This article includes selected highlights from the comprehensive guide Conversation editors refer to – it is not intended to be exhaustive.
In Australia, we usually refer to The Economist style guide. We use single-spacing and British English for The Conversation Australia and UK, American English for The Conversation US.
Capitalisation
We capitalise the beginning of sentences but check titles and other instances.
No caps for “premier”, “prime minister”, “president”, “executive producer”, “artistic director”, “curator” and so on, because these are all common nouns. “Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, enjoys pub rock” or collectively “Previous popes have tripped on that rock” are all lower case.
When used as a form of address, a common noun is capped and becomes a title: President Obama, King Charles, Pope Leo, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley. But the king, the pope etc.
Initials in people’s and companies’ names take points (with a space between initials and name, but not between initials). In general, follow the practice preferred by people, companies and organisations in writing their own names.
We don’t include titles such as Professor or Dr in our articles or acronyms after people’s names for awards or honours.
No caps for “government” – Australian government, federal government, state government and the government – and “federal” is lower case when not part of an official title – “at state and federal levels” and “the federal government funds important research”. “Internet” is lowercase, even when you’re talking about the internet.
No caps for “first world war” or “second world war”, but abbreviations are WWI and WWII respectively.
Speaking of abbreviations, download speeds are in Mbps (not Mb/s) and Australia and the UK are metric, remember, so weight is in kg or tonnes – not lb or tons.
Use caps for our Sun, the Earth’s Moon and our Solar System, but other planets may have their own moons, and other stars their own star system.
For the Quran we follow AP style and use Quran instead of Koran. The Bible is capped.
Capitalise when you are referring to Australian Indigenous people or another particular group of indigenous people. No need to capitalise when used as a broad descriptor: “the plants are indigenous to the area”.
Words after colons are lower case, including after product names in headings. So, Health Check: why is my snot green?
‘Single quotation marks’ in headlines and subheads
If you need to quote someone or something, you should always use double quotation marks in text – regardless of whether it’s a direct quote or non-quote text – and single in headlines, subheads and captions.
Be sure punctuation falls “outside quotation marks” for partial quotes, and the same applies “at the end of a sentence”. There are two exceptions to this, though. If the quoted text follows a colon: “then the full stop (or question mark or whatever) is inside.” If the full quote stands alone, then it also includes punctuation. “In that case, it looks like this.”
If you’re quoting more than a sentence, it can be nice to indent it. If you do that:
Capitalise. You don’t need to use quotation marks and if you omit some text […] stick an ellipsis in square brackets. Don’t forget punctuation – you don’t want to leave people hanging.
It’s nice to use lists. If you need dot points:
- don’t capitalise
- no punctuation after list items
- except the final one.
Dashes, italics, links
For dashes in sentences, use an en dash surrounded by spaces – check these guys out – not a hyphen. You can get an en dash on a Mac by holding down the option key, then hitting the dash key. On a non-Mac keyboard, hold down Alt then hit dash. Hyphens are for hyphenated words, such as a devil-may-care attitude. We don’t use em dashes.
For ellipses, be sure there is a space … either side of the three dots, unless you’re denoting omitted text (see indented text above).
Italicise genus and species names – such as Homo sapiens – and non-English words such as laissez-faire unless they are commonly used in English. We don’t italicise works of art, book names or journals and they don’t need quotation marks.
When inserting links, don’t link punctuation such as “quotation marks” and full stops.
Letters, numbers and days
Spell out numbers from one to ten, and 11 upwards in digits. If you’re talking percentages, use the % symbol. Five, 5,000, 5 million.
In Australia and the United Kingdom, temperature is measured in Celsius – not Fahrenheit – and is denoted with °C, which you can find on the special characters list (via the keyboard icon above): the weather was a balmy 30°C today.
If a dollar amount is from Australia, refer to it in A$, such as A$7 Medicare co-payment. Similarly, if it’s US dollars, they’re US$ – such as US$3 million worth of chocolate. Do this throughout – sometimes one article will switch currencies multiple times.
Unless they’re postcodes, zip codes or years, numbers with four digits or more need commas. I watched 1,000 cat videos on YouTube in 2013.
If something is happening today, say “today” if the immediacy matters and we want to show we’re on the pace.
Otherwise:
less than a week ago – in recent days
more than a week ago but less than a month – in recent weeks
more than a month but less than six months – in recent months
more than six months – it’s no longer recently.
Only give the date or day if it’s necessary to the story, such as “the November 24 election”. If you have to give more info, the order is day first (Tuesday), then month (November), then date (24), then year (2018): November 24 2018.