Guidelines for Contributors

When providing articles or reports for inclusion in this website, or when uploading information onto your own pages through the SIGBI Clubs system, please adhere to the following style guidelines. There are two major reasons for producing these guides:

1. To maintain a consistent feel across the site, for example in the use of apostrophes, abbreviations and capital letters.
2. To maintain a high level of accessibility by using simple language and clear headings and links. This makes the site more accessible to people with learning difficulties, people whose first language is not English, and people who access the web using speech synthesisers.

Abbreviations

Do not use full stops in abbreviations, or spaces between initials: SIGBI, SI, Miss AA Brown, etc

Spell out less well known abbreviations in brackets on first mention. It is not necessary to spell out well known ones, such as UK, UN, BBC, FBI, AIDS.

Avoid using contractions such as aren't, can't, won't, isn't, as this can give an overly informal impression to otherwise serious or professional writing.

Apostrophes

Plural nouns take an apostrophe before the s, e.g. children's games, gentlemen's outfitter, old folk's home

The possessive in words and names ending in s normally takes an apostrophe followed by a second s (Jones's, James's), but be guided by pronunciation and use the plural apostrophe where it helps: Mephistopheles' rather than Mephistopheles's

Use apostrophes in phrases such as 12 years' imprisonment and 200 hours' community service

Do not use apostrophes when pluralising abbreviations, e.g. NGOs and GCSEs, not NGO's and GCSE's

Capital letters

In general, for acts and reports, and official bodies, use upper case when using the full proper name, but lower case when referring to them with a single word, or when speaking in general terms, e.g. "the Soroptimist International of Sometown Annual Report on Health Management in the Regions" but "the report states...", and "a report on health management is needed". Also, use the Federation Conference but the conference, the Chairman of Finance, and the Finance Committee, but the chairman, and the committee, the Federation Office, but the office. Similarly for departments and commissions, e.g. the Department of Transport, but the transport department.

"The" never forms part of an organisation's or group's title, or place names, so should not be capitalised in the middle of a sentence, e.g. the Beatles, the Times, the Waggon and Horses, the Norfolk Broads. The opposite is true for books, films, poems or television shows where "the" can form the first word of a title, in which case it should be capitalised, e.g. The X-Files, The Lord of the Rings.

For Soroptimist-specific words, we use the following conventions: lower case for aims, objectives, national, international, club, awareness, advocacy, action; upper case for Programme Action, Region (when referring to a Soroptimist Region) but region (when referring to a geographical region), National Association, Federation.

Use SI Sometown, not the Sometown Club. When referring to a club, use the singular verb, e.g. "SI Sometown celebrated its 30th anniversary", or use "members" with the plural, e.g. "SI Sometown members are very pleased to welcome".

On this website we use the convention of referring to pages within the website using capital letters, e.g. "the Terms and Conditions page", while referring to the terms and conditions themselves we use lower case. Similarly for "the Important Links page" but "important links". We use "website" (one word, no capital initial), "e-mail" (hyphenated) and "internet" (no capital initial).

Jobs should generally be in lower case; use capital letters to distinguish people's titles from their job description, e.g. Federation President Ann Garvie, but the SIGBI president.

British government departments, agencies, commissions and public bodies take capital initials, e.g. the Home Office, while government departments of other countries take lower case, e.g. the Russian foreign ministry.

Compass points take lower case for geographical or political areas, e.g. the south of England, western Europe, south-east Asia, but take capital initials when they form part of the name of a country or place, e.g. the East End, Middle East, North America.

Dates and numbers

Spell out the numbers from one to nine; use integers from 10 to 999,999; then use million or billion.

Say "2003", not "the year 2003"; for a span of years use a hyphen, 2003-4, 1999-2003, not 2003/4.

Hyphens

Whenever you are unsure about hyphenation of compounds check in a modern dictionary. Some common examples are: fund-raising, lifespan, workplace, worldwide.

Do not use a hyphen between an adverb and the adjective or verb it modifies, e.g. a hotly disputed penalty, a constantly changing website, genetically modified food. Do use a hyphen to avoid ambiguity, e.g. to distinguish "large-print paper " from "large print paper"

Often a single word, or hyphenated version, should be used for a noun which has developed from a two-word verbal phrase, e.g. castoff (noun) cast off (verb), dropout (noun) drop out (verb), handout (noun) hand out (verb), log-in (noun) log in (verb), set-up (noun) set up (verb).

Half takes a hyphen when used adjectivally, e.g. a half-eaten sandwich, well-established principles, but not when used adverbially, e.g. the sandwich looked half eaten, the principle is well established.

Do use hyphens to form compound adjectives, e.g. three-week journey, four-year project.

Other punctuation and grammar

Use commas around a person's name to indicate there is only one person in the position, e.g. "the Federation president, Ann Garvie, said" (only one person in the job), but "the former Federation president Lynn Dunning said".

Use commas, brackets and semi-colons rather than dashes to break up sentences.

When writing a bulleted list, if it forms part of a sentence, place commas at the end of each item, and end the penultimate item with "and". If each item forms a complete sentence in itself, begin each item with a capital letter and end with a full stop.

That defines, which informs: this is the house that Jack built, but this house, which Jack built, is now falling down

Avoid missing out "the": say the conference agreed to do something, not "conference agreed"; the government has to, not "government has to".

Quotations

When quoting someone else's words in the middle of an article, use double quotes, with single quotes for quoted words within that section. Place full points and commas inside the quotes for a complete quoted sentence; otherwise the point comes outside

If the quotation spans more than one paragraph, open each paragraph with double quotes, but close only the final paragraph with double quotes.

Signing off

When providing a news report, please sign off at the end with your name, position and/or club and date in the following format:

Ann Brown
President, SI Example
12 May 2004

Unless it is clear from the title of the page what your position is, for example the President's Message page ends:

Ann Garvie
May 2004

Simple language

The W3C Website Accessibility Guidelines recommends a number of writing style suggestions. The most important of these are:

1. Use clear informative headings so that users can scan a page quickly for information rather than reading it in detail.
2. Use link phrases that make sense when read out of context or as part of a series of links so that users can browse by jumping from link to link.
3. State the topic of the sentence or paragraph at the beginning (this is called "front-loading"). This will help people who are scanning visually, and also people skimming from paragraph to paragraph with speech synthesizers. They read or listen to just enough words to determine whether the current chunk of information interests them. If the main idea of the paragraph is in the middle or at the end, speech users may have to listen to most of the document before finding what they want.
4. Limit each paragraph to one main idea.
5. Use common words, e.g. "begin" rather than "commence" or "now" not "currently", "said" not "commented".
6. Use active rather than passive phrases.

Spelling

Use English spelling, e.g. adviser, realise, colour, fragile, centre, programme (but "program" for computer programs).

Except where these form part of a name of a body or company, when you should use the name the company or body uses themselves, e.g. United Colors of Benetton.