Spelling, Grammar and Style

A - D

A

Abbreviations

Abbreviations don't have full stops:

• eg not e.g.
• Dr not Dr.
• Prof not Prof.

Acronyms

Spell out acronyms at first mention unless they're well known (eg UK, US, EU). This includes University school or service names, eg Science, Agriculture and Engineering (SAgE). You can use the acronym to refer to the unit after this.

Only include an acronym if you're going to use it again later.

Academic unit names

Use title case for the names of Schools, Institutes and other academic units (eg School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development).

Addresses and contact details

Contact details should be listed as follows:

NU Advancement

(Address if necessary)

Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7250

Email: advancement@ncl.ac.uk

ncl.ac.uk/alumni

Always use the international format for telephone numbers, unless you're writing for a completely local audience. Break up the number with spaces. The same format should be followed for textphone numbers.

The email should be written as one word, with no hyphen, and the address should be hyperlinked.

The web address should be hyperlinked and not include www. or https:// at the beginning or / at the end.

Ampersands (&)

Only use ampersands in navigation (ie side menus) to help shorten titles. Use 'and' in page titles and all other text.

Apostrophes

Apostrophes indicate missing letters (eg you're welcome) or possession (eg Kate's bag).

Missing letters

• it’s is short for ‘it is’ or 'it has'
• we'll is short for 'we will'
• you're is short for 'you are'

Possession

Its means belonging to it.

For nouns and most names add an apostrophe plus an s:

• the student's assignment was submitted on time
• Sam's assignment was submitted on time
• King’s Hall is in the Armstrong Building
• a Master's degree in Biochemistry
• For the plural of a Master’s degree, the apostrophe follows the s: Masters’ regulations or Masters’ degrees
• For the singular the apostrophe precedes the s: a Master’s degree in Computing Science

For personal names ending in -s add an apostrophe plus an s:

• Chris's office is in the Percy Building

For organisations and place names ending in -s add just an apostrophe:

• St James' Park is the home of Newcastle United

For plural nouns add an apostrophe plus an s:

• the children's performance was well attended

For plural nouns ending in -s add just an apostrophe:

• the students' group work was excellent
• the renovation is expected to end in four weeks' time
• our suite of Masters' courses

Plural forms

Apostrophes are never used to form the plurals of nouns, for abbreviations or for dates made up of numbers:

• pizzas will be provided at the event
• the CEOs of local businesses were invited to attend
• things were different in the 1970s

Audio content

Audio files should be hosted on a dedicated delivery service, eg Soundcloud or Audioboo. They can then be embedded on your site.

B

Bold (print)

Use bold sparingly to emphasise the part of your text you wish to stand out. This could be someone’s name, a deadline date or another key piece of information.

Punctuation which follows bold text should not itself be bold (unless the whole sentence is in bold type).

Bold (web)

Use of bold online helps make content scannable and adds emphasis to keywords and phrases. Highlighting key words and phrases in bold is also useful for search engine optimisation.

Don’t make entire sentences or paragraphs bold, this defeats the point of emphasis.

Brackets

Use round brackets (), not square brackets [].

Bulleted lists

• follow on from a colon
• start each point with lower case and don’t end with punctuation

For bullet points on the web:

• begin with keywords
• keep each point short – aim for around 10 words

In print there’s no maximum number of words.

C

Capitalisation

As a general rule, do not use a capital letter unless it is absolutely required.

You should capitalise:

• school and service names (eg Newcastle University Business School)
• where a noun is specific (eg when referring to ourselves as the University)
• regions (eg the North East)
• term names (eg Spring Term)
• degree titles (eg BA Honours in History)

Don't capitalise:

• general nouns, eg all three faculties have a head of school
• higher education
• further education
• honours (eg a first class honours degree)
• the first word following a colon

Colons and semi-colons

Colons are used to introduce a quotation, example or a list. Semi-colons are used to join two independent clauses, separate main clauses joined by a conjunctive adverb or separate items in a list. Semi-colons should be used very sparingly.

Examples:

• Modules include: climate change; geology; equine studies and farm management.
• You can visit our accommodation sites throughout the day; shuttle bus services end at 3pm.
• If there’s no ambiguity with the listed items, then a comma will do (eg Judith bought the following items at the market: apples, pears, bananas, grapes and potatoes)

Contractions

Contractions help to make your text more conversational, shorter and easier to read online.

Use contractions where possible (eg we’ll, you're)

Avoid using should've, could've, would've etc as these are hard to read.

D

Dashes

Use en-dashes (not hyphens) for dates such as 1995–96 and for punctuation – as here.

Hyphen: 20th-century British history

En-dash: the date – 14 January – was agreed on

Dates

Dates have no punctuation and are presented as day month year eg Friday 28 February 2024

A date range should look like this:

• 2023 to 2024
• Friday 28 February to Monday 3 March

If space is an issue (eg in tables) use truncated months (eg Jan, Feb)

Decades and centuries should be written as:

• 1930s not 1930's
• 20th century not twentieth century

Degree classifications

• first class honours
• 2:1 honours degree not upper second class honours degree
• 2:2 honours degree not lower second class honours degree
• third class honours

Degree titles and awards

Use title case:

• BA Honours in History
• History, BA Honours
• Single Honours, Joint Honours, Master's etc

Degree subjects

Generic degree subjects should be lower case (eg chemistry degrees, politics degrees).

Degree subjects as a category should be upper case (eg Biological Sciences, English Language and Linguistics).

Student bodies within subjects should be upper case (eg Chemistry students, Computer Science students).

Documents (web)

Documents should be under 8MB. We provide a guide to optimising PDF files (PDF: 556KB) for use on the web.

E - H

E

Email addresses

Email addresses follow the form: name@ncl.ac.uk and should be an active link.

'Newcastle' is abbreviated to ncl.

Eg, etc, and ie

Don't use full stops after or between these notations.

Expandable content (web)

An expandable box is a content type that allows you to show and hide information on the page.

We recommend you use this content type at the end of a page as it acts as a visual line on screen. In user testing we observed that people don't expect content to follow expandable boxes and therefore stop scrolling.

Use this type of content sparingly; you don’t want to make your users work too hard to get to your content.

Titles for expandable boxes follow the same principles as sub-headings; up to 30 characters.

The content of expandable boxes should be shorter than the main content on your page. It should be a maximum of 100 words and follow our general guidance on writing for the web.

F

File names (web)

File names should:

• be short and meaningful eg fms-strategy.pdf not fmsv1.pdf
• be lower case
• not include version numbers or dates, meaning the document can stay in the same location each year
• be single words where possible
• use hyphens to separate words if necessary, eg university-web-strategy.pdf

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

If you write and structure your content with your user and their top task in mind, you won't need them.

Problems with FAQs:

• they're often not ‘frequently asked questions’ but 'questions we wish you'd ask'
• they duplicate information leading to conflicting content
• they create extra work to make updates in multiple places
• content is not where it is expected – FAQs are usually the last resort

Make sure you take genuine enquiries and put the answers in context on your site.

Full stops

Full stops should not be used after:

• abbreviations such as – Mr Dr Mrs BSc MLitt PhD am pm op no cf ie ed
• initials in a name

ie (id est) translates as ‘that is/in other words’ – use as a clarification.

eg (exempli gratia) translates as ‘for example’ – use when citing examples.

Neither abbreviation should be italicised in text.

G

Gender

Use gender neutral terms. Instead of he/she or his/hers use them, their or they.

H

Headings

Page titles are the first thing your reader sees. They tell the reader what the content is about. They can also be seen out of context, eg in a search results page or a contents list.

Your titles need to be clear and meaningful, so a user knows whether the information they want is on your page.

Print titles should be:

• short and concise
• be written in sentence case eg Student life not Student Life

Web titles should:

• be less than 50 characters (including spaces)
• be written in title case eg Student Life not Student life
• begin with keywords to support scan reading
• be simple and clear; jargon is difficult to understand and makes pages hard to find

Sub-headings online help to break up content on the page. They make text easier to scan and help your users pick out relevant information. They should:

• be less than 30 characters (including spaces)
• be written in sentence case, eg Student life in Newcastle
• begin with keywords to support scan reading

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are very important to reading and navigating online content.

Your hyperlink text should:

• be descriptive – that means no 'click here'
• be short phrases – don't link entire sentences
• open in the same browser tab/window – we leave it up to the user to decide whether they want to open a new tab/window
• be checked regularly to make sure they work (Silktide can be used to highlight broken links)

When linking to a document include the file type and the file size in brackets after the link, eg linking to documents (PDF: 72KB)

Hyphens

Use a hyphen to split up two of the same vowel in a word:

• co-ordination
• micro-organism
• co-operate
• re-appointed

Hyphens can also be used in compound adjectives and to join prefixes to words, for example:

• computer-aided
• custom-built
• pre-1900
• post-dated

If you use an adverb to qualify an adjective and it's not identifiable as an adverb, then it should be hyphenated.

In the phrase ‘deep blue sea’, ‘deep’ could be an adverb to say that the colour of the sea was both blue and of considerable depth.

To show that ‘deep’ is being used to qualify the adjective ‘blue’, we use a hyphen – ‘deep-blue sea’.

Adverbs that end in ‘ly’ are usually identifiable as adverbs and rarely need hyphenating, eg slowly moving train, highly educated scholar.

When listing multiple hyphenated terms: three-, four- and five-bedroom flats. 

I - L

I

Images

We have an image guide on our Digital Design Services hub for advice on selecting, resizing and saving images for web.

Please visit the section on Photography for more information on taking and using the right images.

Introduction

The first paragraph on the page should introduce the subject. It often has a distinctive style from the main body content. This introductory text should:

• be less than 50 words
• summarise the main point of the page
• use keywords to support search engine optimisation (online)

Italics

Italics are difficult to read online and their use is discouraged in print so we don't use them.

You should use 'single quotation marks' rather than italics if referring to a document or a word or phrase not commonly accepted as part of the English language.

L

Lists

Using lists online helps to:

• break up large blocks of text
• introduce white space
• make your content instantly easier to read

Bulleted lists

When writing bulleted lists make sure that you:

• follow on from a colon
• begin each point with a lowercase letter
• don't add punctuation at the end of a bullet point (or at the end of the list)
• use a minimum of three bullets but no more than six (web only)
• begin with keywords
• keep each point short, aim for up to 10 words (web only)

Numbered lists

Only use numbered lists if you are guiding a user through a series of steps or a top five: in all other cases use bullets. Here are our top tips for writing numbered lists.

1. They don't need to follow from a colon.
2. Start each step with a capital letter.
3. End each step with a full stop – each step should be a complete sentence.

M - P

M

Measurements

Use numerals for the quantity, even for numbers below 10, followed by a space if you are using the full word for the unit. If using the abbreviation, don’t put a space after the numerals and don't use full stops. For example:

• 5 kilogrammes, 100 metres or 128 megabytes
• 5kg, 100m or 128MB

Be careful to use the correct mix of upper and lower case in abbreviations:

• g, kg (gram, kilogram)
• mm, cm, m, km (millimetre, centimetre, metre, kilometre)
• MHz (megahertz)
• KB (kilobyte), MB (megabyte), GB (gigabyte)

Use metric rather than imperial measurements. For example:

• temperature: celsius rather than fahrenheit
• weight: grams and kilograms rather than pounds and ounces

Menu/navigation items (web)

Web pages should be linked from the menu so that users can navigate easily through your site. This also helps with search engine optimisation.

Link text in the menu of your site should match the destination’s page title. For example the link to this page in the menu is ‘Editorial Style’. The character limit for both page titles and menu items is 50 characters.

Exception to linking pages from the menu

Occasionally it’s impractical to link all pages from the menu if there are many pages within a section. If a menu is too long the user will need to scroll further to find content.

In these cases we recommend you hide pages from the navigation and link directly from the content on the page. For example the postgraduate website does not include the list of available degrees in the menu.

This is because there are over 300 postgraduate degrees available and this would make the menu too long. Instead, the degrees are listed alphabetically on the Postgraduate Degrees List A-Z page.

Money

Names of currencies are written in lower case eg pound, yen, euro.

Pence should be abbreviated eg 50p.

Million and billion should be written in full in lower case, and you should include a space after the numerals. In pages that repeatedly mention sums in millions or billions, it is acceptable to abbreviate, eg:

• £15 million or £15m
• £2 billion or £2bn

N

Name and initials

Full stops are not used after initials, eg Mr A N Other

In an alphabetical list of names: Mc is treated as Mac. De Sa, du Plessis appear under D. Spanish names are listed under the first of the surnames, eg M Rangel Archila de Novais comes under Rangel.

Numbers

Spell out numbers from one to nine. Use numerals from 10 upwards.

Exceptions:

• when a number begins a sentence it is spelt out, even if there are further statistics. Eg Sixty-four students graduated, 31 were international students
• percentages are always presented as numerals, eg 1%, 20%, even when starting a sentence
• for rankings present ordinal numbers as numerals, eg 1st not first
• fractions should be spelt out and not include a hyphen, eg two thirds not two-thirds
• academic awards, eg 2:1, and grades, eg IELTS 6.5
• numerals are used in tables for statistics, money and times

P

Page references

Use en-dash between page ranges, eg pages 34–35, 46–54, 107–117, 136–138.

Paragraph length (web)

A paragraph should be around 50 words. Shorter paragraphs are easier to read on screen.

Percent (%)

Use % not per cent or percent.

Percentages are always presented as numerals, eg 1%, 20%, even when starting a sentence.

Plurals

Plurals should be as follows – heads of school (because each head is head of one school).

For the plural of a Master’s degree, the apostrophe follows the s: Masters’ regulations or Masters’ degrees.

For the singular the apostrophe precedes the s: a Master’s degree in Computing Science. 

Q - T

Q

Quotation marks

Single quotation marks are always used for direct speech or a quote within body copy. Except for a quote within a quote; here you would use double quotation marks within single quotes.

Full stops are used outside the quotation mark if the quote is part of a sentence and inside the quotation mark if the quote is a whole sentence.

You should use 'single quotation marks' rather than italics if referring to a document or a word or phrase not commonly accepted as part of the English language.

Quotes

If using a quote from a student we don’t include their surname, unless given written permission to do so.

Quotes on the website

Quotes are styled to make them stand out from the main content, using the quote content components in T4.

Block quotes and pull quotes should be around 30 words (no more than two short sentences) and contain no hyperlinks.

If you have a source for the quote this should be added on a separate line, be meaningful and, if relevant, hyperlinked.

R

Rankings and proof points (print)

Within text the names of publications are italicised, eg The Times, the Guardian, The Courier.

‘The’ is not capitalised or italicised before either the Guardian (the newspaper or the university guide) or the Times Higher Education products.

Where using a named publication as proof point outside the body of text, there’s no need to italicise eg QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023, Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2022.

S

Sentence case

Sentence case is where the first word and only proper nouns start with capital letters. Eg £3.8m funding for the new Blood and Transplant Research Unit. It is used for print headings, sub-headings and body content.

Sentence length

Sentences should be around 20 words. Keep them short and simple in structure.

Spaces

Use one space after a full stop, not two.

Spelling

Some of the main points of spelling style are as follows:

• use -ise not -ize, eg realise not realize and organisation not organization
• website and online are both one word not two
• email not e-mail
• medieval not mediaeval
• adviser not advisor
• fieldwork is one word but course work is two separate words

Problem spellings

Beware of problem spellings – below are just a few examples of commonly misspelt words:

• accommodation
• liaise
• definitely
• millennium

Keep an eye out for homophones (words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings):

• practice – noun; practise – verb
• advice – noun; advise – verb
• effect – noun: affect – verb
• dependent (unable to do without) and dependant (a person who relies on another for financial support)
• stationery (pens, pencils etc) and stationary (not moving)
• compliment (a statement of praise or admiration) and complement (a thing that enhances or completes something else)

T

Tables

Tables should be used for data only. They can cause problems for screen readers online if used for design purposes.

Telephone numbers

Always use the international format for telephone numbers. Unless you’re writing for a completely local audience. A space should be included after +44, with the 0 from the dialling code in brackets.

Telephone should be written in full, with spaces used to break up the number. For example: Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7250.

The same format should be followed for mobile, fax and textphone numbers.

When shown online, ‘telephone’ can be abbreviated and phone numbers should be hyperlinked to allow click to call functionality eg 'tel:01912087250'.

Times

We use the 24-hour clock to make times accessible to international audiences. The 24-hour clock uses a colon and omits am/pm.

Here are some principles for presenting times:

• 17:30 not 5:30pm or 1730hrs
• 00:00 not midnight
• 12:00 not midday or 12 noon
• 8:00 not 08:00

For periods of time use a hyphen between start and end times, with no space either side of the hyphen, eg 10.00-11.30

Title case

Title case is where all proper words are capitalised. It is always used for degree titles.

U - Z

U

Underline

Underlined text should only ever be a hyperlink on websites. In print materials, the coloured line can be used as a design feature under text. 

University address

The University’s trading name is Newcastle University.

The University’s official title is University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

The address is:

Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
United Kingdom

Where the logo and trading name are used there should always be an explanatory phrase, ie The University of Newcastle upon Tyne trading as Newcastle University.

© Newcastle University, 2023.

The University of Newcastle upon Tyne trading as Newcastle University.

University building names

A number of University place and building names are commonly used incorrectly. Examples include:

• King’s Gate, King’s Hall, King’s Road, King’s Walk - all use an apostrophe before the s
• The Henry Daysh Building – use The at the beginning of the name
• Boiler House – does NOT have The at the beginning of the name
• Philip Robinson Library (one l in Philip)
• Newcastle University Students’ Union – apostrophe is always used after the plural in students’
• Dame Margaret Barbour Building

Upper case

USING ALL UPPER CASE MAKES TEXT DIFFICULT TO SCAN AND CAN BE SEEN AS SHOUTING. Don’t use upper case for entire sentences, headings or emphasis.

URLs

It should be possible to tell what a page will contain just by reading the web address (URL). Folder and file names should be as short as possible while remaining meaningful. 

Names should:

• be a full single word if possible
• be entirely lower case
• have words separated with hyphens, not spaces, dots or underscores

Good URLs look like this:

• ncl.ac.uk/undergraduate/applications-offers/entry-requirements/ 
• ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/
• ncl.ac.uk/sport/sport-and-fitness/

V

Video content

Videos should be hosted on a dedicated delivery service, eg YouTube. Information about the University YouTube channel can be found on our video hosting page (Internal access only).