SSRU housestyle guidelines

[Prepared by Ann from author guidelines for the Open University Press, Oxford University Press, Policy Press, and RoutledgeFalmer, 2 April 2003]

Abbreviations: Don't use full stops for acronyms, e.g. UK, USA, WHO, ESRC. Spell out abbreviations in full the first time they're used, with the abbreviation in brackets (e.g. 'Medical Research Council (MRC)'). Titles such as 'Dr', 'Ms' etc don't need fullstops either. Ampersands ('&') should not be used in journal titles etc. Use fullstop for 'vol.' but not 'vols' and 'ed.' but not 'eds' and for both 'p.' and 'pp.'.

Acts: The date should come before the Act (e.g. 1990 Community Care Act). An Act has capital letters.

Alphabetical order: M, Mac then Mc.

Capitalization: Avoid overuse of capital letters. Proper names need an initial capital letter (e.g. Murphy's law). Capitals are used to distinguish the specific from the general (e.g. 'one local health authority' but 'Exeter District Health Authority'. Only the first letter of the first word in a heading should be capitalized.

Dates: Are written thus: 1 January 1988. A range of dates is written: 1988-1989 etc. Decades don't have an apostrophe (1990s); 50BC, AD10, mid-1980s. Months have capital letters (March, May) but seasons don't (summer, spring). Centuries are spelled out: 'nineteenth-century education' (not ''19th-century education') and 'in the twentieth century' (not 'in the 20th century').

Hyphenation: Be clear and consistent in using hyphens, e.g. '24-year-old'; 'short-term findings'. Consult the Concise Oxford Dictionary when uncertain.

Non-discriminatory/sensitive language: Don't use 'man' to mean humanity. When reference to both sexes is intended, try to find alternatives, for example 'chair' not 'chairman', 'police officer' not 'policeman'. Use the plural 'they' to avoid 'he/she', which can be clumsy; this can be used as a singular pronoun (e.g. 'People swimming after midnight do so at their own risk'). Words such as 'disabled' and 'elderly' shouldn't be used as collective nouns; instead say 'disabled people', 'older people' etc. Don't use 'American' to refer to the USA - 'American' includes both North and South America.

Numbers: Spell out in the text numbers up to, and including, nine, and express larger numbers as figures. Exceptions are lists of numbers (e.g. 'the figures were 104, 57 and 9') and indefinite numbers (e.g. 'three or four items'; 'several hundred'). Spelt out numbers such as 'twenty-one' are hyphenated. Figures should be spelt out at the beginning of sentences (e.g. 'Nine women made dinner...' not '9 women made dinner').

Punctuation: Use a comma before 'and' and 'or' in lists of more than two items: 'red, white, or blue'; 'James, Roberts, and Dodge' (but 'James and Roberts', no comma). Don't put any punctuation at the end of a heading (except for a question mark if needed).

Quotation marks: Use single quotation marks only, except for a quotation within a quotation, where double quotation marks should be used. If material of more than five or six lines is quoted, it should be indented without quotation marks, with a line space above and below it to set it off from the surrounding text.

References: See separate SSRU document for style guidelines (Appendix Q of the SSRU handbook). Note that when there are multiple entries for a particular author, these should be in ascending date order. Where there are multiple entries for the same, first-named author with varying co-authors, these should be listed in ascending order of number of co-authors, thus:

'Smith 1980
Smith 1989
Smith and Roberts 1987
Smith and Roberts 1995
Smith, Roberts and Young 1985
Smith, Roberts, Young and Dodge 1982.'

Spelling: Use English not American spelling, following the Concise Oxford Dictionary. This means generally '-ize' rather than '-ise' endings. The general rule is to use '-ize', '-ization' rather than '-ise' '-isation' where alternatives exist. Exceptions include: 'supervise', 'exercise', 'surmise', 'franchise', 'analyse', and citations from works which themselves use American spellings. Note also that the English spelling convention is 'randomised' not 'randomized' as in the American spelling. The general rule of following the Concise Oxford Dictionary gives e.g. 'adviser' not 'advisor', 'biased' not 'biassed', 'focused' not 'focussed', 'fetus' not 'foetus'.

Tables and Figures: Any item that has any drawing at all on it (including arrows and boxes) is called a figure, even if it contains a lot of text. Every table and figure needs an explanatory heading. Both tables and figures are usually numbered by chapter (e.g. table 1.1 is the first table in chapter 1, figure 2.1 is the first figure in chapter 2).

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS DOCUMENT CAN ALSO BE FOUND ON THE R: DRIVE, IN THE PUBLICATIONS FOLDER, NAMED SSRU HOUSESTYLE.