Style guide for student recruitment communications
Please refer to the following guidelines which are standard for all UCL print and web-based student recruitment publications. Refer also to the UCL Audit Policy.
Please remember that all UCL publications (student recruitment or otherwise) must be produced using the UCL Corporate Identity – further information is available on the Corporate Identity website (UCL user id and password required).
Sample of frequently used terms in UCL student recruitment materials
| USE | DO NOT USE |
| UCL, university, institution | college, College |
| combined-studies | joint-degrees, combined-honours |
| single-subject | single-honours |
| degree programme | course |
| courses (for units) | modules |
| A level | A-level |
| IB Diploma | International Baccalaureate |
| coursework, fieldwork | course work, field work |
| Master’s degree | masters Degree |
| international student(s) | overseas student(s) |
| website | web site |
| www.url.com | http://www.url.com |
Capitalisation
- References to organisations should begin with a lower-case letter unless the title is given in full. For example: ‘The Department of Mathematics offers several degree programmes. Staff in the department specialise in...’
- Only use initial capitalisation for job roles when singular e.g. ‘Students will be assigned a Personal Tutor. All tutors...’
- Academic subjects begin with a lower-case letter unless part of a title. For example: ‘If you are interested in studying mathematics at UCL, a GCE A level in Mathematics is required.’
| USE | DO NOT USE |
| Master's degree | masters Degree |
| first-class Bachelor's degree | First Class Honours Degree |
| ACCESS course | access course |
| BSc degree | BSc Degree |
| the civil service, the military | the Civil Service, the Military |
Hyphenation
- All compound adjectives which precede a noun are hyphenated, unless they end in ‘ly’. For example: ‘a well-tuned instrument’ but a ‘finely tuned instrument’
- A prefix is not followed by a hyphen (e.g. use: multifaculty, postdoctoral, preclinical etc.)
- Use 'first-year courses' not 'first year courses'
- Do not substitute a hyphen (-) for an en-dash (–).
Numbers
- Numbers are spelled out up to ten unless they indicate the time of day (see below), and are represented numerically from 11 onwards unless they begin a sentence or identify a century (e.g. in the nineteenth century.....)
- Indicating percentage follows the same rule as above: e.g. two per cent, 15%
- Dates are by day/month/year: e.g. 15 March 2002
- To indicate time: e.g. 5.30 pm, 2.00 pm
Spelling
- Use -ise in preference to -ize for verbs (and their derivatives) where the sound is 'eyes'.
Punctuation
- Double quotation marks are used for direct quotes, otherwise use single quotation marks.
- Titles of books, journals, films, lectures and works of art are italicised, without quotation marks. Titles of articles within journals, newspapers etc. use single quotation marks and are not italicised.
- In a list, there is no comma before the ‘and’ preceding the last item in the list, unless that item is represented by a phrase which itself contains the word ‘and’. For example, ‘apples, pears and oranges’ is correct, as is ‘the French Society, the English Society, and the Greek and Latin Society’.
| USE | DO NOT USE |
| BA, BSc, MA, PhD | B.A., BS.c., M.A., Ph.D. |
| i.e., e.g. | ie, eg |
| Dr A Smith | Dr. A. Smith |
| CU (abbreviation for Course Unit) | c.u. |
Contact details
Contact details should always be provided for any publication (print or web). Where more than one form of contact is provided, they should be ordered as follows unless there is a specific reason for not doing so in any individual publication:
- Web
- Tel
Headings
These should also be consistent with the prospectuses using initial capitalisation only, rather than title case (e.g. 'Outside options' rather than 'Outside Options') However, watch out for examples where the heading includes the title of a course or programme (or other proper noun) as these will need to use title case for the name (e.g. 'Mathematics Education course' not 'Mathematics education course').
Degree programme listings
Undergraduate
These should be in the same order as the Undergraduate Prospectus i.e. alphabetically within:
- 'single-subject' followed by
- 'subject-with' followed by
- 'subject-and'
Where an MSci or MEng is available, this should be listed ahead of the BSc/BEng option.
Graduate
Notes to follow shortly. For now, submit copy as you prefer and PAMS will amend it as required.
Page last modified on 18 oct 10 12:00 by Samantha Martin
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