Grammar and mechanics

Latin abbreviations 

Latin abbreviations should be written in lower case, not italicised and written without full stops. 

• eg [exempli gratia] means ‘for example’. It should be used for lists that are not exhaustive and is followed by a comma. 

• ie [id est] means ‘that is to say’ or ‘in essence’. It should be used for definitions or lists that are exhaustive and is followed by a comma. 

• etc [et cetera] means ‘and the rest’ and indicates the continuation of a list. 

For example: 

• The use of online or cloud applications eg, Eventbrite, Wufoo and Doodle, to organise events and gather opinions has increased in recent years. 

• By proceeding with enrolment, ie, payment for a course, you agree to our Terms & Conditions. 

• The University considers mitigating circumstances affecting academic performance in relation to examinations, coursework, attendance, etc. 

Acronyms and initialisms 

An acronym is an abbreviation formed of the initial letters of words in a set phrase or series of words, and pronounced as a single word, for example, OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries). An initialism consists of the first letters of words and which are pronounced as separate letters when they are spoken, for example, BBC. 

In general, acronyms and initialisms should be spelt out in full the first time they are used, with the abbreviation following in brackets if the term will be used again in the piece. Subsequently, the abbreviation can be used alone. This may not be necessary for acronyms and initialisms that will be widely recognised by your readers (for example, CV, BBC, UN, PDF, NHS, NASA, AIDS). 

For example: 

• The Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) works to eliminate the effects of schistosomiasis and intestinal worms among the world’s poorest populations. Hundreds of St George’s alumni have donated money to support current students. 

• Professor Friedland was interviewed recently by CNN. 

• Applicants should submit their CVs and covering letters by 17 June. 

Do not use full stops after common abbreviations, for example eg, am, pm, no, ie, etc or after Mr, Mrs, Prof or Dr. 

Ampersands should only be used when they form an official title or name. In all other instances, ‘and’ should be spelt out. 

For example: 

• Dr Lindsay has acted as an advisor to the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. 

• Abby is studying for an MSc in Advanced Materials Science and Engineering. 

• The Institute for Infection and Immunity 

Possessive apostrophes after St George’s look problematic: 

Example: St George’s’ clinicians and scientists 

Try to re-write the sentence to avoid this: Clinicians and scientists, working at St George’s 

A list of information can be neatly organised using bullet points. How a list is punctuated depends on the sort of information that is being presented. 

For a list of short items, there is no need to punctuate each point. A colon should be used to introduce the list, and the first letter of each point should be capitalised. 

For example: 

• Departments in Professional Services 

• Institute of Medical and Biomedical Sciences 

• Institute of Molecular and Clinical Sciences 

• Institute of Infection and Immunity  

ERCM can help with: 

• Design and digital services 

• Communications and marketing 

• Social media posts 

• Adverts for staff and student newsletters 

For a list of longer items or sentences, which follow on from an introductory sentence, each item should end with a semi colon and the final item should end with a full stop. Ensure that the tense and structure of each item work with the introductory sentence. The first letter of each point should not be capitalised (unless it is a proper noun). 
For example: 

If you are struggling with any aspect of life at University, remember that you can ask for help from: 

• your Personal Tutor, for advice on study techniques, time management, career planning and many other issues; 

• support staff, for guidance on everything from accommodation to library resources; 

• the Student Life Centre; 

• your friends and family. 

If a complete sentence introduces the bulleted list, each item in the list should end with a full stop, not a colon, and each point should begin with a capital letter. 

For example: 

The 'For students’ section of St George’s website includes quick links for students. 

• The Student Life Centre is open throughout the week to help with queries and problems. 

• The Students’ Union is home to the SU bar, shop, music room and dance studios, as well as over 100 other clubs and societies. 

• The St George’s Reporting Tool is available to report a case of bullying or harassment at St George’s. 

Use lower case letters as often as possible. It is often tempting for people to capitalise words unnecessarily just because they are ‘important.’ Do not do this! 

Use initial capitals when writing a job title in full, eg. ‘Herbert McTavish, Professor of Molecular Medicine’, ‘Chief Operating Officer Paul Ratcliffe’. However, if you are referring to a position rather than someone’s official title, lower case, eg, ‘he is a professor at St George’s.’ Drop the initial capitals if referring to more than one person with the same job title, et, ‘The Institute directors.’ 

If the title of an organisation or department is given in full, use initial capitalisation. For example, ‘the Division of Basic Medical Sciences.’ If you are referring to the organisation or department without using its full title, use lower case, eg ‘the division.’ 

When referring to structures within St George’s, it may be appropriate to capitalise the first letter, for example, 'students needing access to the Library’ as this is a short form of ‘St George’s, University of London Library.’ However, when referring to libraries in general, the L is not capitalised. 

Capitalise well known structures within St George’s such as ‘Student Life Centre’ and ‘Dissecting Room’. 

Degree titles are capitalised when writing the title in full. However, if referring to the academic subject in general, begin with a lower-case letter. For example: ‘If you are interested in studying biomedical informatics at St George’s...’ For initials around masters or postgraduate courses, please use the following format: PgCert, PgDip, MSc.  

Use upper case ‘U’ when referring to St George’s the institution. 

Use capitals when writing ‘Higher Education Institution’ 

Follow a colon in headlines with a lower case, not capital, letter. 

Dates should be written as day of the week / number / month / year. For example, Thursday 6 April 2021. Do not use ordinals (st, rd, th etc...) 

Time should use 24hr clock and BST/GMT as people may be viewing our content from different time zones, particularly when content is hosted online. Do not use BST/GMT for internal posters/digital screens. 

Use a full stop rather than a colon (used in American English) in times to separate numbers. For example, 17.30 - 18.30 GMT 

Headings should be sentence rather than title case. For example, ‘St George’s netball team wins national league’, not ‘St George’s netball Team Wins National League.’ 

There are two situations where you’re likely to need a hyphen. 

When an adjective’s made up of more than one word 

We call these compound adjectives. This is how they work: 

An adjective describes a noun, like ‘the written word’. 

A compound adjective does the same thing, but it’s made up of more than one word, like ‘round-the-clock support’. 

A compound adjective usually gets a hyphen when it comes before a noun, like in ‘a well-honed piece of writing’. 

But if the first word ends in ‘ly’, like in ‘a specially designed workshop’, you don’t need a hyphen. 

When it comes after the noun, the compound adjective usually doesn’t get a hyphen. So we say an easy-to-remember number, but the number is easy to remember. Same goes for up to date – if it’s before a noun it needs a hyphen. A document is up to date but it’s an up-to-date document. 

After a prefix 

If you’re adding a prefix like ‘pre’, ‘un’, ‘non’ or ‘anti’ to a proper adjective (that’s an adjective made from a proper noun [one with a capital letter] like American, Japanese, Victorian), use a hyphen: un-American, non-EC countries. Long-established words like ‘preamble’ and ‘degrade’ don’t need a hyphen as the prefix is seen as fully fused. 

Use a hyphen with prefixes or suffixes (such as ‘-like’) when you’ve repeated letters in a word, but you pronounce them separately, as in shell-like or anti-inflammatory. Because shelllike looks weird. 

Also use a hyphen if there’s a risk of mispronouncing a word. So, you’d hyphenate co-worker, for example, to stop people tripping up over ‘cow’ when they read it. But coordinator doesn’t need one. 

And we hyphenate words that are spelt the same but can have very different meanings or different pronunciations (called homographs, fact-fans) like ‘recreation’ (fun) and ‘re-creation’ (creating again). 

Some examples of the difference a hyphen can make: 

A man-eating chicken – a chicken that eats humans. 
A man eating chicken – a man who’s eating chicken. 
She re-covered the sofa – she put a new cover on the sofa. 
She recovered the sofa – from where? 

Still confused? Follow these two rules. 

If you can avoid using a hyphen, do. 
If you think there’s any risk of ambiguity, stick one in. 

More interesting hyphen stuff: The hyphen is an endangered species in English. In 2007, the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary removed the hyphens from 16,000 entries including ‘figleaf’, ‘potbelly’ and ‘pigeonhole’. 

The Oxford University Press style manual points out that ‘If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad’. So don't sweat it too much. 

Words we don’t hyphenate 

• cooperate 

• coordinate 

• email 

• online 

• rewrite 

• subtotal 

• website 

Words in a foreign language 

Words in a foreign language that are not in wide general use in English should be italicised. Words that are widely used, such as ‘ad hoc’, ‘café’, and ‘vice versa’, should not be italicised. 

Scientific Latin names for animals, plants etc. 

For all creatures higher than viruses, write the full name in italics giving an initial capital to the first word, which indicates the genus, for example, Turdus philomelos (song thrush). On second mention, the genus may be abbreviated, for example, T. philomelos. In some species, such as dinosaurs, the genus alone is used in lieu of a common name, such as Diplodocus and Tyrannosaurus.  However, the bacterium Escherichia coli is known universally as E. coli, even on its first mention. 

For example: 

• Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) is a deadly fungus that has ravaged frog populations around the world. 

• The committee is responsible for determining whether prima facie evidence of research misconduct exists. 

• Food poisoning from E. coli is commonly associated with eating contaminated beef or chicken products. 

Reported speech 

A colon should be used to introduce a quote.  Double quotation marks should be used for direct quotes. If a quote appears within a quote, single quotation marks should be used within double quotation marks.  

Punctuation marks at the end of quotes should appear within the quotation marks. For example: 

• One researcher who exhibited her research at the Festival recalled her experience: “The best part for me was seeing members of the public understand what I do. I heard one child say ‘I want to be a biologist!’ as he left our stand: that was hugely rewarding.” 

If you break a quote into two paragraphs, omit the closing speech marks at the end of the first paragraph and start the second paragraph with opening speech marks. For example: 

• Dr O'Brien said: “Student welfare is our highest priority. 

"At St George’s, we are doing everything we can to enable our students to thrive.” 

Unfamiliar words and phrases 

Single quotes signify unfamiliar words or phrases. For example: 

• Approximately 1 in 1,000 people suffer from ‘pathological health anxiety’. 

Italics should be used when referring to the titles of books, plays, journals, newspapers and periodicals, films, musical compositions and works of art. 

Where a title includes ‘The’ or ‘A’, those words should also be Italicised. 

For example: 

• In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Professor Rachel Allen talked about the need to inspire the next generation of scientists. 

• Research by St George’s academics into biodiversity was recently published in Nature. 

• Join us for a firm favourite, a book club, for an informal discussion about this year’s Big Read book The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney, the debut novel of Okechukwu Nzelu. 

Single quotation marks should be used for articles in a journal or periodical, chapter titles and the titles of stories or short poems. 

For example: 

• The article, entitled ‘Herbivores and nutrients control grassland plant diversity via light limitation’, examines how rabbits, deer and kangaroos can offset nitrogen pollution and reduce biodiversity loss in grassland areas. 

Title case should be used for titles of conferences and lectures. 

For example: 

• Professor Ma’s Spotlight on Science lecture. 

• The professor’s Inaugural Lecture. 

Do not assume your audience has had medical or scientific training. Explain the term / condition the first time you mention it.  

A couple of lines’ summary using information provided by the researcher or via the NHS website should suffice. For example, “I am studying hereditary childhood ataxia, which is a term for a group of disorders that affect co-ordination, balance and speech.” 

Use British sterling as currency where possible and use the £ symbol. When referring to a grant or funding, use ‘k’ for thousands, ‘m’ for billions and ‘bn’ for billions. For example, £36m grant.  

Round up – say “St George’s has been awarded nearly £70k for its brand-new Turing scheme” rather than, “St George’s has been awarded £67,543.50 for its brand-new Turing scheme.”

Spell out numbers up to and including nine (except when in ranges of numbers, dates or page numbers.) Use figures for numbers over and including 10 (except when at the start of a sentence.) This includes ordinal numbers, e.g. First, ninth, 10th, 20th, etc... 

21st century – lower case ‘c’ 

Thousands – add commas to show thousands, eg 1,000; 20,000; 300,000; etc. 

For guidelines on thousands, millions and billions in currency terms, see ‘Money’.  

Leave one line space between paragraphs. Do not indent the start of a paragraph.  

Aim to keep paragraphs short, particularly when writing for websites – dense chunks of text can put readers off. 

Captions and alternative text 

Captions and alternative text should describe what is shown so that people using screen readers and who cannot view images can understand what is presented. 

Copyright 

Best practice for web content is to use creative commons images, with acknowledgement or material copyright St George’s. 

If you must use copyright material, obtain permission to use any material (images, words, charts, etc) that you have not created.  

Permission should be obtained in writing. Once you have been granted permission to use the material, include a credit to the copyright holder: Reproduced by permission of XX or © Originator's name. 

Photo captions 

List subjects from left to right, using each person’s full name and title, for example: 

Back row, from left: Professor Deborah Baines; Professor Julian Ma; Dr Rosena Allen-Khan MP 

Front row, from left: Professor Jane Saffell; Professor Jenny Higham; Professor Jon Friedland 

If the front row is seated it should be noted as: Seated, from left.