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The Writer’s 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 capitalization and formatting dates.
- Grammar
Abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms
Make sure everyone's familiar with them. Otherwise, spell it out.
- Punctuation
Ampersands (&)
You'll probably only use them if you're working for M&S.
- Our two cents
‘And’ and ‘but’
Why it's okay to start a sentence with a conjunction.
- 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
Parentheses
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.)