Standards and Guidelines: Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation

Based on the TAFE NSW writing style guidelines: 

Australian (British) English is used in preference to American English.

The most common variations are below.

• Use -ise and -yse - e.g.  realise, summarise, organise, analyse,
• Do not use -ize and -yze - e.g. realize, summarize, organize, analyze
• Use -er  - e.g. adviser, provider 
• Do not use -or  - e.g. advisor, providor
• Use -our - e.g. colour, honour, neighbour, favour
• Do not use -or - e.g. color, honor, neighbor, favor

Exceptions: Do not change the American spelling in

• Proper nouns (name of a specific person, place or organisation)
• Item titles.

Proper nouns

Proper nouns - names of organisations, personal names, brand names must be capitalised.

e.g. AUSLAN, The Benevolent Society, Microsoft Office

See also Names

Full stops in bullet point lists

Lists of sentence fragments only require a full stop for the last item:

• always
• add
• a full stop
• to the
• last
• dot
• point
• in a list.

Lists of complete sentences require a full stop for each bullet point:

• The cat sat on the mat.
• Libraries should be funded.
• The LibGuide has a friendly URL.

Commas

Commas should be used sparingly. Avoid using them to space a long sentence. It is preferable to split a long sentence into two sentences. Use them to separate lists of three or more items.

A list of three or more items

Examples

 ... DVDs, books, eBooks and eVideos.

Find relevant, reliable information for your subject. Books, videos, journals, research databases, Australian Standards and more.

An Oxford comma (a comma after the second last item followed by and [last item] is only used if needed to avoid confusion. 

Example ... Business units competing for budget allocation are Marketing, Students and Learning, and Research.

The Oxford comma in the example above identifies Students and Learning as one business unit and Research as a separate unit. 

Semicolon

A semicolon is used in a list of authors by Syndetics as default.

Colon

Replace a pipe (|) in YouTube video titles with a colon.

Example...The importance of Indigenous art | Interview with Aboriginal artist Wayne Quilliam  

The importance of indigenous art : interview with Aboriginal artist Wayne Quilliam

Colon spacing

In the body of text (sentence) - no space before the colon, one space after the colon.

Title with sub title (from the catalogue) - one space before the colon and one space after the colon. *Note: no capitalisation for sub title.

Example from TAFEcat - Hottest Title: Supporting education : the teaching assistant's handbook 

In references - no space before the colon, one space after the colon.

From the TAFE NSW writing style guidelines: 

The ampersand (&) should be avoided. It is only acceptable in the item titles, proper nouns (official names) or in references as per referencing guidelines. The ampersand is also used for authors in articles and book chapters.

Examples:

• Business & office administration
• Ben & Jerry's Australia