Tone and style

Words matter. They send signals, whether we want them to or not – signals about who we are and what we are really like. We want to make sure we are sending the right signals.

People take messages from all the experiences they have with us. That might be on a customer site or at the end of a telephone. On a screen showing our website or through a conversation in a meeting or by reading a letter from us.

We are aiming for the following tone of voice to represent our brand.

• Authoritative - confident of the claims of excellence being made.
• Adult-to-adult - treating the reader as an equal.
• Motivating - positive, aspirational and compelling.
• Straightforward - not tricksy or cool, and avoiding industry jargon.
• Warm - signalling humanity and empathy.

For reference we recommend the Oxford Dictionary of English.

Words such as – benefits, company email, government, group, group secretary, internet, intranet, member, nation, rules, scale, scheme, specialist, state and worldwide web – do not need initial capital letters.

In letter salutations, however it is polite to use capital letters for Dear Member, Group Secretary and so on, when it is not possible to personalise.

Government departments take capitals but their abbreviations contain lower case letters: Department of Health (DoH) and Ministry of Transport (MoT).

Geographical regions take upper case where north/south/east/west form part of the title: Northern Ireland, South London. Common usage determines use of hyphens: North-East England, South East Asia. If the sense is non-specific, use lower case: the north-east of England.

The preferred form is: 2 January 2003. No apostrophe is needed in the plurals of numbers e.g. the 90s.

The hyphen is used to form compound words, though there are no definite rules about when to hyphenate compound nouns. Generally the more closely associated the words become, the more appropriate it is to merge them. A hyphen may be considered a middle way between separation and complete integration, but the modern tendency is to use fewer hyphens in compound words. In some instances to remove ambiguity the sentence may need to be rewritten.

A prefix, which is not a word in itself, must be hyphenated e.g. pre-existing, mid-term.

Many words take hyphens but only when they are used adjectivally; for example: I can’t tell why he was off hand but he had an off-hand manner. He is a well-known politician, whose views are well known.

Fractions, where written in full, should be hyphenated e.g. two-thirds.

In text, the names of other publications, should appear in italics.

In editorial use 10% not 10 percent.

No full stops are needed in abbreviations, whether they be names of companies, organisations, schemed, titles, qualifications or countries.

Full stops are not necessary for headlines, subheads or at the end of bullet point lists (where bullet points start in lower case).

Colons should be used to separate main clauses when there is a step forward from the first to the second.

A dash is unnecessary after a colon.

Only one space is necessary after a full stop or comma.

(When a complete sentence is in brackets, the full stop should be inside.)

Do not put a comma before “and” and “but”, except when there is more than one conjunction in the sentence.

No commas are required in letters after the salutation (Dear Member) or sign-offs (Yours sincerely) or in the address.

Remember the apostrophe in five days’ stay, or over 50 years’ experience.

It’s’ is a contraction for ‘it is’ or ‘it has’. ‘Its’ is a possessive pronoun meaning; ‘more or less’, ‘of it’ or ‘belonging to it’.

Speech marks in text are double quotes, with commas and full stops inside the quotes for complete sentences.

Single quotes are used when they are included within double quote speech marks.

The following nouns are singular: board, committee, company, council department, government, group, majority, minority, number, parliament, range, selection.