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This style guide has been created for all Ormiston Academies Trust staff, to ensure consistency across all OAT material, in order for the trust to present itself in a professional, considered and consistent manner.
As English can have variations in spelling and grammar, this guide should help answer any questions about what should be used where there is more than one option. The guide also covers some common mistakes.
Your first point of reference for style should be the guide below. However if you have any questions that are not adressed below, and if no members of the marketing and communications team are available, in many cases (although not all) the OAT style follows the Guardian and Observer style guide, therefore referring to this would be a safe alternative approach.
It should be noted that academies may have their own “house styles”, which you should adopt if writing a piece on behalf of an academy, or from an academy’s point of view. However, if there is no such style, or if in doubt, you should use the OAT style.
It is fully expected that the OAT style guide will be added to over time, so if you feel that further clarification is needed for any of the definitions below, or that something is missing from the guide, please let us know via email, at marketing@ormistonacademies.co.uk.
Whether you are writing copy for internal or external use, always keep language clear and concise. Keep your sentences short and get to the point quickly. Always write out initialisms in full the first time you use them. Replace long words with short ones where you can. Avoid jargon and technical terms as far as possible – but if you must use them, explain them. What might be obvious to you, might not be obvious to your readers; never assume.
Style entries are listed below, alphabetically.
#iwill is all lower case, however #WeWill should have capital W’s.
not A Level, A-Level or A level.
For consistency, academic years should be written in the format 2023–24. You should use an en rule to express the date range. You should not use a slash character, nor should you use a hyphen.
See hyphens and en rules.
The words academy and academies should only be capitalised when they form part of the name of an organisation or academy.
For example:
Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy opened its new library last Thursday.
or
The academy opened its new library last Thursday.
but not:
The Academy opened its new library last Thursday.
See also: Trust or trust?
There is no expectation for you to use the word academy to replace the word school in every instance (apart from where it is used as part of a name). When writing an article for example, multiple uses of the word academy can often look forced and clumsy. It is perfectly acceptable to use the word school instead, in order to vary your terminology and avoid this perceived clumsiness. For example, and in particular, you should feel free to use the word school where it forms part of an already familiar term, such as school meals, school office or school day.
Take a deep breath… here goes!
In a broad sense an acronym is effectively a word formed from the first, or first few, letters of the most important words in a name or phrase. An acronym is usually treated and pronounced as a word (NASA, NATO, scuba, Ofsted).
An initialism is most commonly an abbreviation formed from a series of initials and usually pronounced as individual letters (FBI, BBC, USA, DfE).
Both acronyms and initialisms in common use generally have their own particular rules about how they are written, whether they are all caps or a mixture of caps and lower case letters. Commonly-known acronyms and initialisms, such as those shown above, do not need to be written out in full. Indeed, some may be less well-known if they are… do you know what UNESCO stands for? You may do, of course, but the point is that it is more widely known by its acronym than by its full name.
Some acronyms and initialisms often used in education are detailed in this guide.
When creating initialisms or acronyms of names or phrases that are not commonly known you should write them out in full the first time they are used, then add the abbreviation in brackets immediately after:
“Ormiston Academies Trust (OAT) is one of the largest multi-academy trusts in England.”
You can then go on to use just the abbreviation for the rest of your piece.
Importantly, many initialisms and acronyms are jargon, which is to say they are expressions used by a particular profession or group, and which may be unfamiliar to others. Education is an area where jargon is very common, so think about your audience and whether they are likely to know what you’re talking about. Just because we know what OSSMA is, doesn’t mean everyone will.
And of course, there are exceptions to every rule.
not advisor.
a 14-year-old girl; a 14-year-old; 14 years old.
An ampersand (&) should only be used in the following circumstances: to avoid ambiguity, to save characters in a social media post where character numbers are limited (but only where absolutely necessary), or where it forms part of an already-established name or phrase, such as where a company uses it in its own name, eg. P&O.
An ampersand should not be used in any other circumstance.
In almost all cases, you should write out the word “and” in full. It’s not hard… it’s only three letters, after all!
Never use a plus symbol as a quick way to write “and”. Avoid using an ampersand other than for the exceptions stated under ampersand in this guide.
The apostrophe has two purposes.
Omission
for example, when contracting cannot to can’t.
Possession
for example, Ian’s book or my parents’ house.
It is incorrect to use an apostrophe to mark a plural, so: Jenny brought two apple’s to school is incorrect.
However, an important exception to this is when pluralising single letters. For example,
Mind your p’s and q’s
would be almost unreadable without the apostrophes, so they are necessary in cases like this.
Do not use an apostrophe when pluralising or abbreviating years. So: the 1990s and not the 1990’s, and the 90s and not the ’90s. It is common in American English to use an apostrophe in the first example, but it is not done in British English.
Items in a list of bullet points should have no punctuation at the end, other than a question mark where the item naturally requires one.
If the items in a list of bullet points form whole sentences in their own right, each should start with a capital letter, but still have no punctuation at the end.
If the items in a list of bullet points do not form whole sentences, each should start with a lower case letter.
For consistency and neatness, wherever possible you should avoid mixing items in a bullet point list that are both whole sentences and not whole sentences.
If you have items in a list of bullet points which form multiple sentences, you should consider rewriting. Your text might sound better written simply as paragraphs, and bullet points may be unnecessary and unwieldy.
Stop capitalising everything! Seriously… please stop it.
Of course, it’s almost impossible to be wholly consistent with the style of capitalisation, as there will always be exceptions. We’ve endeavoured to outline the following rules to maintain as much consistency as possible and to avoid the unnecessary and often incorrect use of capital letters. Our general advice is to stop capitalising everything! Just because you consider something to be important, doesn’t mean it should be capitalised. There are some exceptions which are detailed throughout this style guide, but you should try to adhere to the following rules, as a starting point. If you have any questions please contact a member of the marketing and communications team.
Proper nouns should always be capitalised.
Capitalisation of headings is often considered overly formal and outmoded, nowadays. It is the OAT house style not to capitalise words in headings, other than the first word and subsequent proper nouns.
School subjects should not be capitalised, except for languages. So: Alice studied art, history, French and music.
The following should be capitalised however, with the exception of articles, conjunctions and prepositions in the middle of a title or name, such as an, and, in etc.
See also, in this style guide:
should only be used when referring to dates or measures, and nothing else. Can be abbreviated to c. (including the full-stop). Do not use circa to refer to an approximate monetary value; it is incorrect to do so. The words about, roughly, around and approximately are all perfectly acceptable in this instance.
So: circa 1982 or c. 1982.
But not: c. £20,000.
should be hyphenated, so not coordinate, coordinator.
A colon is not normally followed by a capital letter; text which follows a colon is still part of the same sentence. An exception to this is where the first word after the colon would always be capitalised, eg. a name or a proper noun.
See: Covid-19
should be hyphenated, and should always have a capital C but the rest of the term should be lower case. However, coronavirus does not need to be capitalised. We recommend the use of the term Covid-19, and not just Covid. The terms Covid-19 and coronavirus can both be used.
cyberbully, cybercrime, cybersecurity, cyberspace…
but
cyber-attack
Dates should be written with the number only and not with an ordinal suffix, so: 27 May rather than 27th May. When including the year, no comma is necessary, so: 27 May 2020.
Dates may also be written in short form, so: 27/05/2020. However, ensure that you use the same date format throughout a single document or article.
When expressing a date range, such as an academic year, you should try to avoid using a hyphen or a slash, and instead use an en rule (an en rule is a type of dash, longer than a hyphen). The slash character can imply “or” rather than “to”.
So use:
rather than:
See also: hyphens and en rules
See also: time
Days of the week and months should always have capital initial letters, however seasons should never be capitalised unless they begin a sentence.
So: Monday and September, but spring and summer.
See also: capitalisation
not DFE. The f should always be written in lower case. Please also note, the full name is Department for Education, not Department of Education.
The abbreviation should not be confused with that of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which is commonly shortened to DofE.
not the Duke of Edinburgh Award (so Edinburgh’s not Edinburgh). Avoid shortening to Duke of Edinburgh’s (omitting the word Award), but it can be shortened to DofE.
email and ebook, but e-cigarette, e-learning, e-safety etc. All should begin with a capital letter if they appear at the start of a sentence.
English baccalaureate (Ebacc); only the E is capitalised, so not EBacc or EBACC.
As of September 2021, the term NQT (newly qualified teacher) is no longer used. You should now use the term ECT (early career teacher). Please also note that the ECT period is two years.
should have a full-stop at the end, but not between the e and g.
See also: ie.
or Email at the beginning of a sentence. Do not use e-mail, e-Mail or eMail.
See also: e as a prefix
When writing out an email address (within a document for example) it should always be written entirely in lower case. Email address syntax is not case-sensitive so capital letters make no difference, and look untidy.
Please also note, you must still place a full stop at the end of a sentence that ends with an email address, but take care not to include the full stop as part of the hyperlink.
See also: web addresses
is one word. Both extra-curricular and extra curricular are incorrect.
is one word. Extra-ordinary is incorrect.
ie. in both the past participle and the present participle, the ‘s’ is single. Although a double ‘s’ in these cases is still correct English, for consistency it is our style to use a single ‘s’.
should both be hyphenated, so not full time and part time.
Hyphens should be used for hyphenation only, and never to express a range. Ranges should be expressed using the word to or by using an en rule (also called an en dash). An en rule is longer than a hyphen.
Sugar-free is correct (hyphen)
2020–21 is correct (en rule)
2020 to 21 is correct
but
2020-21 is incorrect (hyphen)
should have a full-stop at the end, but not between the i and e.
See also: eg.
Job titles should be capitalised in all cases (apart from short words such as conjunctions, prepositions and articles).
For example:
Please note that the preposition “of” and the conjunction “and” in the examples above are not capitalised.
See also: capitalisation
Amended, April 2024. This is an updated style definition which differs from the previously stated rule.
When referring to a particular key stage or range of key stages the phrase should be capitalised. You may also abbreviate to KS when referring to a particular key stage. However, when referring to key stages more generally the phrase should be lower case. So:
Key Stage 3
KS3
Key Stages 3 and 4
but
The initiative is being rolled out to all key stages.
See also: year groups
should begin with a lower case m and requires an apostrophe as shown. So:
Astrid is currently studying for her master’s in ancient history.
However, when referring to a master’s in full, you should use Master of Arts, Master of Philosophy etc.
should be lower case.
The term NQT (newly qualified teacher) is no longer used. See ECT.
Spell out all numbers under 10 as words but use numerals for 10 onwards.
Never start a sentence with a numeral. If spelling out a number at the start of a sentence seems too long and unwieldy, consider rewording.
Commas should always be used for thousand-separators. Spell out large numbers for ease of legibility if necessary; eg. one million instead of 1,000,000.
Exceptions
Key stages and year groups should be written with numerals, so: Key Stage 3, KS4, Year 8 etc. GCSE grades should also be written as numerals, so GCSE history grade 9.
See The OAKS (listed under T).
not OATNet, OATNET or Oatnet etc.
not OFSTED. Always use a capital O, but the rest of the word should be lower case.
should not begin with an initial capital letter and should not be placed within inverted commas or quotation marks. For emphasis, should it be required, consider using italic or bold text instead.
So: The academy was rated outstanding by Ofsted in 2019.
not 1-2-1, 1:1 or 1–1 etc.
The company name is not Ormiston Academy Trust; note that “Academies” is plural.
The word “the” should not precede Ormiston Academies Trust when referring to the name of the trust, so the company is not the Ormiston Academies Trust. However, it may be referred to as “the trust” following a full mention previously in the same document. Please note however, that when referring to “the trust” the word “trust” should not be capitalised.
If Ormiston Trust and Ormiston Academies Trust are both referred to in the same article or document, do not use “the trust” but refer to them both in full (or by their initials after first mentioning them in full), to avoid confusion.
Ormiston Academies Trust may be referred to as “OAT” following full mention previously in the same document.
Also note: companies, academies, organisations, teams etc. are singular (love him or not, The Rt Hon. Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg is absolutely right).
So: “Ormiston Academies Trust is pleased to announce its best set of results…”, and not: “Ormiston Academies Trust are pleased to announce their best set of results…”
And: “The DfE has published new guidance…”, and not: “The DfE have published new guidance…”
You should try to avoid the use the Oxford comma unless it is absolutely necessary to avoid ambiguity or misinterpretation.
See: full-time.
Use the % symbol when writing a percentage:
“Across the network, 32% of pupils bring a packed lunch.”
The only exception to this is when the percentage figure starts a sentence. Because a sentence should never begin with a numeral (see numbers), the percentage figure should be written out in full:
“Thirty-two per cent of pupils across the network bring a packed lunch.”
Also note that per cent is two words, but percentage(s) is one.
should be hyphenated, so not post 16.
We always use the British spelling programme. The only exception to this is when referring to a computer program, which should take the US spelling.
not protestor.
is the preferred past participle of prove, rather than proven. Exceptions to this are common idioms such as, “she has a proven track record…”
It is our house style not to use these terms interchangeably. We have different definitions for these terms.
When talking about the young people across our network, we use the word pupils. This is our preferred, collective term when referring to young people across all ages and key stages.
The word pupil(s) should also be used when referring to children of primary age.
The word student(s) should be used when referring only to young people at secondary or sixth form level. The word student(s) should not be used to refer to only children of primary age.
Always use double quotation marks when an individual is being quoted. Single quotation marks should be used for a nested quote (a quote within a quote).
When a quotation contains more than one paragraph, use an opening quotation mark at the start of each paragraph, but only using a closing quotation mark at the end of the final paragraph, not after each.
OAT regions should not be capitalised. So, OAT’s north region, not OAT’s North region. The exception to this is the OAT London region. You should use the terms north, east etc. when referring to the OAT regions, and not northern, eastern etc.
See: academy or school?
When referring to special educational needs and disabilities it is the OAT house style to use the term SEND not SEN, but we use SENCO not SENCo, SENDCo or SENDCO. This is the convention currently used by the DfE.
Avoid using a slash character when writing copy, where a word such as or could be used instead. Using a slash in this way is unnecessary and will interrupt the flow when your piece is being read. Imagine reading your copy aloud, and what you would say when you encounter a slash. If you would naturally and without thinking replace it with the word or, you should write the word or. So:
Please refer to bus or train timetables…
and not
Please refer to bus/train timetables…
You should generally try to avoid splitting an infinitive, but this is not a hard and fast rule. If the alternative sounds awkward or clumsy it is acceptible to so do. 😉
Static, not moving.
Pens, pencils, notepads etc. Items bought from a stationer.
Use STEMFest in body copy (note the lower case “est”). Can be stylised as STEMFEST in graphics.
Note the hyphenation and the lower case ‘o’. Can be shortened to Stoke. Should not be written as Stoke on Trent, without the hyphens.
See: pupils or students?
Refer to the Microsoft communications platform as Teams, not TEAMS.
All landline telephone numbers should include the local area code.
There should be a space after the local area code, and the rest of the number should be separated into blocks of three and four digits where there are seven digits in total, or three and three when there are six. This makes numbers easier to recite and remember. When writing mobile phone numbers the first five digits should be treated as the area code, and so separated from the rest of the number.
0121 236 5100
01502 574 474
07854 013 376
Do not include international dialling codes or prefixes unless they are necessary.
Our school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) facility is called The OAKS. Please note the capitalisation of The and of the entirety of OAKS. The name is an acronym of Ormiston and Keele SCITT.
Do not write it as The OAKs or The Oaks.
You can use either 12- or 24-hour clock when expressing times, but do not use both formats in the same document or article.
12-hour clock
When using 12-hour clock you should include a colon between the hours and minutes, and am or pm should follow the time directly with no space before.
For example: 2:30pm, 11:15am, but not 2:30 pm.
When expressing a time that is on the hour, you can optionally omit the minutes, so both 10:00am and 10am are acceptible. You may also use 10 o’clock, but not 10:00 o’clock. You should however ensure that the format is consistent throughout a single document or article, and does not vary.
24-hour clock
If using 24-hour clock you should include a colon between the hours and minutes. Times before 10:00 should include a leading zero, so: 09:45, not 9:45. You should never use am or pm when using 24-hour clock. So: 09:45 or 14:30 but never 09:45am or 14:30pm, for example.
See also: date and date ranges
The word trust should not be capitalised unless it forms part of the name of an organisation (including OAT and OT). In the past, there has been an inclination to write “the Trust” (with a cap T) when referring to OAT or OT, but this should not be done.
So:
Ormiston Academies Trust has recently published its new five-year strategy.
but:
The trust has recently published its new five-year strategy.
An exception to this is when OAT (or OT) might be referred to as “the Trust” as a party in legal documentation.
See also: Academy or academy?
and: Ormiston Academies Trust
not upmost.
When writing out a web address in a document, do not include the http:// or https:// prefixes unless the address does not contain www.
For example, write:
www.mywebaddress.co.uk
http://anotherwebaddress.co.uk
but do not write:
http://www.mywebaddress.co.uk
Please also note, you must still place a full stop at the end of a sentence that ends with a web address, but take care not to include the full stop as part of the hyperlink.
See also: email addresses
one word, not hyphenated.
not wi-fi or wifi. The term Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance, so it is our style to retain the capitalised format used by the organisation itself.
When referring to a particular year group or range of year groups, the word “Year” should be capitalised. So:
We will be holding an open day for parents of pupils in Year 6.
The competition is open to pupils in Years 4 to 6.
However, when referring to year groups more generally, the phrase should be written in lower case. So:
The competition is open to all year groups.
See also: key stages
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