Writing standards and guidelines

Contemporary usage means that full stops are no longer necessary after abbreviations, acronyms or contractions.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations are formed by omitting letters from the end of a word. Full stops and other punctuation marks are not used in most abbreviations but are still preferred in shortened Latin words:

Acronyms

Acronyms are formed from the initial letters of words (whether the result is pronounceable as a word or as a series of letters). Full stops are not necessary between initials.

Write the name in full first with the acronym in brackets after. The acronym can then be used in the content.

eg Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI)

CeRDI staff were honoured with an award...

Contractions

Contractions are formed by omitting letters from the middle of a word. Full stops are not necessary.

Symbols

Do not use @ in place of 'at' unless it refers to a unit price or within an electronic address.

Avoid using ampersands (&) in body text (unless it is within a specific title name). Use 'and' instead.

Campuses

When referring to a specific campus a capital 'C' should be used. When referring to more than one campus, use the lower case 'c'.

Do not refer to campuses by their street names (with the exceptions of Camp Street and Gillies Street campuses).

Our campuses

• Camp Street Campus
• Berwick Campus
• Gillies Street Campus
• Gippsland Campus (not Churchill)
• Mt Helen Campus
• SMB Campus
• Wimmera Campus (not Horsham)

Areas our campuses are located

• Ballarat (Mt Helen, SMB)
• Gippsland
• Wimmera

To assist readability, headings need to follow a structured hierarchy, with a clear distinction between heading sizes. Headings should be descriptive so they provide the reader with a suggestion of what will follow, allowing scan-reading. Headings should be aligned to the left.

Our headings should be written in Sentence case - only the first word and proper nouns have initial capitals.

Headings should not:

• be questions
• end in a full stop or colon
• be hyperlinks
• be written in all capitals

Formal titles and proper nouns should be written with a capital letter at the start of each word.

Terms often incorrectly capitalised: international, staff, students, bachelor's degree, higher education, lecturer, teacher

Academic degrees are lowercase when spelled out:

• bachelor's degree
• science degree
• master's degree
• doctoral degree
• doctorate
  *Note the plural form: bachelor's degrees; master's degrees; doctoral degrees.

Capitalise Federation degrees when referring to them by their proper name:

• Bachelor of Science

Names of majors, minors, concentrations, and programs are written in lowercase within text.

We use Australian spelling, which is often different to American or British. Some common examples are listed here, but if you are unsure check the Macquarie Dictionary.

Use your spell-check.

Tip: You may need to set the language in Microsoft Word to English (Australian) to stop it automatically changing your words to US spelling.

If you are referring to a specific organisation or publication, or using a direct quote, always use the original spelling.

In general, spell numbers up to nine and use numerals for numbers 10 and above. Exceptions to this include:

• references to headings or expressions from elsewhere that use numerals, for example, ‘chapter 5’, ‘appendix 2’, ‘Year 12’, ‘semester 1’
• text that is largely statistical or mathematical in nature, for example in a table, in which case the reader is aided by consistent use of numerals
• numbers accompanied by symbols or measurements, for example, ‘8°C’, ‘3 km’, ‘10 am’
• the beginning of sentences, where numbers should always be expressed in words.

Dates and times

Dates are written with no punctuation. Don't use 'th' or 'nd' etc after numbers.

Times are written with full stops, not colons, and a space before 'am' or 'pm'.

It is acceptable to abbreviate months and days to three characters
Eg Apr, Sep, Wed, Fri

Telephone

To make them easier to read, telephone numbers should be broken into chunks. They should not break over two lines

If content is directed at an international audience the format should be +613 5327 9363.

If the items in your list are complete sentences, start each one with a capital letter and finish each with a full stop.

If the items in your list are not complete sentences, start each item with a lower-case letter. Don’t use commas or semicolons at the end of each item. Don’t use ‘and’ on the second-last item. Do use a full stop after the final item.

All items in a list must follow the same grammatical structure. You can check this by reading the introductory phrase and then each item to see if it makes sense.