraphs: Denote with a single line break and do not indent the initial word.

Quotations: Please give the source of your quotations

Quotation marks: There are two types of quotation marks, or inverted commas: single (‘ ‘) and double (“ “). We follow standard British practice, enclosing quoted matter between single quotation marks. When a whole sentence is a quotation, all punctuation is placed inside the quotation marks; if the quoted matter forms only part of the sentence, it comes outside the quotation marks (The report praised the ‘tireless efforts of the dedicated and hard-working staff’.)

Quotations within quotations: Use double quotation marks within single (eg, ‘When I say “immediately”, I mean some time before April,’ said the tutor).

Spellcheckers: It is a good idea to check your documents, but be aware that spellcheckers do not spot all the errors and may even be responsible for creating some.

Subscript and Superscript: Pleaseuse these as accurately as possible, especially if your text contains formulae. Not using them can change the meaning of the text. For example 104 to 106 is not the same as 104 to 106; H20 is not the same as H20.

The University of Birmingham: We have dropped the word The from the word marque (logo) of the University and it no longer appears in our address, which should now be written: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, B15 2TT. In the general run of text, the should still be used but with a lower case t, (Welcome to the University of Birmingham). We always use an upper case initial ‘U’ when referring to our own University

Time of day: Written as figures, with a full stop to indicate the minutes and no space between the time and am or pm (9.00am, 3.45pm). We do not use the 24-hour clock.

Web addresses: These should be written in the following way: with no full stop or other punctuation marks immediately afterwards. Try not to include too many website addresses within the main body of text. Put them at the end of the copy if possible. This is a standard element of publications within the new brand.

For further help and advise please contact the Editorial Officers:

Carole Wale Joel Alexander

Editorial Officer Editorial Officer

Design and PublicationsDesign and Publications

Tel ext 42582Tel ext 46683