Style guide
Style has substance.
En dash or em dash? Single or double quotes? Oxford commas: good or bad? (Don’t get us started on that one.)
Check our style guide for answers to classic grammar quandaries. Or read our two cents on the issues keeping the grammar geeks awake at night.
If you’re writing for a brand, find out if they have a style guide of their own – they’ll have particular rules on things like capitalisation and formatting dates.
Grammar
Abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms
Make sure everyone's familiar with them. Otherwise, spell it out.
Our two cents
Accessibility
A few notes on using words to help people navigate online.
Punctuation
Ampersands (&)
You'll probably only use them if you're working for M&S.
Punctuation
Apostrophes
The world is full of apostrophes. You’re probably already confident about how to use them. But if you aren’t (or some cases trip you up), here’s a recap.
Punctuation
Brackets
There's a couple of rules to do with punctuation you need to get your head around. (They're easy peasy once you know them.)
Names and titles
Brand names
Write it the way they do.
Our two cents
British vs American English (and other flavours)
With a base in London and New York, we're always flittering between the two. Here's some of the main differences.
Punctuation
Bullet points
There are a lot of ways to get these right – the most important thing is to make sure you’re consistent, and that each of your bullets follows on logically from the top.
Grammar
Caps vs lower case
If in doubt, use lower case. Save capital letters for proper nouns (like Jude or London), acronyms and initialisms.
Punctuation
Colons and semicolons
Henry Watson Fowler said we should use a colon ‘to deliver the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words’.
Punctuation
Commas
Some of comma commentary is pretty straightforward. But there are a few grey areas, mainly around the Oxford comma, comma splices and separating adjectives.
Names and titles
Compass points
Lower case for north, south, east and west, except when it’s part of a name like South Korea, South Africa or East Anglia.
Numbers
Currency
A few notes on pence and cents.
Punctuation
Dashes
Is it an en dash, an em dash, or a hyphen?
Numbers
Dates and times
Getting your days and clocks in order.
Punctuation
Ellipses
If you’re using an ellipsis to show a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or an enigmatic trailing off into silence... then you don’t need a space before it.
Grammar
Etc
It's a bit jargon-y and you can probably find a better alternative...
Punctuation
Exclamation marks
Generally avoid them. They can make you sound like you’re shouting! Or you’re angry!!!
Words
Foreign words
No need to italicise foreign words that have slipped into common usage (like curriculum, cliché or faux pas).
Punctuation
Hyphens
When to use them, when to leave them out
Names and titles
Job titles and team names
Use lower case for our job titles, and if you’re not sure.
Names and titles
Newspapers and magazines
In London, we italicise the names of newspapers and magazines. Like we do with the titles of books, films and tv programmes.
Numbers
Numbers
The dos and don'ts on writing numbers.
Spelling
Okay
We spell it okay. Not OK, O.K. or ok.
Our two cents
Old-fashioned words
They used to be stylish; they’re not any more. So change these dated words for their modern alternatives.
Numbers
Percent
We use per cent in the UK and percent in the US.
Numbers
Phone numbers
No brackets around area codes. So it’s 01234 567890 not (01234) 567890.
Grammar
Plurals
We know you know how to make something plural: usually, you add an ‘s’. But there's some weird exceptions.
Grammar
Pronouns
He, she, they. If you’re not sure of someone’s gender, use ‘they’ or ‘their’ as the pronoun.
Punctuation
Quotation marks
Use single rather than double quotes. But it’s okay to use double quotes when you’ve got a nice quote in a large font size.
Our two cents
Readability
There’s a readability checker right here on our website. It’ll tell you how easy your writing is to read, and show you how it compares to some famous books and authors.
Grammar
Split infinitives
Split away. We do it all the time in speech. There’s no grammatical reason why we can’t split infinitives in English.
Grammar
That, who or which?
‘That’ defines a thing (not a person). ‘Who’ defines a person (not a thing). ‘Which’ gives extra information, often in a clause with commas round it.
Names and titles
Titles of books, films, TV programmes
Use italics rather than quotes.
Grammar
Web and email addresses
No need to include the ‘www.’ (so our address is thewriter.com). Roman (which means no italics). Same with email addresses – no italics needed.
Numbers
Weights and measures
No space between the number and the measure such as 10kg, 800g, 9lbs, 7oz.
Names and titles
What to call The Writer
We're not a fussy bunch, but just so you know...
Spelling
Words we’re never quite sure how to spell
You’re not alone if these trip you up.
Our two cents
‘And’ and ‘but’
Why it's okay to start a sentence with a conjunction.