Editorial style guide

These guidelines are designed to help us communicate clearly, with our audiences and with each other. We advise you to bookmark this page for quick reference.

If you can't find what you're looking for on these pages, try the Guardian and Observer style guide.

---

Index

A

• A world top 100 University
• A Level
• abbreviations
• accents
• access
• acronyms and initials
• addresses
• alumni, alumnus, alumna and alumnae
• ampersand (&)
• and/or
• apostrophes
• Arts Tower
• asterisks (*)      

B

• -based
• brackets
• bullet points

C

• carbon dioxide
• careers adviser
• Care 2050
• centuries
• Chancellor
• CITY College
• Clearing and Adjustment
• colon (:)
• comma
• compass points: north, south, east and west
• compliment or complement
• computer-aided
• contact details
• contractions
• Council
• course titles
• cue up
• curriculums

D

• Dame
• dashes
• dates and times
• degree class
• departmental
• department names
• Diamond
• dos and dont's

E

• east
• eg
• ellipsis (...)
• email
• en-dash (–)
• Energy 2050
• Engineering Heartspace
• etc
• exclamation mark (!)
• extracurricular

F

• faculty
• fewer / less
• fonts
• foreign words and expressions
• fractions
• fragments
• freshers' week
• full stops
• full time

G

• gender
• government
• graduation, graduate
• green paper

H

• head of department
• headlines, headings and sub-headings
• headlines and links
• Henderson's
• healthcare
• helpdesk
• higher education
• Honorary Professor
• honorary titles
• Houses of Parliament
• hyphen (-)
• hyphenating compounds

I

• ie
• innovation district
• Insigneo
• institutes
• institution
• interesting
• International Faculty
• international students
• internet
• Intro Week
• -ise or -ize
• italics
• it's or its

J

• jargon
• job title

K

• key (adjective)
• knight

L

• Latin plurals
• learning and teaching
• left wing
• liaise and liaison
• links

M

• masters
• material
• MB (megabytes)
• Money Planner
• Money Timeline
• motor neurone disease
• multimedia

N

• north
• northern powerhouse
• numbers

O

• oceans
• ongoing
• open days
• outer space

P

• paragraphs
• parliament
• part time
• passive voice
• per cent
• per day
• peregrine
• PhD
• phone numbers
• Plain English
• planets
• platitudes
• policy maker
• postgraduate
• practice/practise
• President and Vice-Chancellor
• professional services
• Pro-Vice-Chancellor
• punctuation

Q

• question mark (?)
• queue up
• quotation marks

R

• ranges (numerical)
• redundancy
• research institutes
• right wing

S

• seas
• seasons
• school
• semicolon (;)
• semester
• Senate
• sentence case
• sir
• south
• space
• spaces
• spiegeltent
• SPERI
• split infinitives
• Student Funding Calculator
• Students' Union
• superbug

T

• tautology (grammatical)
• teaching
• telephone numbers
• title case
• titles, people
• time

U

• undergraduate
• university
• University Executive Board
• URLs

V

• Sheffield Varsity
• Vice-Chancellor
• Vision

W

• wars
• We Are International
• web addresses
• web page
• website
• west

Z

• -ize or -ise