Our style guide

This guide is based on the Yahoo! Style Guide.

What’s in this guide:

• Our voice – write accessible and engaging posts by using our tone of voice
• Spelling – use US English
• Be inclusive, write for the world – ensure your posts are easily understood
• Punctuate proficiently – tips and tricks
• Abbreviate, capitalize, and treat titles consistently – a guide to our style
• Apply a consistent style for numbers – a guide to our style
• Word list – from A-Z, how we write

Our voice

Everyone’s writing style will be different. But there is a certain tone that we’d like to strike on the blogs which translates across different styles of writing. This is summarized with examples below:

Human

Human sounds like when you’re talking to another person. It’s likely to sound less formal than the style you’d normally write in. You might use more contractions – I’ve, they’re, you’d, it’s. You might occasionally start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’. Human also sounds like a real person, with opinions and passion for their subject.

An easy way to tell if you sound human – read what you’ve written back to yourself and see whether or not it’s something you would say to someone in a conversation. (You can also read some tips in this Forbes article and this article on NextScientist.com)

Knowledgeable

Knowledgeable sounds like someone who is confident in their understanding and opinions. You might reference your previous experience in the area you’re writing about, or tell stories that explain your background in a topic.

An easy way to tell if you sound knowledgeable – read the blog back, does it sound confident and with clearly expressed views? Does the reader know why they should be listening to you?

Spirited

Spirited sounds like someone who is enthusiastic about their subject and determined to make sure that the reader feels the same. Let your interest in the subject shine through and give it a bit of personality.

An easy way to tell if you sound spirited – read the blog back and ask yourself ‘can I tell that the person who’s written this is interested in the subject and wants me to be excited about it?’ If the answer is no, go back through the blog and think about how you can work some of that in. (Our writing guide can help with this.)

A quick disclaimer on tone of voice

Of course, different blogs on different subjects will inevitably call for a different balance of the elements in our tone of voice. A blog about Valentine’s Day is the perfect place to play up the ‘spirited’ element, while a blog about a new open access mandate calls for more of the ‘knowledgeable’ element. No matter what, we should always sound human.

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Spelling

In product names and website copy – and on the blogs – we use American spellings (anesthesiology, anemia, catalog, color, etc). Always make sure you check this before sending posts for review.

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Be inclusive, write for the world

When writing for the blogs, always remember your audience. We’re aiming the majority of our blogs at ‘interested lay readers’ and scientists (but non-specialist).

So what does this mean? Well, essentially we want people with a knowledge of science to be able to understand all of our blogs, no matter what research field they are in. So for example, a physicist should be able to understand an article on the microbiome, and a biologist should be able to understand a post on medical ethics.

We’re also a global organization with a global audience, so it’s worth remembering that not everyone reading a post will be reading it in their first language or will know about things happening in a certain country.

For example, it’s pretty safe to assume that everyone reading will know what DNA is, but don’t be so sure that they will know the NHS or ISRCTN. With all this in mind, try to:

• Keep sentences short and simple
• Avoid using technical language and jargon – write the blog in the style of an opinion piece you would find in a high brow newspaper – it doesn’t have to be dumbed-down, just clear.
• Avoid using initials and acronyms, and always explain them if you do – unless it’s so commonly used that it’s likely to be understood by a wide range of audiences. And try to avoid using too many as they can make the page look messy.
• Avoid being too location-specific – while it’s fine to write about things that are only relevant to one country – especially if you can show how it applies to others – it’s important to remember that not everyone reading the post will be from the same place as you.

Example:

Before: The journal, which has already made a considerable impact here, will be relaunched as an open access journal in January by the new Editor-in-Chief, with the hope of reaching foreign markets.

After: The journal will be relaunched in January by the new Editor-in-Chief. It has already made a considerable impact in the UK, and hopes to reach new countries by becoming open access.

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Punctuate proficiently

Keep punctuation simple. Some rules to remember:

• Uncluttered and easy-to-read sentences work best online. If you find yourself using comma after comma after comma, try making two (or even three) short sentences out of that long one.
• Avoid overusing exclamation points. Your words should be so clear and strong that they don’t require extra emphasis.
• Use the serial or ‘Oxford’ comma. In a series consisting of three or more elements, separate the elements with commas. E.g. Our blogs are written by our staff, Editors, and authors.
• Use single quote marks to refer to words, titles, or to indicate irony, sarcasm or nonstandard usage. For example:
  • The sentence contains two instances of ‘friend’, one misspelled, the other spelled correctly.
  • The paper suggests that ‘sugar-sweetened beverages’ are bad for our health.
  • The US military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy was introduced in 1993.
• Use double quote marks for quoting speech. For example:
  • “It’s an unexpected finding,” said Dr. Watson, lead author on the paper. “We really didn’t think that Holmes could have survived a fall of that height.”
  • Professor Moriarty said, “it’s been a complete surprise to me too, believe me.”
• Semicolons can be used to separate related independent clauses (that is, clauses that can stand alone as separate sentences), if they are not joined by a conjunction (such as ‘and’ or ‘but’).

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Abbreviate, capitalize, and treat titles consistently

Abbreviations

No matter how familiar an abbreviation or acronym may seem to you, some visitors – particularly from other countries – may be unfamiliar with the term.

• If the shortened form of the word may be unfamiliar, spell it out the first time it’s used. g. Many sites now support Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a method of accessing content online.

Abbreviations and acronyms don’t need full stops/periods between them. So, it’s USA, not U.S.A.

Capitalization and titles

We use sentence case for titles and headings on the blogs. This means:

• Capitalize the first word and any other words that are normally capitalized (such as proper nouns). For example:
  • How can tagging a hammerhead shark help save the species?
  • Are carbon nanotubes the next asbestos?
  • The long-lasting impact of El Niño on child growth in Peru

Take a look at our word list to check whether certain words related to our business should or shouldn’t be capitalized.

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Apply a consistent style for numbers

We use numbers a lot in our blogs, so it’s important we keep a consistent style. Below are some simple rules to follow:

• Spell out numbers below 10, use numerals for 10 and above. With a few exceptions:
  • In headlines, particularly in the number is important, it may be better to use the numeral
  • If a passage contains two or more numbers that refer to the same category of information and one of them is 10 or higher, use numerals for all of them. g. The delegation included 3 women and 11 men.
  • When referring to the age of a person or animal.
• Express large and very large numbers in numerals followed by ‘million’ or ‘billion’, etc. g. 5 billion people, 7 million liters.
• If expressing a number greater than 999 in numerals, use a comma. Except in page numbers, addresses, or years. g. 1,240 people took part in the study
• Avoid starting a sentence with a number. Except in a headline.
• Write dates in the US style. g. The journal is launching on January 22, 2015.
• When possible, use decimals instead of fractions. ‘1.5’ rather than ‘1-1/2’
• When using fractions that stand alone (without a whole number) spell them out and hyphenate. g. In three-quarters of cases
• Use the ‘%’ sign, rather than spelling out ‘percent’.

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Word list

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – XYZ