Tips on style and grammar

What follows are suggestions and recommendations on style. This is not meant to be prescriptive, but should provide a useful grounding for producing consistent and easy-to-read documents. It is not exhaustive.

Abbreviations	Written with full points.	i.e./e.g./etc./ibid./op. cit.

Acronyms	Written without full points (unfamiliar acronyms should be spelt out on first use)	USA, UN, EU, OUFC, OED

Commas	A contentious one this, but we advocate use of the Oxford Comma (and not just because of its name). This is a comma placed before the final and in lists and in strings of clauses.	The kids approached us, selling cigarettes, chewing gum, and shoelaces. (Now try it without the final comma.)

Currencies	Specify which currency only when it is ambiguous.	Use $ not US$ unless your text refers to dollars used by other nations, such as Canada (C$), Australia (A$), New Zealand (NZ$), Malaysia (M$), or Singapore (S$).
	'euro' should be used for both singular and plural, and should always be in lower case.	I didn't get many euro for my Sterling

Dates	Day/Month/Year and without the ordinal suffixes on the day.	15 July 2010

Decades	Enumerate in full, in figures, and without apostrophes.	The 1990s; the 2000s.

Electronic terms	In web addresses, don't use http:// unless the www prefix is absent. Ensure that it does not appear in the document as a link, and don't underline, italicise or enclose in angle brackets.	www.oxfordediting.co.uk martin@oxfordediting.co.uk
	Use initial capitals when using proper nouns.	the Internet; the Net; the World Wide Web; the Web

Foreign words	Should be italicised and followed by an English translation in brackets unless it's a familiar, everyday term.	'The Italian football championship is known as the Scudetto (Little Shield)'.

Fractions	Should be written in words and hyphenated. Avoid using fractions and percentages in the same sentence (unless the sentence is about mixing fractions and percentages).	one-half; two-thirds; fifteen-seventeenths

Measurements	Avoid imperial measurements unless they're in context.	"one hectare" not "two-and-a-half acres"
	Don't use s when pluralised and don't put in a space after the number. Use m for million unless it might be confused with 'metre'. Billion is bn, and sadly it is now almost always used to mean 1000 million, not 1,000,000 million.	50kg; 7km; 25m; 300bn

Numbers	Any number at the beginning of a sentence should be written out in words.	One to ten should be written in words; 11 and above should be written in numbers.

Percentages	Written in two words: 20 per cent	The % sign can be used in graphs and tables but should otherwise be avoided.
	The plural verb is for countable nouns; the singular verb is for uncountable nouns.	'Twenty per cent of the women are...' 'Twenty per cent of the area is...'

Quotation marks	Generally default to singular quotation marks. Use double quotation marks for quotes within a quote.	The speaker addressed the assembly, 'As the poet Emerson remarked "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know"'.
	Full stops and commas should be outside quotation marks; exclamation marks and question marks should be inside the quotation marks.

Spellings	Unless writing specifically for an American audience, use British spellings and language.	'colour', 'through', 'pavement', 'trousers', 'aluminium', etc.

Stereotypes	Avoid refering to generic groups such as 'the poor', 'the mentally illl', 'the disabled', 'the homeless', etc.	'poor people', 'people with mental illness', 'people with disabilities', 'homeless people', etc.

Verb endings	Unless writing specifically for an American audience, use s endings, not z.	'realise', 'authorise', 'stabilise', etc.