Style Guide

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  1. Use a person’s full name at first mention, but only use surnames after that.
  2. When writing dates follow a day – month – year – time order. Eg: 30 April 2020, 10pm.
  3. Don’t use “%”. House style is “per cent”.
  4. Avoid using overly casual words like “actually” and “really”.
  5. Be concise. “In order to” can be simply swapped for “To”, just like “additionally” can be used for “in addition”.
  6. Headlines and subheads are capitalised like body text, unless a phrase is used. Example: “London Food Cycle: How to make the most out of your groceries”.
  7. Numbers 1-9 are generally written out; one, two, three… Anything over is numerical.
  8. Big money numbers are written with a comma in between. 10,000 not 10.000. Million, billion etc.. are like so: £1billion.
  9. When talking about money, use £, $ or €. Don’t write pounds, dollars or euros. If it’s a non-US type of $ write it like: (AUD)$1.50.
  10. Attributing images is crucial. Photo: Photographer’s Name (Hyperlink to image page)/Website or License (Hyperlink to photographer’s page on the website, or the license).
  11. Hyperlinks: please insert at least one internal and one external hyperlink per piece, they should only highlight a handful of words.
  12. Use “that” sparingly. Example: “He told me that it looks good” becomes “He told me it looks good”.
  13. Initialisms and abbreviations are used without dots after each letter. “UK”, not “U.K.”; “Mr”, not “Mr.”; “Dr” not “Dr.”
  14. Measurements: kilograms, kilojoules, kilometres, kilowatts all abbreviate to kg, kJ, km, kW.
  15. No names are italicised or in quotation marks unless they are in a quote. This includes books, publications, organisations, movies, series, songs, albums etc.
  16. A person’s occupation/designation does not need to be capitalised. Example: Donald Trump isn’t President; he’s president.
  17. All body text is justify-aligned.
  18. Follow British-English spelling, not American. Example: Organise not organize.
  19. No indents.
  20. Full quotes, use colons not commas and full stop inside quotations marks. Example: She said: “I love reading books.”
  21. When writing a review, don’t forget to give a rating out of five, written at the start of your article. Like so; Rating: 5/5.
  22. When citing a source, always hyperlink the sentence to its original source.