Anyone involved in writing, editing or proofreading something for Catch22 needs to be aware of our writing conventions:
- we are Catch22 and not Catch 22 or Catch-22.
- use ‘sentence case’: capitalise only the first word of headings
eg Transforming lives through alternative education - use ‘single’ quotation marks. Only use double ‘for “quotes” within quotes’
- no full stop after ie, eg, Mr, Mrs
- use -ise and not -ize
- spell out numbers from one to ten. From 11 to 999,999, use the figure; thereafter say £3million, £3.2billion (except when referring to statistics such as ‘9 out of 10 young people we help with housing are settled in their own accommodation after six months’)
- dates: 23 August 2013, the 1980s
- ages: 13 to 16-years-old, not 13-16
- never use & in body copy, with the exception of brand names (eg M&S)
- for acronyms such as PCC, at the first mention always give the name in full with the acronym in brackets, eg Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC). Thereafter use the acronym
- titles of books, newspapers, films and reports are in italics
- use square bullet points. When bullets follow text, do not capitalise the first letter and do not end each point with punctuation, except for the last.