Proofed | Emeritus | Imperial College London Business School (IMP) Style Guide | IMP-AIHC / IMP-BA / IMP-ECEO / IMP-ECTO / IMP-PCMLAI R3 / IMP-SL

Key Style Guide Information and Links

• For any style points not covered in this guide, refer to:
• Editors | Emeritus | Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS) Guidelines for Emeritus Content
• Spelling: Oxford Dictionaries
• Dialect: UK English
• For marketing documents, use:
• Proofed | Editors | Emeritus | Imperial College London Business School (IMP) | Marketing Content Style Guide
• For video editing specifics, refer to:
• Proofed | Editors | Emeritus | Imperial College Business School (IMP) | Video Style Guide

Floryboard Specifics

The "This module has..." text at the beginning should be formatted either like it is in the floryboard template or as below:

• This module has seven videos, self-study activities including two readings, one crowdsource activity, one discussion, one try-it activity and one knowledge check, as well as required activities including one reading and one capstone checkpoint.

If there is only one required activity, format the text like this:

• This module has seven videos, self-study activities including two readings, one crowdsource activity, one discussion, one try-it activity and one knowledge check, as well as one required capstone checkpoint activity.

School and Course Terminology

course, teacher and learners

Bold green indicates the preference for this school/the specified courses.

Exception: IMP-ECTO

school name, faculty and courses

• Imperial College Business School – not ICBS, BS or The Business School
• Executive Education – not executive education (when referring to the department)
• Careers & Professional Development Service – not Career and Professional Development Service or C&PDS
• Imperial College London – not Imperial College
• Capitalise 'College' and 'School' when referring to Imperial, even if the full name isn't given.
• For faculty:
• Use Professor or Dr as appropriate in bios and the faculty ID screen at the beginning of a video.
• IMP-AIHC: At the beginning of a video, full name but no Professor/Dr
• Refer to faculty by their first name in text, e.g. "In this video, John explains..."
• Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer (not associate professor/senior lecturer).
• Programme Support will be capitalised when it appears.
• Use & (not 'and') in programme names: MSc Economics & Strategy for Business.
• Capitalise 'Campus' when referring to a School site: South Kensington Campus.

contact details

• Telephone numbers: +44 (0)20 7594 XXXX
• Always use the international dialling code
• All email addresses written in lower case
• Telephone, fax and mobile number, email addresses and websites preceded by T:, F:, M:, E:: and W:
• imperial.ac.uk/business-school – not www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school

Important School Style Notes

• Please read for consistent point of view (POV) across all the narrative text in the courses (any text that is not part of an activity instruction, direction, or question).
• Use second person ('you') for activity instructions and imperative statements.
• Ensure consistent verb tense throughout.
• Use the simple present tense for narrative text, not present continuous/progressive.
• Activities may have different tenses, and this is permissible, when appropriate.
• Use active voice and clear, concise language.
• The following phrasing should always remain the same:
• In the list of learning outcomes:
• 'By the end of this week, you will be able to:'
• In the list of key activities:
• 'Key (mandatory) activities:'
• Some words will be italicized, e.g., 'Screen summary', 'Intro text', 'Screen time' and 'Intro text'. This is text that learners won't be seeing (instructions for the Emeritus team when building the course), so no editing or commenting required.
• Similarly, there is no need to edit items in [brackets] or <carets> as these are simply directions to the technical design team.
• Degree classifications: 2.1 (not 2:1).
• Don't directly edit/'fix' hashtags, but if one seems to have a spelling error, please flag with a comment.

• Default to organisation to refer to a company, with the following exceptions:
• When referring to a specific for-profit company (e.g. Amazon, BP).
• When referring to something that would only apply to a for-profit company (e.g. buying/selling shares, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, private equity, financial statements for investors).
• When there is a phrase that is so common that it would sound very strange to substitute 'organisation' (e.g. law firm, oil and gas company, insurance provider/company, private equity firm).
• When matching what the speaker says in a video.
• 'business' is fine as an adjective and when referring to the process of business (e.g. business strategy, business growth).
• If there is an overuse of 'organisation' or a page or screen, then we can allow for 'company' or 'firm' for variety.

Capitalization

• Lowercase after a colon, except for activity/discussion/video numbers/subheaders in the floryboards, e.g.:
• Video 4.3: Example video title: example
• Word limit: Your submission should be a maximum of 500 words.
• Capitalize all frameworks, e.g. "Porter's Five Forces Framework", "Using the Five Forces Model...", "Which of the Five Forces..."
• Whiteboard will be capitalized when referenced in text, but "activity" would be lowercase according to the Imperial style guide.
• e.g. Please read the first page before responding to the Whiteboard activity below.
• Capitalize 'Full-Time' when referring to a study programme: Full-Time MBA.

Headers/subheaders

• Main header (initial Module name at the top of page 1): CMoS Title Case
• All other headers: sentence case
• Subheaders: sentence case
• Lowercase after a colon or dash in sentence case (e.g. "Sentence case: example", "Sentence case – sentence")

Numbers

• Spell out numbers one through ten; use figures for 11 and above.
• Always spell out numbers when they start a sentence.
• Write out units for large numbers: e.g. 4 million, 20 billion.
• Do not use M, B, mn, bln, etc.
• Spell out per cent (two words) in body text; use % in tables or lists, and use % in videos
• Don't hyphenate fractions unless used as a compound adjective: two thirds vs two-thirds majority.
• No space between figures and abbreviated units: 5kg.

dates and times

• Date format: 20 November 2015; 9 August.
• Use unspaced en dashes for ranges; use only two figures for the second year if both are in the same century.
• 2008–09
• Spell out numbers for centuries: Nineteenth Century
• Times: 09:30, 18:00 (24-hr clock)

currency

• For US dollars, the $ sign is usually sufficient.
• If the text refers to multiple different dollar currencies (e.g. A$ [Australian dollars]; NZ$ [New Zealand dollars]), use US$ for clarity.

Punctuation

• Do not use the serial comma unless required for clarity.
• Parenthetical dashes: use spaced en dashes.
• No full stops in academic qualifications (PhD, MSc, etc.).
• Use single quotation marks as per standard UK English convention.

Bullet Lists

• Use a capital letter at the start of each bullet point.
• Use full stops for complete sentences, including when each bullet point completes a sentence started by the lead-in.
• e.g. Your submission should include:
• A description of the offering you're evaluating.
• A description of the risk your offering addresses.
• Exception: IMP-BA / IMP-ECTO / IMP-PCMLAI R3 — use full stops for standalone complete sentences but not for sentences that complete the lead-in.
• IMP-PCMLAI quick reference guides: Ensure parallel points in the interest of clarity, even if that means being repetitive or sounding less natural. For example:
• Statistical methods are used to develop and evaluate ML models.
• Statistical methods can help to model... (NOT ○ They can help to model...)

Citations/Referencing

• Use CMoS Notes and Bibliography style for referencing.
• Use Bibliography style for reading lists.
• Use Notes style for references in videos.
• HOWEVER: IMP/UK English conventions take precedence over CMoS for capitalization/punctuation, so use:
• Sentence case for titles
• Single quotation marks
• Punctuation outside quotation marks
• Spaced en dashes
• However, US date format and serial comma when there is more than one author
• Use italics for publication titles.
• A reference to a generative AI tool being used in the creation of content should appear in the following format:
• AI Company. (Year). Name of AI Model (Version) [Description of AI tool]. URL
• e.g., OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/
• e.g., OpenAI. (2024). DALL-E (Oct 8 version) [Image creator]. https://openai.com/dall-e-2

Terminology/Spelling Preferences

• adviser
• ageing
• amid
• among
• cooperation
• cyber security
• data set
• decision-making
• email
• focuses, focusing, focused
• healthcare
• judgement
• learned
• PESTEL
• postdoctoral
• post-experience
• pre-selected
• SQL – no definition required
• start-up
• touchpoint
• well-being
• while