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Editorial

It is anticipated that content supplied to site designers will have been proofread by NCSL and will be in the correct format and style. However, there may be amendments to pages that will need to be applied following NCSL´s editorial style guide. This is a detailed document and the extract below offers only a brief overview:

It is essential that written materials follow a house style which supports the consistent expression of NCSL.

Our writing style guide is a reference for anyone writing copy and preparing documents for NCSL, including NCSL staff, editors and other external contributors and authors.

Some of the key rules to remember about NCSL house style include:
Avoid overcapitalisation, particularly in headings. Overcapitalisation slows down reading speed and is uncomfortable on the eye. Only capitalise proper nouns and titles.
Always use a single space after a comma and full stop; do not use punctuation with etc, ie, eg, km.
Always spell headteacher as one word and use lower case.
Always align blocks of text to the left; justified text is more difficult for the reader to track and read.
As a general rule, write numbers from zero to nine in full and use digits for numbers from 10 onwards.
Use the 12 hour clock and lower case for am and pm without a space (eg 10am, 9pm).
For dates, use the format 12 March 2008, unless in tables when the format 12/03/08 can be used.

For the complete NCSL house guidelines, please see the NCSL editorial style guide.

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Editorial