I
ie,
Not i.e.
-ise or -ize
Use the British -ise rather than the American -ize in words such as organise, specialise and finalise. NB some rare exceptions: capsize, synthesizer
Its or It’s
- It’s means it is or it has.
- Its means belonging to it, as in his, hers or its.
- Never use an apostrophe when ‘its’ is used in the possessive sense: ‘The University is conveniently located; its main campus is within 10 minutes of the town centre.’
J
K
L
Licence or license
Use ‘license’ for a verb, but ‘licence’ for a noun – eg, ‘we will license this software’, but ‘the cost of the licence is £100’.
Link text on the website
On webpages it is best practice to use a short self-explanatory phrase as a link rather than to show a URL – eg, ‘See the Special Collections home page’ rather than ‘see as.exeter.ac.uk/library/about/special’. This helps both users and your search engine rankings, since you are using the key words users and search engine robots are looking for in your link text instead of URLs.
Make your link text clearly describe where clicking the link will take you, eg, ‘Go back to the home page’, ‘Visit our virtual tours site’ or ‘Find out more about our services for students’.
Avoid vague link text that doesn’t make sense out of context, eg, ‘Read more’, ‘Find out more’, ‘Click here’, or worst of all ‘here’. These may confuse people using screen-reading software, which can be set to just speak the link text on a page, and can also be difficult for those scanning a page for relevant onward links.
For more information about links and link text, see the creating links guide on the Web Support pages.
Lists
If there is a hierarchy or logical order in the list then it should be followed, if not then items should be in alphabetical order.
Log in or login
Use ‘log in’ for a verb, and ‘login’ for a noun or adjective – eg, ‘to log in, enter your password’, but ‘your login name is...’ and ‘after the last successful login’.
M
Market Place
The new shopping facility in the Forum. Don't capitalise 'the' before it, eg, the Market Place.
Masters
Not Master’s
Million
Write out million in full, and abbreviate to 'm' only for headlines: £4.3 million, or in a headline ‘University wins grant of £4.3m.’
Module titles
Titles of modules should be in Title Case and separated by semi-colons.
Module
Not unit
N
Names
In student recruitment publications, where staff are listed by name, give the full first name (eg, Professor Abel Other NOT Professor A N Other).
Navigation labels
Navigation labels on the new University website design use Sentence case rather than Title Case, unless the label is a proper name:
Eg,
- Visit the University
- Where to stay
- How to find us
- Our beautiful campuses
- Campus facilities
- Exeter and the South West
Navigation labels for sites built and managed in the content management system, Site Manager, are automatically generated from the names given to sections within the system, so you must ensure these are consistently sentence case unless they are a formal title of an academic unit, programme, module or similar.
For further advice see the guidance on naming sections in Site Manager.
Newspapers and journals
Use italics for titles and use The in the title if appropriate: The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer, The Times Higher Education Supplement. NB exceptions: Financial Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Express and Echo, Western Morning News.
Numbers
One to nine should be spelt out; any number from 10 upwards should be in figures. But spell out numbers that begin a sentence, regardless of any inconsistency this may create. (One hundred and ten men and 103 women will graduate this year.) Use a comma after 999, eg, 1,000.
For ordinal numerals use 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on in headlines, bulleted lists, and when referring to the University's positioning in league tables and other rankings. In general body text when not referring to league tables or rankings use first, second, third, fourth and so on. (In the third year of the programme there is an option to study abroad.)
