A to Z Style Guide

Style A-Z This is a guide to Public Health Research & Practice house style to assist you in preparing your manuscript. We ask authors to pay particular attention to the accuracy and formatting of references. Reference style can be found on page 12. Spelling, language and house style Months of the year: In general, spelling follows The Macquarie • Spell out in text and graph headings Dictionary, with ‘ise’ spelling. Capitalisation, • Abbreviate on graph axes. hyphenation, punctuation and abbreviations Countries: should be uniform throughout. See ‘Standard and Preferred Spelling’ in this document. • US and UK: no need to spell out • Britain is preferable to UK unless you For any style items not included in this document, specifically want to include Northern Ireland. please refer to the Australian Style manual for authors, editors and printers (6th edition). Also see Shortened forms The journal is accessible to a broad readership and therefore favours jargon-free articles. All submissions should use non-discriminatory Aboriginal language. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are generally referred to as Aboriginal in line with NSW Health policy that notes: ‘Aboriginal’ is generally used in preference to ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ in recognition of the fact A that Aboriginal people are the original inhabitants of NSW. If a distinction for clarity must be made, e.g. if the Abbreviations article does not relate to NSW, Aboriginal and General principles: Torres Strait Islander or Indigenous (with a capital I) are acceptable usage. Never use the initialism • In titles: acceptable but minimise ATSI. Appropriate use of terminology for • In Abstracts: acceptable but minimise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples • In text: use sparingly and only for common, follows the advice of Communicating positively: a repeated words. Spell the word(s) first guide to appropriate Aboriginal followed by the abbreviation in brackets and terminology (NSW Health, 2004) use the abbreviation thereafter. http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/aboriginal/Publicati • Do not use full stops with either initialisms ons/pub-terminology.pdf (NSW, ABC) or acronyms (WHO, TAFE) • Do not italicise Abbreviating states/territories: About/on • Abbreviations are acceptable in graphs, Information about, NOT information on. ‘On’ is tables, figures, headings and author used for placing physical objects on top of each affiliations other. But people are told ‘about’ information or • Spell out all states at first mention and an event. They receive information ‘about’ the thereafter use initialisms for NSW, ACT, NT, performance of their public hospital system. SA and WA. 1 ATOZ-STYLE-GUIDE.PDF | PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH & PRACTICE Many people are phasing this use of apostrophes out but it is still common usage Acknowledgement and as such can still be used in Sax Institute Include the second ‘e’ publications • Do not use an apostrophe with plural shortened forms e.g. MPs, GPs, a man in his Acronyms and initialisms 20s (see shortened forms section) • Do use to denote the short form of a decade: • It is acceptable to begin sentences with the ’70s common acronyms or initialisms such as • For possessives that end in ‘s’, generally use NSW ’s e.g. The Jones’s house, unless to do so • Don’t use full stops between letters e.g. NSW would make an ugly sound on reading e.g. not N.S.W. Menzies’ papers not Menzies’s paper. • Use capital letters • If the acronym or initialism is not well known At/about it needs to be spelt out in the first instance. Choose one or the other, but don’t use both, e.g. • When to use A or An: Make a decision based “It starts at 10 am” or “It starts about 10 am”, not on the sound of the first letter of the “It starts at about 10 am”. It’s either at 10am OR initialism/acronym. Use ‘an’ when the first about 10am – it can’t be both. letter is a vowel sound (whether it is a vowel or not). Spelling (A) e.g. An ASIO document; An RACGP guideline acknowledgement A NSW policy; A UNESCO committee The Act (when referring to legislation) affect means to influence; effect means to bring about or accomplish (verb) affect has a narrow Active voice psychological meaning; effect means the result of Use the active voice: Doctors treated Jack not Jack an action (noun) was treated by doctors. ageing (not aging; this is an exception to a general rule: paging, imaging) Acts of Parliament airborne (also foodborne, waterborne, etc, exceptions are vector-borne and mosquito- Italicise, upper case: borne) Public Health Amendment (Vaccination of among (not amongst) Children Attending Child Care Facilities) Act 2013 analyse Ampersand (&) antiviral Don’t use unless it is part of a name/official title Australian Government Apostrophe • For singular common nouns use before the ‘s’ e.g. the government’s report B • For plural common nouns use after the ‘s’ e.g. the Local Health Networks’ policies • For plural common noun’s that don’t end in Bacteria an ‘s’ the apostrophe sits before the ‘s’ to Bacteria should always be in italics when referring denote the possessive e.g. women's health to their taxonomic names (e.g. Staphylococcus • Six weeks’ time, three months’ earnings, one aureus) or abbreviated taxonomic names (S. month’s time generally take apostrophes. aureus). However, if they are generic and plural, 2 ATOZ-STYLE-GUIDE.PDF | PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH & PRACTICE then they are in roman with no initial cap birthweight (as above) (staphylococci, streptococci). Family names of bottle-feed bacteria (e.g. Enterobacteriaceae) should be italicised. breastfeed Birthweight C One word. Low birthweight is not hyphenated when used as a noun but should be hyphenated when used as a compound adjective i.e. low- Capitals birthweight baby. • Avoid too many capitals. They arrest the eye and slow down reading • Paper titles should be in sentence case (only Bullet points/numbering the first word and proper nouns are capped) • In general, cap an organisation or institution • Don’t use semi colons or commas at the end but lower case its divisions, subsidiaries or of each bullet point. Use a full stop at the committees, e.g. Sydney University’s faculty end of the last bullet point of medicine. Stand-alone institutes e.g. the • Cap the first letter of the first word in each Sax Institute, the Woolcock Institute of bullet point (whether they comprise full Medical Research, are capped, even if they sentences or part sentences) are located at universities • Avoid using the definite (the) and indefinite • Shortened titles for organisations and (a) articles at the beginning of every sentence institutions: cap the title even when it is not in a bullet point list. Long lists of ‘A, an, the’ the full title e.g. the NSW Health Department are not visually appealing to the reader ... the Department, the Sax Institute ... the • If the list has a definite order, numbering may Institute, the University of Sydney ... the be required in preference to bullets University • Numbered lists within text should be • Maintain lower case for organisations whose formatted with the number first and close official title is lower case, e.g. beyondblue bracket second, followed by a semi-colon, and headspace – except where they begin a e.g. Including: 1) general practitioner training; sentence 2) coordinated aftercare; 3) school-based • Official position titles within organisations mental health literacy programs. should be capitalised e.g. Chief Executive, • If the sentences are longer and there are Director of Nursing several bullet points, a return between them • Don’t cap generic organisations, institutions, is appropriate to break up the text. If the list or job descriptions such as university, is shorter, with fewer words, no return is institute, nurse, cardiovascular surgeon, necessary researcher • Don’t use bullet points to try to make a long- • Other general descriptions that should not winded paragraph look more succinct. Bullet be capitalised include states and territories. points should be used judiciously; too many E.g. NSW, Victoria, ACT and the NT were of them create confusion and clutter. involved in the plan. The states and territories signed a memorandum of understanding on the issue. Spelling (B) bioassay Commas Bill (legislation) The Oxford comma biobank Also known as the ‘serial comma’, the 'Oxford birthing, avoid this use – prefer giving birth, comma' is an optional comma before the word childbirth) 3 ATOZ-STYLE-GUIDE.PDF | PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH & PRACTICE 'and' at the end of a list: We sell books, videos, behave yesterday. The words between the and magazines. commas represent a non-defining clause • Use in place of ‘and’ in a list of words Do not use the Oxford comma except in cases • Use to clarify meaning. For example, His where it is necessary to avoid ambiguity. brother George was best man, means the An Oxford comma is not needed in the following bridegroom has more than one brother. His examples: brother, George, was best man, means the bridegroom has only one brother and his The colours were red, white and blue. name is George Socio-economic status, education and lifestyle • Expressions such as however and for example factors have a major influence on health and are always followed by a comma if they begin wellbeing. a sentence and are separated by commas within a sentence: However, not all states achieved the same results. ALSO: If, however, The following examples, taken from sources all the Local Health Networks are consulted, including the Style Guide for Authors Editors and they are likely to deliver by the deadline Printers 6th edition, show how sentences can be • Where a phrase contains numerals ambiguous or unwieldy without the Oxford immediately followed by more numerals, a comma: comma is needed to separate them: In 2010, 5000 patients reported mistakes in their care.

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