Elements of style

How we write things at the Fermi Building and the Adriatico Guesthouse.

The title of this page is a homage to Mr. William Strunk, Jr., who in 1918 published an extremely useful booklet by the same title. It can be browsed online here: http://www.bartleby.com/141/

 

Listed in no particular order (the numbers are for quick reference only).

  1. Double quotes " … " should be used for actual quotations. Single quotes ' … ' should be used for emphasis.
  2. At the end of a phrase or sentence, emphasis quotes should be inside the punctuation mark, for instance inside the 'phrase', whereas quotes usually close "outside the sentence." In case the quote ends in a highlight, it "goes like 'this'."
  3. Numbers one to ten are written out, then use figures for 11, 12 etc.
  4. Describe values in full: two kilometres (note 're' ending for centimetre, millimetre etc), three degrees Centigrade etc. The only exception to this rule is percent: we use the symbol % for that.
  5. We do not use titles – Dr., Prof. – because everyone is equal! We don't use capital letters for positions, e.g. executive director, secretary-general, except for Prime Ministers and Presidents of countries. We even lower-case TWAS's own president and director. We also tend to use lower-case letters for 'department of biology' etc., when describing a person's place of work and for position: executive director, professor of biology.
  6. Dates are written as, for example, '2 March 2007' – not 'March 2, 2007', not '2nd March, 2007'.
  7. Places (cities, universities, etc.) are usually given a country location, too, with a comma after the country name if the sentence continues: The University of Paris, France, is home to… Harvard University, United States, is a famous place…
  8. Use United States, not USA, and United Kingdom, not UK, at least at the first mention in an article. All other acronyms are written out in full at the first mention with the acronym immediately following in brackets. The exception is TWAS in a TWAS publication. We assume that anyone reading it will know (or know where to look). This gets to be a nuisance with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – and others – but there you have it.
  9. When meaning Taiwan, always write 'Taiwan, China'. Example: The Academia Sinica is the science academy of Taiwan, China. In lists, list 'Taiwan, China' after 'China'.
  10. In titles, use normal sentence style (no upper-case initials for nouns).
  11. Use a medium-length dash ("–", also called en-dash => has the width of an 'n') between two spaces to separate phrases in a sentence, but short ones ("-", also called hyphen => same length as the minus sign) without spaces in hyphenated words, e.g. science-based. To produce an en-dash, on the Mac press ALT+minus sign; on a PC press ALT and enter 0150 on the numeric keypad.
  12. Spelling is mostly British English (colour, honour, endeavour, NOT color, honor, endeavor), except for words like 'organise', 'realise', for which we use 'organize' and 'realize' (an apparent exception from the exception is  -lys- as in ‘analyse’ and ‘catalyse’, which always retain their ‘s’ [due to their Greek origin]). Other examples of UK spelling include instil (not instill), labelling and travelling (not labeling or traveling) etc.
  13. All technical terms should be explained in non-technical language. You should consider that we are writing for a 'general readership', not a bunch of scientists.
  14. Words and phrases in foreign languages, for example names of institutions, should be italicized: The Academia Sinica is the science academy of Taiwan, China; The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is hosting a workshop. However, we no longer italicize abbreviations such as e.g. and etc. (Latin: exempli gratia and et cetera).
  15. Publications, e.g. 'Nature', 'TWAS Newsletter' and 'Journal of [whatever]', should be italicized: The TWAS Newsletter appears every three months.
  16. Note the absence of a comma after 'TWAS Newsletter' and before the 'and' in the previous point. Do not use the American 'Oxford comma' in lists; rather, follow Strunk's comma recommendations. For more complex lists, the use of semi-colons (";") is acceptable.
  17. Do not use capital letters after colons, unless it is a complete sentence (with verb) => The big question would be: How can we boost development in the South? – vs. – He sold groceries: onions, celery, potatoes (lower case, because a list and not a sentence).
  18. Use commas when writing thousands: 1,200 people died last week, 12,000 more became ill.
  19. For consistency, we write such degrees as PhD and MSc without dots (not Ph.D. or M.Sc.). Likewise, US (not U.S.) and UK (not U.K.).
  20. We form the possessive by attaching an "'s" to all names and concepts, regardless of their final consonant: we write TWAS's programmes and CAS's president.
  21. Chinese surnames come before the given names. Write BAI Chunli and ZHOU Guangzhao (not Chunli BAI or Guangzhao ZHOU); also, it's best NOT to use initials with Chinese names. The same goes for Malaysian names, which are even trickier. The Economist and even Malaysian academic journals avoid problems by giving the FULL name. We tend to follow this norm, and so our Malaysian member is best mentioned in full as 'Omar bin Abdul Rahman'.
  22. We write vice-president with a hyphen; vice-chairperson, vice-chancellor etc. Also secretary-general.
  23. Not hyphenated, one word: nanoscience, nanotechnology; policymaker, decisionmaker (but: foreign-policy makers). Details: http://www.englishforums.com/English/RulesForUsingHyphens/gqxx/post.htm
  24. [To be expanded]

 

When in doubt, refer to the United Nations Editorial Manual Online