Proofed | Editors | Emeritus | Cambridge Judge Business School (CJ) Marketing Content Style Guide

General Notes

The notes below refer to CJ marketing materials. This guide should not be used for CJ learning content. The general rules for Emeritus content should not be consulted for CJ marketing materials.

SEPO-specific notes are listed at the bottom of this card.

• Use British English
• Don’t use certification, certified. Only certificate.
• Serial commas are not to be used [only use to avoid ambiguity].

General Emeritus Marketing Content Guidelines

Proofreading approach: For proofreading jobs, we should be performing a light proofread. Emeritus do not need us to make suggestions to the content or language of the documents. They are only interested in:

1. Grammar errors
2. Spelling errors
3. Punctuation errors
4. Style guide errors

Global comments in PDFs: The marketing team would prefer if we leave global comments for repeated issues in a document. This is for any issues that Emeritus could quickly fix with a find-and-replace or are obvious in the document. We should still make full changes for less-obvious issues, such as serial commas. For example, we can leave global comments for:

1. Adding a hyphen to all instances of "decision making"
2. Replacing all instances of "course" with "programme"
3. Removing full stops from all bullet lists

Global comments in Google Docs: Whenever possible, use the replace all function instead of making the same change in multiple identical instances. For example:

1. Replacing all instances of "decision making" with "decision-making"
2. Replacing all instances of "course" with "programme"

Using "company"/"firm"/"organisation":

1. We should only use synonyms when it's repetitive, and consider the meaning – don't use them interchangeably
2. We can use "business" as well
3. "Company" should be the last choice – "organisation," "business," and "firm" are OK

HEADINGS

• Headings, headlines and subheadings take an initial capital only (i.e. they are in sentence case).
• Use sentence case for captions for figures and tables.
• Module titles in sentence case (but course titles in title case).

ACRONYMS/abbreviations

• United States (noun in running text) / US (adjective)
• Spell out abbreviations/acronyms in full when they are first mentioned in text, for instance: Department of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP).

school name

The school can be referred to as Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education, Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge Judge, or Cambridge Judge Exec Ed. The school must never be called ‘Cambridge' or 'Cambridge University'.

Capitalization/casing

• Use sentence case in headers and subheaders
• In text, use a capital first letter if the noun is specific, i.e. the Faculty of Education, but use lowercase letters in general use.
• Capital letters are used for positions/job titles, such as Senior Tutor, Admissions Tutor and Director of Studies.
• Degree titles use initial capitals, e.g. BA Honours in History. Single Honours, Joint Honours, etc also use initial capitals.
• Qualifications should also be capitalised eg GCSEs in Mathematics, Chemistry and History.
• Significant words in titles of books, magazines and newspapers take initial capitals (aka title case), and the titles of periodicals should be in italics. However, 'a', 'and', 'at', 'for', 'from', 'in', 'of', 'on', 'the' and 'to' are not usually capitalised (except at the start of a title). Only two UK news outlets use full italics in their titles: The Times and The Economist (in contrast to The Guardian or The Independent).
• Titles of papers/journal articles should have initial capital letters eg This includes the paper 'Historical Argument and Practice'.
• Follow a colon in headlines with lower case and not a capital letter.
• Use lower case letters and no hyphenation for phrases such as cleantech, medtech, fintech.

Numbers/Dates

• Numbers up to and including ten are spelled out – numerals for 11 onwards.
• Friday, 16 January 2004 (not 16th January)
• 1890s, 1930s not 1890's, 1930's
• 20th century not twentieth century (use 19th-century only for adjectives: Late 19th-century architecture saw an increase in heavy detailing. Leave th or st as roman, not superscript).
• Use two digits when representing a span of years within the same century: 2009–10, and four digits: 1892–1925 when spanning more than one century.
• Dates are expressed as date/month/year, eg 1 July 2017, or Monday, 1 July 2017 (note the comma following the day of the week). Time zone: BST /GMT
• Use numerals for all numbers in mailer (email) subject lines.
• When a sentence starts with a number, it should be spelled out (although try to avoid starting sentences with numbers if possible).
• Spell out million, billion wherever possible: one million, preceded by a space. Use figures when working with currency: £1 million and when quoting specific amounts. Include the GBP equivalent of non-GBP currency amounts.
• Numbers over a thousand should use a comma, eg 1,234 not 1234.
• Fractions do not use a hyphen, eg two thirds, not two-thirds (but hyphenate if used as an adjective: a two-thirds majority).
• Page references are always the shortest admissible within the range. For example, pages 34–5 or 46–54 or 107–17 or 136–8.
• When giving a percentage, always use % with a numeral, eg 3%, 8.8%, 100%.

time

• Time is expressed following a 12-hour clock, using a full stop between the numbers and without full stops in am and pm: 12.45pm. Times on the hour are shown without the full stop and minutes: 8am.
• Use am and pm when referring to time in the body of text: Opening hours are 11.30am to 6pm.

Dashes

• A hyphen is used to separate two vowels used together in a word when they are the same vowel, eg co-ordination, micro-organism, co-operate. Where vowels are different, we do not use a hyphen: it's 'reappointed' not 're-appointed'.
• Do hyphenate Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor.
• Use unspaced en dashes for number ranges.
• Use spaced parenthetical em dashes.

italics

• Use italics for non-English words and book/journal titles
• No italics in mailer (email) subject lines.

Punctuation

• When a noun ends with an s and the final syllable is pronounced, the possessive s is added, eg Emeritus's, Thomas’s lunch, Dr Huw Jones’s research, Octopus’s Garden
• Do not use full stops in abbreviations: eg, ie am, pm, op, no, cf, ed, etc or after Mr, Mrs or Dr
• Do not use full stops after initials, eg Dr M P S Handley (with space between each initial)
• Do not use full stops in PhD, BSc, MA, etc
• No comma between a name and honorarium, eg Dame Jane Goodall DBE.
• & not to be used. Can only be used only when there is a character limit restriction

SINGULAR/PLURAL

• Companies, countries and institutions should all be singular (AstraZeneca believes that…Cambridge United is having a good season…).
• Data should also be treated as singular.

QUOTATION MARKS

• Use single quotation marks for thoughts or reported quotations that are sourced from text.
• Single quotes also signify unfamiliar words or phrases.
• Use double quotation marks for directly quoted speech.
• When using single quotation marks, quotes within quotes use double quote marks; this pattern is reversed for quotes within reported speech.
• Full stops outside the quotation mark except if the quote is a complete sentence.

BULLET LISTS

If you use a complete sentence to introduce the bulleted list, then end it with a full stop, not a colon.

• Start each point with a capital letter.
• Full stops for complete sentences only.
• No full stops for incomplete sentences.
• No full stops for bullet points that complete the lead-in.

File naming

• If you intend a file to be downloadable, use lowercase letters, and substitute spaces with dashes: chart-showing-migration-of-birds.pdf

landing pages

• Do not edit the FAQs – just check that the correct program title is used.

Social media ads

• In images (labelled "creatives"), no periods after imperative sentences unless there are two or more sentences.

sUBJECT SPECIFIC SPELLING/USAGE

• biomedical
• cleantech
• 'data' is a singular noun (not plural)
• decision-making
• email
• fintech
• focused / focusing / focuses
• fundraising
• learnt
• log in (verb) (NOT log on)
• login (noun)
• medtech
• micro-level
• micro-scale
• multidisciplinary
• online
• postdoctoral
• spinouts
• start-up
• under-representation
• website

INCIDENTALS REGARDING TEXT COLOURS:

• We must never use yellow text, regardless of the colour of the background.
• All yellow backgrounds must only have black text on them. The school does not allow white text on yellow background.

sepo-specific notes (only for documents specifically marked as sepo in the notes)

• 'Cambridge' is an acceptable abbreviation for the school name in combination with the programme:
• Cambridge Chief People Officer Programme
• Always capitalise 'Programme' when given as part of the programme name
• Don't use an em dash to indicate a pause/clause break: use a colon or comma instead as appropriate.
• Parenthetical dashes
• Unspaced em dash for print collateral (brochure and 'month in the life'/session summary document)
• Spaced em dash for all digital materials
• It's acceptable to use figures for low numbers for consistency in graphics
• Do not use an en dash for complex range hyphenation in running text
• Correct: 9- to 12-month
• Incorrect: 9–12-month
• Bullet lists: no periods
• Subheaders: sentence case
• Don't capitalize 'success coach' unless preceding a person's name
• Don't make changes to module titles
• Standard usage for introducing criteria: inclusions/exclusions, not included/excluded
• No colon to introduce "call to action" (i.e., clickable) buttons