Corporate Style Guide

When abbreviating within text, the full term should be used on the first occurrence with the abbreviation in brackets e.g. Higher Education (HE), then the abbreviation can be used thereafter.

Should be written as above with no hyphens or apostrophes around ‘A’ and ‘T’.

Use when part of an official title, such as City & Guilds.

Use in subject area titles, such as Hospitality & Catering.

Do not use in years e.g. 1940s

Do not use in the plurals of abbreviated forms e.g. MPs

For possession

Singular noun + apostrophe + s e.g. the dog’s tail

Personal name + apostrophe + s e.g. Tom’s house

For personal names and plural nouns that end in an “s”, add an apostrophe at the end e.g. Thomas’ / girls’ school

Plural nouns that don’t end in s, use an apostrophe + s e.g. children’s uniform

You should not use an apostrophe to form the plurals of nouns e.g. euros

• Use bullets to list modules or topics in course information leaflets
• Start each bullet with a capital letter
• No final full stops

Do use capital letters for

• Stating a course level e.g. Level 1
• Job titles
• Departmental title e.g. Reprographics, Apprenticeships Team
• Specific qualifications e.g. Level 3 Diploma in IT
• Grades e.g. Merit / Distinction
• College – when referring to a specific college
• University – when referring to a specific university
• Course types e.g. Higher Education / Further Education / A Level / T Level / Vocational / Apprenticeships / Adult Learning
• Names of topics or modules e.g. Health and Safety

Do not use capital letters for

• Generalised descriptions of qualifications e.g. qualifications in fitness instructing
• General terms like university, degree, foundation degree, apprenticeship, higher education, further education; unless referring to specifics
• Conjunctions e.g. and, in, on, for, but, as

Collective nouns e.g. team, family can be seen as either plural or singular - is/are. The key is to be consistent throughout your sentence.

Use singular e.g. the team is, when they are seen as one identity e.g. the football team is winning.

Use plural to emphasise individual members of the group e.g. the team are scoring well.

“Police” and “people” are always used with the plural verb – are.

When referring to organisations, including the College or Group as a whole, use ‘is’

Where possible, we should refer to our three Colleges as Colleges, rather than campuses, and write them out in full even when referring to several e.g. Castleford College & Wakefield College.

Write email addresses and web addresses in lowercase and where possible, use bold font.

A telephone number should come first with ‘or email’ before the email address e.g. Contact us on 01924 789111 or email enquiries@wakefield.ac.uk

When writing phone numbers, use a space after the area code but NOT in between the last 6 digits, as above.

Use ‘at’ before an email address if there is no phone number e.g. Contact us at enquiries@wakefield.ac.uk

If the email address is at the end of a sentence, do not use a full stop.

These should include the qualification, subject name and level where applicable e.g.:

• A Level English Language
• T Level Business (Management & Administration)
• Level 3 Extended Diploma in Hospitality & Catering

Where several course titles are listed, it is important that these are consistent in format.

Qualification types or levels should not be duplicated in titles e.g.:

• Higher National Diploma HND in (no need for ‘HND’)
• T Level Technical Qualification in (no need for ‘Technical Qualification’)

Course titles should not include internally used terms and phrases which may not be recognised externally e.g. ‘Study Programme’.

Please format your dates as follows, including the ordinal suffix “st”, “nd”, “rd” or “th”:

Friday 1st September 2017 (no commas needed).

For academic years, separate with a slash and only repeat the last two digits e.g. 2017/18

To be used when giving an example. Should be written in lowercase, not italics and with two full stops.

See also, i.e.

Entry requirements in course information leaflets should follow this layout (please remember to check the course footprint for course entry requirements).

ALL applicants e.g. interview or portfolio.

Main requirements e.g. 5 GCSEs at Grade 9-4, including English and Maths.

AND

Secondary requirements.

OR

Alternative qualification.

Capitalise every word (except conjunctions) e.g. What We Do

This includes digital platforms e.g. website menus.

This should be written out in full, as above, and not abbreviated to HOY or HOYEG.

If adding a ‘the’ before the Group name (e.g. students at the Heart of Yorkshire Education Group), it does not need a capital T on ‘the’.

Hyphens should be used for terms such as full-time and part-time, degree-level, fully-equipped, purpose-built, industry standard and top-up. If you are unsure about other terms, please get in touch.

To be used for exploratory information.

This should be written in lowercase and with two full stops.

See also, e.g.

Lists in sentences should not be introduced by colons and items should be separated by commas unless individual items are internally punctuated, in which case semi-colons can be used.

Bullet point lists should be introduced with colons.

For whole figures in pounds use £174 not £174.00.

For figures over £1,000 use a comma e.g. £3,459.

In text, the general rule is to use text for numbers zero to nine, then numerals for numbers 10 and above.

Punctuation should be used as appropriate with the correct spacing before/after it, e.g.:

• No spaces needed before colons
• Hyphens should have spaces before and after

Double quotation marks are to be used when quoting directly. Start with a capital letter (even if you are quoting midsentence), and include punctuation within the speech marks. Use a colon after ‘said’ to introduce the quote. Quotes which go over two paragraphs should have a second open quotation mark at the start of the subsequent paragraphs (but not at the end of paragraphs where the quote is to continue).

e.g. Ofsted said: “The College is good.”

Single quotation marks are to be used when quoting within double speech marks e.g. He said, “I saw a sign that said ‘keep off’.” or when referring to a concept e.g. ‘

Do not put spaces around a forward slash e.g. and/or

Use a slash to separate academic years, rather than a dash e.g. 2017/18 not 2017-18.

Please use 12 hour format, separating the hour and minutes with a full stop.

E.g. 5.30pm – 7.00pm

If appearing after a date, put a comma before the time e.g.:

Saturday 17th June, 10.00am - 12.00pm

Should be written as above with a capital T and U, and a hyphen between the words.

Please use UK English rather than US English, e.g.:

Programme (not program)

Civilisation (not civilization)