A–Z guide to University of Hull web styles and formatting
Abbreviations
With the exception of ‘e.g.’ and ‘i.e.’, which look defective without points, we do not use
full stops in abbreviations, whether formed by contraction (‘Dr’, ‘dept’, etc) or truncation
(‘incl’, ‘etc’, etc) or from the initial letters of the abbreviated phrase (‘pm’, ‘pp’, ‘MA’, ‘UK’,
etc).
Academic disciplines
These – as distinct from academic departments – should generally have lower-case initials
(as chemistry, economics, gender studies, sociology, etc). The obvious exceptions are
those incorporating words which always have an upper-case initial (as American studies or
English). Note also that formal degree titles do have capital initials: ‘The BSc in Human
Biology is one of several biology programmes offered at Hull.’
Accents
In foreign proper names (of people, institutions, etc), and in genuinely foreign words and
phrases (those that should normally be printed in italic), include all the proper accents.
In words and phrases of foreign origin which have been fully assimilated into English (and
which should therefore be printed in roman type), omit accents unless this might cause
confusion: thus, for example, ‘cafe’ and ‘elite’ are OK without diacritics, but the nouns
‘résumé’ (two accents!) and ‘exposé’ need acute accents to distinguish them from the
verbs ‘resume’ and ‘expose’.
Accommodation
Write ‘Thwaite Hall’, ‘Taylor Court’, etc (capital initials for proper names), but ‘our halls of
residence’, ‘our on-campus flats’, etc (lower-case initials for common nouns). Though we
perhaps use terms such as ‘traditional halls’ or ‘student houses’ in a special sense, the
context should make capital initials unnecessary. Write ‘Head Leasing Scheme’, ‘Directed
Accommodation Scheme’, etc, as appropriate; but again the context should allow us to
write ‘head-leased accommodation’, ‘directed accommodation’, etc, without fear of
misunderstanding.
AD, BC
‘AD’ should precede the year (‘AD 1830’), although ‘10th century AD’ is well established;
‘BC’ follows the year (‘1830 BC’).
Addresses
Omit non-essential elements (such as ‘Cottingham Road’ or ‘East Yorkshire’) from
addresses. Include ‘UK’ if the publication will have an international readership.
Where an address is ‘for further information’ and an individual contact is named, try to
give his or her forename rather than initials.
Ensure that addresses are presented consistently throughout a document. University of
Hull addresses should ALWAYS be displayed thus:
International Office
University of Hull
Cottingham Road,
Hull, HU6 7RX
United Kingdom
Email
Website
Tel +44 (0)1482 466904
Fax +44 (0)1482 466554
(Bold name of office/faculty/department, etc)
(Line two)
(Line Three)
(Line four)
(Line five)
(Line six – never type out whole email address)
(Line seven – never type out whole URL)
(Line eight)
(Line nine)
Ages
Use numerals, not words, even where the number is less than 10: ‘5 and 13 years of age
respectively’; ‘a 6-month-old infant’. Whether functioning as an adjective or noun, ‘19year-old’ is hyphenated.
A level
Capital ‘A’, lower-case ‘l’. No hyphen.
Alumna, alumnae, alumnus, alumni
Use the correct word for gender and number.
‘Alumna’ is the feminine singular form.
‘Alumnae’ is feminine plural.
‘Alumnus’ is the masculine (or non-gendered) singular.
‘Alumni’ is masculine (or mixed-gender) plural.
Among
Preferable to ‘amongst’.
Ampersand (&)
This occurs in the names of some companies (Procter & Gamble, Simon & Schuster, etc)
and in some abbreviations (such as ‘R&D’). Elsewhere, including the names of University
departments, ‘and’ is to be preferred.
Apostrophe
The apostrophe (‘) is never used to form the plural of a word. While it is helpful in ‘dotting
the i’s and crossing the t’s’, it is unnecessary in such plurals as ‘MPs’ and ‘1940s’.
Bachelors (degree)
Capital ‘B’; no apostrophe.
Brackets
In publishing, ‘brackets’ usually means not parentheses, ( ), but square brackets, [ ].
These are used to enclose ‘editorial’ comments, corrections, explanations, interpolations,
etc, within quoted matter: ‘Before I knew what had happened,’ said the coach, ‘he [Smith]
had scored.’
Buildings
Capitalise the proper names of University and other buildings, including the word ‘building’
if (and only if) it is part of the proper name: ‘the Cohen Building’ but ‘the Chemistry
building’.
Bullet (centred dot)
A small solid circle sometimes printed before each item in a list.
Campuses
We call ours the Hull Campus and the Scarborough Campus, each with a capital ‘C’. Use a
lower-case ‘c’, however, when ‘campus’ functions as a common noun, as in ‘the main
campus’, ‘our campus at Scarborough’, etc.
Note that there is no such thing as the ‘West Campus’, whatever you may have read in
internal memos and announcements. Refer instead to ‘the western side of the Hull
Campus’ or ‘the western part of the Hull Campus’.
Capitals (and headings)
Headings: Capitalise the first letter in the heading only, unless otherwise specified. Don’t
interchange between upper and lower case randomly (e.g., Computer science with Games
development).
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Don’t use ALL CAPITALS – ever
Pronouns: Use capitals for the first letter of any pronoun (e.g., Madison, Hull)
Captions
A caption always begins with a capital initial and ends with a full stop, even if it comprises
less than a complete sentence: The interior of the award-winning Asylum nightclub.
Terms such as ‘above’, ‘below’, ‘top’, ‘bottom’, ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘clockwise’ can serve to
pinpoint individual pictures within a group of illustrations or to identify individual elements
within an illustration. Such terms are followed by a colon when preceding the subject and
are placed in parentheses when following the subject: Above: the Continental Cafe. Below:
the Sports and Fitness Centre. Left to right: Terry Simmons, Gillian Shepherd and Tracy
Fletcher. Philip Larkin (centre) and Andrew Motion (left) are among the many poets
associated with Hull.
Certificate
Lower-case ‘c’ except in the full, formal title of an award, such as the Certificate in Higher
Education.
Clearing
Capital ‘C’ when referring to the annual scrummage in August–September.
Comma
In lists of three or more items, we generally do not include a comma before ‘and’ or ‘or’:
‘The meeting was attended by Tom, Dick and Harry.’
However, in more complex lists – for example, where one item requires its own
conjunction – the comma may be needed to avoid ambiguity or confusion: ‘Tom had to
choose between criminology, gender studies, and sociology and anthropology.’
Compass points
Use capital initials when denoting a region by the nominal form (‘unemployment in the
North’) and in geographical names with recognised status (such as Northern Ireland or
South Africa), but not otherwise (write ‘northern France’ or ‘southern England’).
Compounds such as ‘north-east’ and ‘south-west’ should be hyphenated.
Contractions
Common verbal contractions, such as ‘I’m’, ‘can’t’, ‘we’ll’ or ‘it’s’, are perfectly acceptable
in less formal writing. Within reason, try to maintain a consistent register – whether formal
or informal – throughout a piece of writing.
Course
For a course of study leading to a degree or other qualification, this university uses the
word ‘programme’ in its internal discourse. In our recruitment literature, though, and
especially in publications for prospective undergraduates, we generally defer to popular
usage and allow ‘course’.
For a course of study that is a component of such a programme, ‘module’ is usually the
appropriate word.
Coursework
One word.
Dash/Hyphen
In professional typography, a dash ( – ) (created by pressing ALT, then 0150) is not the
same thing as a hyphen (-).
Use the correct dash/hyphen:
Hyphen: The long-running Beatles had a string of hits in the 60s.
Spaced en-dash: The Beatles – featuring John Lennon – rose to fame in the 60s.
En dash: John Lennon (1940–1980)
Hyphens ( - ) are used to hyphenate words and for line-ending word breaks.
En dashes ( – ) are used as a dash or date/number break.
Dates
The order is always day, month, year. Write ‘12 September’, ‘September 2001’, ‘12
September 2001’, without commas. Note that the day takes the form of a cardinal
number, without ‘st’, ‘nd’, ‘rd’ or ‘th’ attached to it (but write ‘the 12th of this month’ –
with the ‘th’ on the line, not superscript). When including the name of a day, do not follow
it with a comma: write ‘Tuesday 12 September’.
Four-figure years – such as 2001 – do not have a comma after the thousands digit, but
those with more – such as 10,000 BC – do have one.
Centuries: Write ‘7th century’, ‘19th century’, etc. The ‘th’ (or the ‘st’, ‘nd’ or ‘rd’) should
not be superscript. Note that ‘century’ does NOT need a capital initial.
Decades: If you simply want to denote a 10-year historical time span, write, for example,
‘the 1920s’ (no apostrophe). If it is clear what century you are talking about and you also
want to connote all the social, cultural and political conditions unique to or significant in
that decade, you may write ‘the Twenties’ (capital ‘T’; no apostrophe).
Deep, (The)
The definite article always has a capital ‘T’, even in mid sentence.
Degree
Lower-case ‘d’ (as, for example, in ‘a Joint Honours degree’).
Degrees
Omit full stops from the abbreviations ‘BA’, ‘MPhil’, ‘PhD’, etc. Where the awarding
institution is cited, leave a space before the parenthesis: ‘MSc (Hull)’.
When used after a name, set off degree abbreviations with commas: ‘John Smith, PhD, is
an alumnus of the University of Hull.’ Avoid redundancies such as ‘Dr John Smith, PhD’
(where ‘Dr’ or ‘PhD’ is superfluous).
Use capital initials for ‘Bachelors’ and ‘Masters’ and for types of degree: ‘Single Honours’,
‘Joint Honours’, ‘Combined Honours’, etc.
Departments/faculties
Write ‘the Department of X’, with a capital ‘D’, if this is its full, formal title; but write ‘the
department’ or ‘departmental’, with a lower-case ‘d’, if referring back to the same.
Diploma
Lower-case ‘d’ except in the full, formal title of an award such as the Diploma in Higher
Education.
Distance learning
Hyphenated when used attributively: ‘distance-learning provision’.
Distance-taught
Hyphen.
Doctoral, doctorate
Lower-case (but ‘Doctor of Philosophy’).
E-business, e-commerce, etc
Hyphen. Capitalise the ‘e’ when the term appears at the beginning of a sentence, at the
beginning of an upper and-lower-case heading or within an upper-case heading, but not
otherwise.
E.g. and i.e.
Two abbreviations which take full stops.
Ellipsis ( … )
Use this device to indicate the omission of one or more words from quoted matter (but not
at the beginning or end of a quotation). We also use it to indicate grammatical continuity
between typographically discontinuous bits of text – for example, between a heading and
the text which follows it.
Email
One word. Capitalise the ‘e’ only when the term appears at the beginning of a sentence, at
the beginning of an upper and-lower-case heading, within an upper-case heading or in a
context (such as a displayed address) where other items – ‘Tel’, ‘Fax’, etc – are
capitalised.
Email addresses
Our style is lower-case – j.bloggs@hull.ac.uk.
If the email address ends a sentence, it must be followed by a full stop. We cannot
suspend the most basic rules of punctuation just because a few technologically challenged
readers might be confused by the extra ‘dot’. DO NOT break email addresses over two
lines.
En suite
Not italic. Hyphenate when attributive: ‘en-suite accommodation’.
Etc
No full point.
Events
Where capitalisation is concerned, treat the titles of these in the same way as titles of
publications etc. In general there is no need for quotation marks, but it is occasionally
helpful to use them when an event is first cited – ‘On the Edge’, for example, or ‘The
Humber Mouth’ – to distinguish the title as a title and avoid puzzling or confusing the
reader.
Extra-departmental
Hyphen.
First-year, second-year, third-year, etc
Hyphenate, whether noun (‘first-year student’) or adjective.
Foundation course, year, etc
Lower-case ‘f’.
Fractions
Spell out and hyphenate simple fractions: ‘The theatre was two-thirds full.’
Numerals should be used for more complex fractions (such as 27/64), or when fractions
appear with whole numbers (51/4); but in these cases fractions are best avoided – convert
to decimals if possible.
Free elective
Lower-case initials (except in ‘Free Elective Scheme’); always two words (no hyphen),
whether noun or adjective.
Full-stops
Don’t forget to add these (.) at the end of sentences.
Fundraiser, fundraising
One word.
Further education
Lower-case initials, despite the upper-case abbreviation ‘FE’.
Government, government
Capital ‘G’ when referring to a particular body of persons, such as the British Government;
but use lower case for the general concept and common nouns: ‘the art of government’, ‘a
foreign government’, etc.
Higher education
Lower-case, despite the upper-case abbreviation ‘HE’.
Homepage
One word.
Honours
Capital ‘H’ (as in ‘Single Honours’).Abbreviated as ‘Hons’ (as in ‘BA (Hons) English’).
Images
Images should always be in RGB OR greyscale colour modes, NEVER CMYK. A maximum
resolution of 72dpi should be used. Images should be saved in .jpg format with an image
quality rating of 7.
Image run-around
When adding pictures in-between text, please assign a left alignment to the images
(Immediacy adds default spacing around the image automatically, although you can alter
this manually). This will maintain site consistency.
Initials
Forename initials, where they occur with the surname, should always be spaced and
without full points: ‘T S Eliot’.‘TSE’ (= T S Eliot) and similar series of initials should be
close up without full points
Interdisciplinary
One word.
Internet (The)
Lower-case ‘i’. Hence also ‘the net’.
-ise, -ize
We prefer the ‘-ise’ spelling. The exception, in computing contexts, is ‘visualization’.
Italic
A style of type, as this. Use italic for the following (among other things):
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Titles of published books, except for the Bible and other religious texts
Titles of newspapers/periodicals (but article titles are roman in quotation marks)
Titles of poems long enough to form a separate publication, such as Paradise Lost
(but titles of short poems – for example, as published within collections or
anthologies – are roman in quotation marks)
Titles of plays, films, and radio and television programmes
Titles of paintings, sculptures and other artworks
Titles of conferences and exhibitions
Names of individual ships and railway engines, apart from such prefixes as ‘HMS’
(write ‘aboard HMS Victory’)
Latin names of genera and species (as Homo sapiens)
Mathematical variables
Foreign words and phrases, not yet naturalised, in an English sentence (but roman
for proper names, and roman in quotation marks for foreign-language quotations)
Names of parties in legal cases (but ‘v’ between them is roman)
Emphasis (but use it sparingly)
Job titles
Full, formal job titles should have capital initials, particularly in references to specific
individuals; indefinite or generic references to jobs or occupations should not.
Lawns, The
The definite article always has a capital ‘T’, even in mid sentence (but write ‘the Lawns
Centre’).
Libraries
Use a capital ‘L’ in ‘the Brynmor Jones Library’ and ‘the Keith Donaldson Library’; but write
lower-case ‘library’ or ‘libraries’ in subsequent shortened references to these, and
wherever else the word functions as a common noun.
Links
Email or web address links should never appear in their entirety (e.g.,
http://www.hull.ac.uk/hubs OR mailto:businessmasters@hull.ac.uk).
Instead, come up with a creative, yet accurate, way of displaying this info (e.g., Business
School / Email) by embedding the info in the words used.
Break/brighten up uninteresting blocks of text with a few liberally-strewn links.
Lists
For our purposes there are two kinds of list: the run-in or embedded kind, which occurs
within ordinary text; and the displayed kind, which is broken off and sometimes indented.
Embedded lists: Occur within ordinary text. In the simplest form, component items –
except the last two – are separated by commas: ‘The meeting was attended by Tom, Dick
and Harry.’
Displayed lists: Bulleted or numbered.
Local education authority
Lower-case initials, despite the upper-case abbreviation ‘LEA’.
Masters (degree)
Capital ‘M’; no apostrophe. Compare Bachelors (degree).
Measurements
Non-technical text: Physical quantities should be expressed as ‘two square feet’, ‘20
miles’, ‘240 volts’, ‘nine metres’, ‘300 acres’, etc (but quantities consisting of whole
numbers and fractions should be expressed as numerals:‘81/2 inches’).
Technical contexts: Where an abbreviated unit of measurement (‘cm’, ‘kg’, ‘ml’) is used,
the number should be in the form of numerals: ‘5 cm’, ‘10 kg’, ‘500 ml’, etc.
Mid
Do not hyphenate ‘the mid 1980s’, ‘the mid 19th century’, etc (but write ‘a mid 1980s
phenomenon’, ‘a mid-19th-century invention’, etc).
Money
Use numerals in references to money: ‘50p’, ‘£2’, ‘£4.99’, ‘£5,500’, ‘£7 million’.
If whole pounds appear in the same context as fractional amounts, they should be treated
in a similar way: for example, ‘£6.00, £5.25 and £0.25’, not ‘£6, £5.25 and 25p’. Do not
use ‘£’ and ‘p’ in the same expression.
Months
Do not abbreviate the names of months in running text. Never abbreviate ‘May’, ‘June’ or
‘July’.
Multidisciplinary
One word.
Multimedia
One word.
Net, (The)
Lower-case ‘n’.
Numbers
Numbers greater than nine should be expressed in numerals, not words, with these
exceptions:
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Numbers at the beginning of a sentence
Vague numbers (‘some fifty or sixty students’)
Round numbers preceded by the indefinite article (‘I have told you a hundred
times’)
Ages expressed as ordinal numbers or decades (‘in his thirty-third year’, ‘between
her teens and twenties’)
Time of day with ‘o’clock’ (write ‘ten o’clock’)
Millions, billions, etc (see below)
Numbers greater than 999 should generally show a comma after the thousands digit:
3,500; 35,000; etc. Exceptions include page numbers, mathematical workings, house or
hotel-room numbers, and library call or shelf numbers.
Four-figure dates – such as 2005 – have no comma, but those with more – such as 10,000
BC – do have one.
Numbers less than 10 should be expressed in words, not numerals, with these exceptions:
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Percentages (write ‘6%’)
Decimals (write ‘3.5’)
Quantities combining whole numbers and fractions (‘3 1/2 inches’)
Ages expressed in cardinal numbers (‘6 years old’)
Centuries (‘7th century’)
Dates (‘5 November’)
References (page, section, chapter numbers, etc)
Time of day with ‘am’ or ‘pm’ (write ‘8 pm’)
Money (write ‘£5’ or ‘£5.00’)
Numbers giving exact measurements or with abbreviated units of measurement (‘7
kg’,‘15.8 mm’, etc)
Number spans
We use an un-spaced en rule (see dash and typesetting characters), not a hyphen:
‘12–34’, not ‘12-34’.
On campus, off campus
No hyphen unless used attributively: write, for example, ‘the meeting will be held on
campus’, but ‘we attended an on-campus meeting’.
Online
One word when referring to computer communications.
Open day
Lower-case initials when used as a common noun.
Open learning
To be hyphenated when used attributively: ‘open-learning provision’.
Overseas
In general, not to be used to to describe students: instead, write ‘international students’.
Paragraphs
In general, these should be shorter on web pages than in print (maximum 4-5 lines long).
Even for web readers, however, there is no need to keep them to one sentence.
Parentheses
These ( ), should always go in pairs. When enumerating the items in a list, for example,
write ‘the meeting was attended by (1) Tom, (2) Dick and (3) Harry’, not ‘the meeting was
attended by 1) Tom, 2) Dick and 3) Harry’.
Percent
One word; but use the symbol % wherever possible.
Percentages
Use numerals (even where the number is under 10) and the % symbol: write ‘6%’, ‘60%’,
etc. At the beginning of a sentence, write ‘Six percent’. Make sure that percentages are
distinguished from actual numbers in tables.
Periodicals/journals
The titles of magazines, journals, newspapers, etc, should be italicised. Italicise and
capitalise ‘the’ only for one-word titles: write ‘The Times’, ‘The Spectator’ and ‘The
Guardian’ but ‘the Daily Mail’, ‘the Radio Times’ and ‘the News of the World’.
Phone/fax numbers
These should be expressed and presented consistently. If the publication is solely for an
international readership, make phone and fax numbers international: +44 1482 346311.
If the publication is for a mixed (home and international) readership, include a
parenthetical zero: +44 (0)1482 346311.
Place names
Prefer anglicised forms of foreign place names when they are in common use: Cologne,
Lower Saxony, Naples, Turin, etc. Be consistent
Plurals
Some naturalised foreign nouns have optional plural forms. Where the option does exist,
prefer the English to the native termination: for example, prefer ‘cactuses’ to ‘cacti’,
‘formulas’ to ‘formulae’ (except in technical contexts),‘stadiums’ to ‘stadia’, ‘ultimatums’ to
‘ultimata’.
Possessive case
The possessive apostrophe always comes before the ‘s’ in singular and plural nouns not
ending in ‘s’, as in ‘the boy’s bicycle’ and ‘the women’s games’. It comes after the ‘s’ in
plural nouns ending in ‘s’, as in ‘the boys’ bicycles’.
In singular nouns ending in ‘s’, contrary to a widespread misconception, British convention
dictates there should usually be a further ‘s’ after the apostrophe: write, for example, ‘an
octopus’s garden’, ‘the witness’s statement’, ‘the campus’s facilities’. This applies to proper
names as well as to common nouns: write ‘James’s bicycle’, ‘Dickens’s novels’, ‘Zacharias’s
reputation’.
Postgraduate
One word.
Program, programme
Use ‘programme’ except in computing contexts.
Pro-vice-chancellor
Two hyphens.
Quotation marks
These should be genuine ‘curly quotes’ (inverted commas and apostrophes), not ‘feet and
inches’. They should be single, not double, except for quotations within quotations.
Where quoted matter is longer than one paragraph, use quotation marks at the beginning
of each paragraph but only at the end of the last paragraph.
Seasons
These are lower-case (‘spring’, ‘summer’, etc) except, for example, when citing an issue of
a publication (‘the Autumn 2000 issue’).
Self-Hyphenate compounds: ‘self-esteem’, ‘self-taught’, ‘self-correcting’, etc.
Semester
A common noun which should generally have a lower-case initial, as in ‘the first semester’
and ‘the second semester’; but write ‘Semester 1’ and ‘Semester 2’ (upper-case ‘S’).
Semicolon
The semicolon separates two or more clauses, of more or less equal importance, which
could stand independently as sentences but which are closely related in sense: ‘Tom
arrived punctually at 9.30; Dick turned up at 9.45; Harry was 40 minutes late.’ It is
particularly appropriate where the desired effect is one of balance or antithesis: ‘Tom
proposed the scheme; Dick opposed it.’
Sentences
A good way to know if your sentence is too long is to read it out aloud. If you’re struggling
for breath before you get to the full-stop, it probably means your sentence is too long and
needs to be split up with commas (pauses) or made into two sentences.
Social sciences, the
Lower-case initials.
Soft returns
Press ‘Enter’ or ‘Return’ to go to the next line, leaving a gap between both.
Use soft returns (i.e., Shift, Enter/Return) when you want to move down to the next line
without leaving a gap between lines.
Spacing
Do not double-space after punctuation, including full stops. This is a hangover from
typewriter days and it looks wrong where proportionally spaced type is used.
Spelling
Follow British rather than American conventions. And please... use your Word (or other)
spell-check if in doubt.
Staff
This word (like many other collective nouns) may be grammatically singular or plural
according to the context: ‘the staff comprises both men and women’, for example, but ‘the
staff disagree among themselves’.
Students’ union
Always use lower-case initials, even when referring to Hull University Union (as it calls
itself); always use an apostrophe AFTER the ‘s’.
Study-bedroom
Hyphen.
Teamwork
One word.
Tel
The initial ‘t’ is not capitalised except at the beginning of a sentence or in a context (such
as a displayed address) where other items – ‘Fax’, ‘Email’, etc – are capitalised.
Time of day
Use numerals in ‘8 am’, ‘11.30 pm’, etc; spell out the hour in ‘eight o’clock’, ‘half past
eleven’, etc. Never mix the two conventions.
Titles of people
Except in very formal contexts, try to avoid the courtesy titles ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’, ‘Miss’, ‘Ms’ and
‘Dr’. (Where they are used, be consistent: if Dr John Smith is given a title, Mr Joe Bloggs
should have one too.) Also avoid using job titles as if they were personal titles, as in ‘ViceChancellor Drewry’ (which is awfully reminiscent of ‘Postman Pat’).
Titles of publications, etc
In references to the titles of programmes, modules, publications, etc, where the style is
upper and lower-case, give a capital initial only to the first word, the last word, and any
important words in between (capitalise all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs,
but generally not articles, conjunctions or prepositions such as ‘the’, ‘but’ and ‘to’).
Where a hyphenated compound appears in the title, you should capitalise as if each
element were a separate word (write ‘Promoting Cross-Cultural Research’, ‘An End-of-Year
Symposium’, etc) unless one element is a prefix or combining form such as ‘co-’,‘pre’,‘neo-’, etc (write ‘Co-ownership of Property’, ‘Neoconservatism in the USA’, etc).
Trademarks
Some trade names are now used as common nouns, but proprietors insist on a capital for
their product: for example, Xerox, Kleenex, Thermos. Common proprietary names are
identified in dictionaries, and it may be better to substitute another term: for example,
‘photocopy’ for Xerox, ‘(paper) tissue’ for Kleenex, ‘vacuum flask’ for Thermos. Watch out
for proprietary names of drugs. It is not necessary to put any of these names in quotation
marks.
UCAS
This is a kind of acronym, in that it is pronounced as a word (‘yew-cass’), so it does not
require the definite article. Where the indefinite article precedes it, use ‘a’, as in ‘a UCAS
initiative’.
Undergraduate
One word.
University
This is a common noun. It should have a capital ‘U’ only when it is part of, or functions as
shorthand for, a proper name such as ‘University of Hull’.
University of Hull, (The)
Include ‘The’, with a capital ‘T’, in the full, formal title (such as it appears in addresses or
legal contracts, for example); but in ordinary prose use a lower-case ‘t’ when ‘the
University of Hull’ occurs in mid sentence.
Note that we are ‘University of Hull’ (without the article) in addresses, as we are in
the corporate logo.
URLs
There is no need to include ‘http://’ in web locations; if the site requires another protocol,
use the appropriate tag. Domain names in URLs should be lowercase; pathnames, which
follow the first slash, are case-sensitive, so follow the style dictated by the site.
If the URL ends a sentence, it must be followed by a full stop. We cannot suspend the
most basic rules of punctuation just because a few technologically challenged readers
might be confused by the extra ‘dot’.
Vice-chancellor
Hyphen.
Web, (The)
Lower-case ‘w’.
Website
One word (but write ‘web page’).
WISE
Stands for ‘Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation’.
The lower-case ‘s’ in ‘study’ breaks the most basic rules of capitalisation and looks like an
error, but in this case it has been decided that the name must be made to fit the acronym
and not vice versa.
Worldwide
One word.
World Wide Web
Three words; three capital initials.
WWW
Capitals.
Years
Write ‘first year’, ‘second year’, etc (lower-case), but ‘Year 1’, ‘Year 2’, etc (upper case).
Write ‘a first-year student’ (hyphen), but ‘a Year 1 student’ (no hyphen).