Writing Style Guide

Academic and non-academic programs

When writing about academic programs, use the full name of the program at first mention (e.g. Bachelor of Commerce). If appropriate, and if the reader will understand, you can then refer to the program’s abbreviated form (e.g. BCom). Never use full stops in program abbreviations.

Always write out dual degree titles in full (e.g. Bachelor of Journalism/Bachelor of Arts).

Use an apostrophe for bachelor’s degree and master’s degree and only use initial capitals when writing the full title of a degree.

Similarly, use lower case when referring generally to a program/degree.

Capitalise the names of faculties, institutes and schools.

Academic periods

All specific, official study periods on the academic calendar should be capitalised, using numerals rather than words when referencing the period.

However, use lowercase when a term is being used generically or descriptively—that is, when talking about semesters in general rather than a specific, named one.

Alumni year formats.

Note the use of the en dash to indicate a span of time in these examples.

Blue Dogs

This is a quirky phrase that is unique to Emmanuel. It demonstrates fraternity to the outside world and is typically used in competitive contexts: barracking, marking territory and in ICC contexts (but not just sport). It should be capitalised.

Building names

Capitalise the official names of campus buildings, wings, rooms and spaces, such as Emmanuel College Chapel, Stevens Bonnin Room and Gibson Wing. We capitalise the Quad, as it is a unique and special space on our campus.

Do not capitalise the word such as ‘room’, ‘wing’, ‘building’ or ‘campus’ unless it forms part of an official name.

General facilities such as the dining hall, kitchen servery, reception, laundry, music rooms, basketball court and wellbeing space should be presented in lowercase.

Some rooms at Emmanuel College are commonly referred to by their acronym.

In external communication, opt to use the full name once with the acronym in brackets, then employ the acronym for subsequent mentions. The acronym can be always used in internal communication to students due to familiarity with these campus rooms.

Shorthand references to Emmanuel College should use an initial capital, however the initial capital is not used for generic references.

Use capitalisation for job titles in body text and non-body text when referring to a specific staff member or when the title is used in place of or alongside their name.

Use lowercase when referring to job titles in a general or generic sense or when referring to a group of staff members within a team. This approach recognises staff roles while maintaining clarity and readability in broader references.

Include titles when referencing a Professor/The Honourable/Dr and note that a doctorate qualification is indicated by either “Dr” before the person’s name or “, PhD” after the person’s name, not both.

Note that ‘The Honourable’, ‘Professor’ and ‘Associate Professor’ should be spelled out in full and not abbreviated except on rare occasions where space is limited.

Include honorifics and postnominals if applicable and thereafter, use the person’s title and last name.

If it is necessary to give a title to a non-academic rank holder, use ‘Mr’ and ‘Ms’ rather than ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’, unless otherwise requested.

Old Dogs

This is another quirky phrase that is unique to Emmanuel and is used by students when referring to alumni. It is to be used in an affectionate (and respectful) way, typically when targeting content to current students. Alumni above the age of 35 would not consider themselves to be Blue Dogs or Old Dogs. It should be capitalised.

The full title of student engagement team should be used in all student-facing internal and external communication (both formal and informal), with the acronyms SET and SMT only to be used for internal staff communication.

When referring to the team of residential experience officers, lowercase is to be used in the first instance with ‘REOs’ in parentheses after, and ‘REOs’ used for subsequent mentions.

Students and residents

The terms students and residents are both acceptable, with students preferred (as an inclusive term for the whole community), depending on the context and content.

Non-residents are called associate members, and this term should not be capitalised. Terms such as undergraduates and postgradutes should also be written in lowercase.

When referring to Emmanuel College students/residents, use men and women or young men and young women, not boys and girls.

The word ‘freshers’ is an informal term used by students and should be avoided in formal publications, where the term first-year student is the appropriate alternative. Note when referring to the year level of a student, these should be in lowercase with a hyphen.

Using Emmanuelians to refer to students is acceptable and has been adopted as the title for the annual student publication.

The University of Queensland

The full name The University of Queensland (capitalise ‘The’ even in the middle of a sentence) should be used once followed by ‘UQ’ in brackets. Use UQ for subsequent mentions.

Shorthand references to The University of Queensland should use an initial capital without capitalising ‘the’. However, the initial capital is not used for generic references.

Web, email and social media

Use lowercase for URLs and email addresses and forgo the inclusion of ‘http://’ and ‘www.’ when writing a web address. Also omit the final forward slash at the end of the web address.

Don’t include hyperlinks in headings.

When writing a URL in a sentence, edit the sentence to avoid the URL being at the end of a sentence. Where this isn’t possible, use a full stop at the end of the sentence, even if it’s after a URL.

Here is a list of our social media handles for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Capitalisation

Emmanuel College uses minimal capitalisation. When using a generic term in place of a proper noun, it is not capitalised, even when referring to a specific person or organisation.

Exceptions to this rule

Use ‘the College’ when referring to Emmanuel and ‘the University’ when referring to The University of Queensland.

We choose minimal capitalisation for headings.

Collective nouns and names

Examples of collective words include committee, crowd, family, government and team. Emmanuel College is presented as a singular entity in our writing.

Point of view

At Emmanuel College, we aim to write in the first- and second-person voice where possible. This helps us build familiarity and warmth into our writing.

• First person is the ‘I/we’ point of view
• Second person is the ‘you’ point of view
• Third person is the ‘he/she/it/they’ point of view

Compare these examples for an illustration of the tonal differences that point of view can create.

Tense

In English, there are three main tenses: past, present and future. Across long pieces of writing, it is easy to slip in and out of a consistent tense. Rigorously edit and rewrite your work to avoid confusing your reader with mixed tense.

That/which confusion

Which is used where the linked phrase is optional and provides additional information and That is used where the linked phrase is essential to the meaning (the bicycle that was stolen is in the storeroom).

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

It is convention to use the full term ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ in the first instance before introducing shorter terms such as ‘Indigenous’, ‘First Peoples’, ‘Indigenous Australian peoples’ or ‘First Nations’. These shorter terms can help to avoid repetition in your writing but note the use of capitals in all instances. We choose to avoid the abbreviations ‘ATSI’ and ‘A&TSI’.

It is appropriate to identify an Aboriginal person by their clan if it is known.

Our Acknowledgement of Country is included as an appendix to this guide.

Ampersands

The ampersand (&) is a useful device when space is tight and an abbreviation is helpful. However, it should not be used in general text when space is generally not at a premium. Instead, ampersands should be reserved for headlines, subheads and captions only. Avoid the use of ampersands in job titles.

Care should be taken to use the ampersand when it forms part of an organisation’s name.

Apostrophes

An apostrophe is not necessary when a plural noun is descriptive rather than possessive.

Decades and acronyms should not include an apostrophe.

Colons and semicolons

Use a colon to:

• draw attention to the text that follows
• introduce a string of items in a sentence where the string follows an independent clause
• introduce lists and block quotes.

The semicolon is used to:

• link two closely related sentences that develop an idea
• introduce clarity into sentences with a complex list of items, although it’s worth considering a bulleted list in this instance.

Note that semicolons are not used at the end of each item in a list of bullet points.

A comma is not used after salutation or closure of a letter or email.

Avoid using a comma between a job title and the person’s name.

However, if the title comes after the name, a comma pair is used.

Avoid using the Oxford comma (also called the serial comma), which is placed before the words ‘and’/‘or’ in a list of three or more items. Note in the following example the appropriate absence of a comma before the word ‘and’.

On occasion, an Oxford comma may be required to provide clarity.

Dates and times

In Australia we use the standard format (day, month, year).

For times of day, use a colon between the hour and the minutes to avoid confusion with a decimal number and do not include a space between the time and 'am' or 'pm'. 

Avoid the use of two zeros to denote the full hour.

The use of 12am and 12pm can be confusing, so choose midnight instead of 12am, and choose noon or midday instead of 12pm.

Use an en dash for spans of time and dates and include a space either side of the span.

Full stops and shortened forms/abbreviations

Full stops are not required at the end of shortened forms.

Be mindful that some shortened forms, especially academic and professional titles, are not well known. If in doubt, it’s best to write these titles out in full.

Avoid using the shortened forms unless the material is for internal use.

A hyphen is used to link words and parts of a single word. However, we omit hyphens when adjectives occur after the noun.

An en dash is used to mark a span between numbers and names.

If you introduce a span or range with words such as from or between, use the word ‘to’ instead of an en dash.

An em dash is used when amplifying the subject of a sentence. There are no spaces either side of an em dash.

Italics

Italics are used for:

• titles of books, periodicals and journals, works of art, plays and poems, films, television and radio programs, legislation and musical compositions
• foreign words and phrases that are not commonly used in English.

We do not italicise text for emphasis; bold weight may be used sparingly for this purpose.

Type 1: flows like one long sentence. If each dot point consists of, or begins with, a sentence fragment, no initial capital is used, and a full stop is placed only at the end of the final dot point. Semicolons are not used after each dot point.

Type 2: comprises a series of sentences. Capitalisation and punctuation for bullet points follows normal sentence rules; every point starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop.

Numbers

There are several views on writing numbers in text. In Australia, the style is to generally write out the words zero and one but to use numerals for all other numbers. The exception is when the number begins the sentence.

For sports competitions we use abbreviations but for legibility reasons we avoid using superscripts.

We avoid the use of parentheses and dashes in phone numbers. Instead, use the following formatting and spaces for separating area and dialling codes.

Quotations and direct quotes

Avoid using synonyms for ‘said’ unless your piece is becoming unduly repetitive.

Always include a quote exactly as written or said by the source, unless they have approved any changes. It is appropriate to reduce the word count of quotes by including an ellipsis ( … ) to indicate missing content if the meaning isn’t altered. According to the Australian style, we add a space either side of an ellipsis when it is used in the middle of a sentence.

To clarify information within a quote, use square brackets.

Single quotation marks are used for:

• quoting text from another source
• quoting or citing the titles of chapters, lectures and journal articles within text
• referencing technical terms in non-technical writing
• nicknames, slang or colloquial terms
• highlighting a quote within a heading.

Double quotation marks are used for quoting direct speech.

For a double quotation—that is, a quotation within a quotation—use single quotation marks inside double quotation marks.

The globalisation of information is leading to an increase in the use of Americanisms. Take care to avoid these in common words.

You can reset the default spelling to Australian English in Microsoft apps. Instructions for doing so are included as an appendix to this guide.

International words should be used in their original forms to respect the culture from which they are taken.

This rule is especially important for people’s names.

Archaic or literary words are those that have been replaced in modern writing with simpler versions offering an identical meaning.