Style Guide
Our style guide is by no means comprehensive, however, we do have certain elements that we ask editors to look out for. If something is not covered, use your own judgement and research, the BBC's and The Economist's style guides are a good start.
Titles of things
Palatinate or Indigo should be italicised, as should any other newspaper name: The Sunday Times, The Spectator, The Guardian etc.
Palatinate is called Palatinate, not The Palatinate or Palatine.
Book, film, TV show, play, and album titles should be in italics:
“Greta Gerwig’s movie Little Women”
“The Durham team on University Challenge”
“Hamlet by William Shakespeare”
“Douglas Stuart’s novel Shuggie Bain”
“Harry Styles’s album Fineline”
Single quotation marks and no italics for titles of poems, titles of songs, titles of articles, art installations, podcast titles:
‘To Autumn’ by John Keats
‘bad guy’ by Billie Eilish
I read a great essay about ‘The Death of the Author’ by Barthes
‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’ by Yayoi Kusama
....as shown here, follow how the capital letters of something are stylised.‘Under the Skin’ by Russell Brand
“‘Off Menu’, presented by Durham alumnus Ed Gamble”
Quotes
Double quotation marks for direct quotes
“I really like Palatinate,” says Jeremy Vine.
Single quotes for nicknames, figures of speech:
Bill ‘Billy B’ Bryson
When you finally meet ‘the one’
Single quotes when you have a quote within a quote:
“They described it as ‘a really good student newspaper’ and I agreed”, said Dan Rivers.
When dealing with longer quotes, break them up in the following way so that each paragraph starts with double quotations, but only the last paragraph should use end quotes:
“Not everyone will be breathalysed, it will be down to door staff to judge those individuals who might benefit from not drinking any more that night. (no end quote in the middle!)
“We want everyone to have a great night, but we also want to make sure they make it home safely, and without causing any disruption to residents.” (quote mark at the end)
When writing a quote that is embedded in the sentence, put the full stop after the final quotation mark:
He said that whether Palatinate won Best Publication at the SPAs was “up to the committee”.
When writing a quote that make sense as its own sentence, put the full stop before the final quotation mark:
Joe Rossiter said, “Palatinate will become an independent newspaper and leave Durham Students’ Union.”
When inserting an ellipsis into a quotation, place it in square brackets.
Elliot Burrin said, "I really [...] enjoy being in the office at 8:30 on distribution day."
Numbers and dates
Numbers written in words up to ten, you can also have thousand, million etc in words
“Gatherings of up to six people were allowed”
“If I had ten million pounds, I’d give it to Palatinate”
Digits from 11 onwards
“I had 27 things to do”
Commas after every thousand
20,000 students go to Durham
Dates written as 25th December 2019, no variation on this – it has to go day-month-year. Doesn’t need ‘of’ or ‘the’.
“This style guide was updated on 28th December 2022”
“On 17th March 1948, Palatinate was created”
“Editorial Board is on Tuesday 3rd January 2022”
Spellings
British English spellings (i.e. not American)
socialise, not socialize
Pandemic vocabulary :(
In Palatinate, it’s either Covid-19 or coronavirus, nothing else.
It’s never COVID-19, COVID, Covid, covid, covid-19, Corona, corona, Coronavirus, the coronavirus, etc.
Spell things correctly!
Spell people’s names correctly, it’s just rude otherwise.
Other specific phrases:
A levels, not A-Levels
Durham University must be capitalised, when you refer to it call it the University with a capital U
Colleges must be spelt correctly and capitalised in full St Chad’s College, St Cuthbert’s Society, University College, College of St Hild and St Bede
Alumni is PLURAL. A single person is an alumnus (masc) or alumna (fem): “George Alagiah, Palatinate alumnus”; “the alumni of Cuth’s get together every year for a celebration weekend”. A single person cannot be a Durham alumni.
Grammar
Avoid clichés.
Do not use a long word if you can use a shorter one.
Be concise. Omit needless words.
Substitute complex jargon for everyday, easily understood words. If you do have to use a complex term, it may be useful to explain it.
For instance, as the University's Council is governing body, equivalent to a board of trustees, you may wish to refer to it as "the University's trustees", or "the University's Council, akin to a board of trustees, [...]".
Use em dashes like these – rather than single ones - like this. There should be a space before and after.
Avoid overusing uncommon punctuation.
Abbreviations
To shorten the names of things like organisations, write the name in full first, then include the abbreviation in brackets (). Use the abbreviation for the rest of the article without brackets.
St. Mary's College Eurovision Society (SMCES), is perhaps one of the most niche on campus, holding just one major event per year. In terms of expanding the society, the President of SMCES said: "unless they start making more Eurovisions, I'm going to struggle to hold more events!"
Avoid spelling out commonly used abbreviations.
When referring to Durham Students' Union, spell it out once and then refer to it just as "the SU" thereafter, unless you believe it may be confused with another University's Students' Union.
Do not spell out "JCR" or "MCR", etc. Students know what they are in their abbreviated form.
Other style points
Only capitalise the first letter of a headline, unless the other words are normally capitalised.
‘Why I started writing for Palatinate’
‘University emphasises student safety amid reports of street harassment’
‘Creating household traditions in lockdown’
‘Things to do in Durham this month’
After a person has been referred to once, use their title and surname the next time you refer to them. You may refer to them using their first name if the article is less formal.
Exceptions would include a personal story where the name is that of a friend. “As Bill Bryson said in his address to the Union…” = Mr Bryson, “I was talking to my friend Bill Bryson” = Bill.
We tend to use Ms instead of Mrs/Miss unless the individual specifies their preference.
Capitalise ‘Government’ when you are referring to a specific governmental body (such as HM Government in Westminster) and use lower case letters (i.e. ‘government’) when referring more generally (to either a hypothetical or multiple governments). Similarly, capitalise 'University' when discussing a specific university, and all lower case 'university' when referring more generally.
Pull-quotes should always begin with a capital letter and never end with a full-stop
Excerpts should end with a full-stop.
Article titles should always begin with a capital. Following this the only capital letters should be proper nouns
‘Diversifying your bookshelf: in the miso soup’
‘The Corbyn conundrum’
Image credits go at the end of articles and should be italicised in the format:
Image: Emily Doughty
Image: Mark Smith via Wikimedia Commons