Structure and grammar
Illustrative sample. Do not use this copy unchanged in production. Licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later, the same terms as AI Context.
Use sentence case, minimal punctuation, and consistent British spelling. Structure content with proper heading levels and scannable lists. Write link text that stands alone. Format dates, numbers, times, money and distances consistently, favouring words over symbols and hyphens where accessibility is at risk.
1. Capital letters
Use sentence case throughout — capitalise only the first word of a sentence or heading, and any proper nouns. Do not use capitals for emphasis or to signal importance.
Write: Establishing green standards for financial markets
Do not write: Establishing Green Standards for Financial Markets
Proper nouns always take a capital: institutions (the University of Edinburgh), schools and colleges (the School of Biological Sciences), job titles (the Deputy Head of Institute), team and committee titles, named events, people, places, days of the week and months, nationalities and religions.
Do not capitalise schools/colleges in general reference ("seven schools"), or seasons.
Subject areas — decision rule: is the subject name part of an official programme or course title?
- Yes → capitalise (Accounting and Finance MA (Hons))
- No → lowercase (she studied biology at university)
2. Links
Link text must make sense without its surrounding context. Never use a URL as link text. Never use vague phrases like "click here", "more information" or "learn more". Put links on a new line, not inline within a sentence.
Write: Gym memberships
Do not write: https://sport-exercise.ed.ac.uk/gym-memberships or "click here"
Where helpful, note after the link if it opens in a new tab, requires a University login, or opens a file type (PDF), (Excel), (Word). Only style a link as a button when it is the most important action on the page.
Link text by type — decision rule:
- Invites an action (browse, apply, download, register, book) → start with a verb: "Apply for postgraduate study"
- Navigates to a University page → use the destination page's title: "Campus maps"
- Goes to an external site → describe it and name the site: "Mental health support on the NHS Inform website"
3. Headings and page titles
Use heading levels to create structure, not visual effect — do not skip levels (H1 page title is automatic; H2 sections; H3 subheadings; H4 within H3). Avoid more than four levels on one page.
Do not use bold, underlining, larger font, or all caps as a substitute for a heading.
Keep headings to 60 characters or fewer, in sentence case, using words users will recognise rather than internal jargon.
Write: How to pay for your ticket
Do not write: How to Pay for Your Ticket
4. Lists
Use a list only when it has at least two items and grouping helps scanning. Use numbered lists when order matters; bulleted lists when it does not. Always introduce a list with a lead-in sentence ending in a colon.
Partial-sentence items: lowercase start (unless proper noun), no end punctuation, no "etc." Full-sentence items: sentence case, full stop at the end of every item.
Do not embed links inside list items — place them after the list instead (unless every item in the list is itself a link).
5. Bold, italic and underlined text
Use bold sparingly, for key information only — never as a substitute for a heading. Use italics only for academic referencing (bibliographies); avoid elsewhere, as italics are harder to read for users with visual impairments and dyslexia. Never underline text — it looks like a broken hyperlink.
6. Punctuation
Use punctuation sparingly and prefer clarity over complexity.
- @ — email addresses and social handles only, never to mean "at" in running text
- Accents — keep in proper names and non-English words; drop from anglicised words (cafe, not café)
- Ampersand — breadcrumbs and navigation only; use "and" in paragraph text and headings
- Apostrophes — singular possessive before the s (the University's halls); plural possessive after the s (Students' Union); "its" has no apostrophe as a possessive ("it's" = "it is" only); time periods modifying a noun take an apostrophe (two days' time) but not when modifying an adjective (six months pregnant)
- Brackets — punctuation stays outside unless the whole sentence is inside the brackets; use square brackets for interpolations
- Colons — introduce a list, or where a second clause explains the first
- Hyphens and dashes — keep to a minimum; always use a hyphen, never an en-dash or em-dash; hyphenate compound adjectives before a noun (world-leading research, half-hour wait) but not adverbs ending in -ly; never hyphenate date/time ranges — use "to" instead
- Ellipsis — three full stops with a space before and after
- Exclamation marks — use sparingly; never in headings or navigation
- Per cent — two words in running text (64%, sixty-four per cent); never "64 percent" or "64 %"
- Question marks — no space before the mark
- Quotation marks — double for direct speech, single for a quote within a quote and for titles of essays/articles/songs/poems
- Semicolons — separate balanced clauses, or list items where commas would confuse
- Spaces — never double spaces at the end of a sentence
7. Spelling style
Use the most common British English spelling; when in doubt, refer to the Oxford English Dictionary. Preferred forms include:
adviser (not advisor) · all right (not alright) · amid (not amidst) · among (not amongst) · archaeology (not archeology) · artefact (not artifact) · benefited, benefiting (not benefitted, benefitting) · car park · cooperate, coordinate (no hyphen) · enrol, enrolling, enrolment · focused, focusing (not focussed) · groundbreaking · helpdesk · a historic (not an historic) · judgement · medieval (not mediaeval) · nationwide · no one (not no-one) · online, offline · postgraduate, undergraduate (no hyphen) · supersede (not supercede) · uncooperative · under way (not underway) · Vice-Chancellor, Vice-President, Vice-Principal (hyphenated) · vice versa · voicemail · website · wellbeing
8. Dates and days
Capitalise and write days of the week in full in running text (abbreviate only in tables: Mon, Tue…). Write dates as day (numeral) + month (full name) + year (full), with no comma and no ordinal suffixes.
Write: Thursday 19 November 2020
Do not write: Thursday, 19th November 2020 / 19/11/20
Write years in full (2024, not '24). Decades: 1990s, not 1990's. Centuries keep ordinal suffixes: the 19th century.
Express date and year ranges in words, not hyphens — hyphens in ranges cause accessibility problems.
Write: from 2020 to 2024 / between 8 and 9 July / the 2020 to 2021 academic year
Do not write: 2020–24 / 8–9 July / the 2020/21 academic year
For historical eras, AD/BC or CE/BCE are both acceptable: AD897, 645BC, 78 CE, 908 BCE (spell out CE/BCE in full on first use).
9. Numbers
Write one to nine as words, 10 and above as numerals — but be consistent within a sentence (do not mix "seven and 13").
Write: There were five students on the research team. / We will delete the records after 11 years.
Never start a sentence with a numeral — write it out or rewrite the sentence.
Use commas for thousands separators (3,500). Spell out millions/billions where possible; abbreviate (mn, bn) only in tables, tagged with the full word.
Express numerical ranges in words, not hyphens: "from 18 to 21", not "18–21".
10. Times
Use the 12-hour clock only. No space and no full stop between the numeral and am/pm; colon between hours and minutes.
Write: 10am / 5:30pm
Do not write: 10 a.m. / 17:30
Use "to" for time ranges (3pm to 5pm), not a hyphen. Write fractions of hours in full (half an hour, one and a half hours); hyphenate only when used adjectivally before a noun (a half-hour wait).
11. Money
Place £ directly before the number, no space; separate pounds and pence with a full stop (£12.50). For amounts under £1, use "p" with no full stop (75p).
In running text, write other currencies in full, lower case, and specify the country for non-US dollars (40 Australian dollars). Currency symbols and codes are acceptable in tables only ($NZ25, €500).
12. Distances
Use miles for longer distances, with fractions in words (four and a half miles, not 4.5 miles). Use kilometres only when necessary, in decimals (2.7 kilometres). Use metres for shorter distances, abbreviating "m" only when necessary and tagged.