Tone of voice
PTA+: encouraging, optimistic, conversational, friendly, authoritative
Key takeaways
- Use single curly quotes (unless it’s a quote within a quote, when double curly quotes apply)
- In PTA+, we say children or pupils (kids very occasionally in speech/testimonials, but never students)
- In FundEd we say students for those in secondary school (but vary it to avoid repetition)
- British spellings rather than American spellings (organise not organize)
- Case studies format: Lucy Armstrong, chair, St Swithin’s School PTA, Tunbridge Wells (X pupils); include a county for smaller towns
- Names at the end of articles: round bullet point followed by text in the same style as that which it follows. Names are not in bold but URLs are bold.
- All case studies are written in the first person. Use a conversational tone, but sentences must make sense gramatically. Do not use slang.
- Job titles are lower case: headteacher, co-chair, vice chair, treasurer
- Numbers one to ten are written out, then 11, 12 and so on
- £Xmillion (no space)
- Dates use UK format (1 January 2023)
- Contractions such as aren’t, can’t, couldn’t, hasn’t, don’t, I’m, it’s and there’s are acceptable, but don’t overuse them
- En dashes (–) rather than hyphens (-)
- 1,000 takes a comma
- Use around, not approx or approximately when referring to how much money was raised, ie around £400, or more than £400, or nearly/almost £400
- Round up or down the amount made on events eg, ‘The event raised more than £400’ rather than ‘The event raised £410.56’
- Companies in general are singular (eg, British Airways is based in London), but can be written as plural in direct speech/testimonials, if it’s more in keeping with spoken word (eg, ‘I work for British Airways and they’re great’).
General
- Use Collins English dictionary as a reference
- Use British English everywhere, so realised, not realized
- Omit ‘www’ from web addresses
- Avoid word breaks and widows wherever possible
- Put web addresses in bold – go up 2x weights, eg regular – semi-bold; medium – bold (except PT Serif, which goes up from regular – bold).
Punctuation
- Use open punctuation – full stops omitted at end of titles, intros, captions, pullout quotes, etc but do use a full stop after web addresses at the end of a paragraph
- Use en dashes (–) throughout
- Quote marks are single unless text within direct speech, then double
- Italicise names of books, films, works of art, plays (but not names of exhibitions)
- When referencing other PTA+/FundEd online or print articles, italicise the titles
- No full points after initials, eg JK Rowling.
Singular/plural
Companies in general are singular, but should be written as plural in direct speech/testimonials, as it’s more in keeping with spoken word.
Bullet points/lists
- If each item is a whole sentence, begin with a capital letter and end with a full point.
- If each item is a part sentence and is a continuation of the sentence before the list, no full points.
- If a list of items, use lower-case and no full points until the last item.
Upper/lower case
- All headlines, subheads and page headings are written in sentence case (capital only first letter of first word)
- All job titles are lower case. In running copy, ‘says the head’ or ‘says the chair’ can sound odd so use ‘headteacher’ or ‘chairperson’
- Continental, the Continent, when referring to mainland Europe, does take a capital
- Government – use capital G only in the phrase the Government, meaning the present government. Otherwise, use lower case – government policy, a future Labour government etc
- the prime minister
- the Queen.
Dates/numbers/measurements
- Dates: 1 January 2018 or Thursday, 4 September, 1998, but where lots of dates in calendar feature use 8 Aug to 6 Sept to abbreviate
- Time: 7:30pm not 7.30pm
- Decades: 1960s, not sixties or 60s. 2000s or the noughties
- Age: children aged four; ten-year-old pupils; nine to 18-year-olds, 14- and 15-year-olds
- 20th century (not superscripted); first to tenth-century written out
- Numbers: one to ten written out, then 11, 12 etc; a hundred, a thousand, a million written out when used without measurement (so a hundred pairs of shoes vs. 100km)
- 1,000 takes a comma
- Fractions: if one to ten, in running copy, then write out. eg, four per cent; for 11 an upwards, fractions, and/or a stand-alone figure, use figures and symbol: 4.5%, 12%
- Street numbers, as per country style (eg, 4 Larkfield Road, Goethestr 32). Write out ‘street’ etc in full
- Measurements: usually abbreviations when measurement is an adjective: a 50m pool but write in full if this makes it clearer; use long form when it’s a noun: we trekked 25 kilometres through the jungle
- Abbreviation of square metres is sq m
- Degrees: use 7º (alt j or alt k)
- Temperatures: Celsius, can have Fahrenheit equivalent, but not centigrade
- Karat/Carat: kt for gold; ct for diamonds
- £Xmillion.
Miscellaneous
- a hotel, not an hotel
- around, not approx
- towards, not toward
- checkout as noun; check out as verb
- incl. and excl. for abbreviations of including and excluding
- always include counties for schools featured in testimonials etc
- FundEd only – bold up all school names in body copy
- FundEd only – if multiple people are quoted in an article, use first name and surname each time.
Quick reference word list
- after-school if it’s an adjective (eg after-school club)
- age-old
- all right not alright
- A-level
- AS level
- armchair
- ball gown
- barbecue (BBQ is ok in heads/subheads)
- bestselling/bestseller
- book bags
- board of governors
- brand-new
- by-product
- café
- clientele
- co-chair
- coordinate
- CofE
- compère
- cost of living crisis (no hyphens)
- crowdfunding, crowdfunded
- décor
- Diamond Jubilee
- Early Years
- ecosystem
- eg (no full stops)
- email, ecommerce
- etc (no full stop)
- ExCeL London
- extra-curricular
- façade
- Fairtrade is one word when it refers to the FAIRTRADE Mark. When talking about fairly traded goods that are not covered by our standards, it is two words
- fête
- Financial Times not the Financial Times
- Formula 1
- forward-thinking
- free school
- friends association (no apostrophe)
- frontrunner
- fundraising
- Gift Aid
- go-kart
- half-term
- hard-pressed
- home-made
- hoodie
- hotdogs
- houmous
- ice-cream van
- ie (no full stops)
- internet
- jacuzzi
- key stage 1 / 2
- left-field
- like-minded
- live-stream
- Marks & Spencer
- match funding (no hyphen)
- mind-reader
- multimedia
- National Curriculum
- netbook
- noticeboard
- offline
- ongoing
- online
- outgoing
- over-sized (not size)
- Pancake Day
- papier-mâché
- parkour
- photovoltaic (first in full, abbreviated to PV thereafter)
- PTAs (as an abbreviation; a possessive would take an apostrophe eg The PTA’s funds)
- rip-roaring
- run down
- runners-up
- saltwater
- school children
- second-hand
- set-up (eg set-up begins at 3pm…)
- skin care
- smartphone
- special educational needs (lower case, abbreviated to SEN)
- sports car
- stand-alone
- standard-bearer
- state-of-the-art
- street-cred
- sun cream, sun care, sun tan
- summer fair
- teamwork
- teddy, teddies (lower case)
- The Guardian
- The Independent
- TikTok
- timetable
- Topshop
- T-shirt
- Twitter, but tweet, live-tweet
- underway
- Velcro®
- vice chair
- verruca
- wellbeing
- well-intentioned
- Wi-Fi
- win-win (not win/win)
- World War I / II
- year group
- Year 2, Reception, Early Years
- YouTube.
Checklist for articles
Please supply the following:
- First name and surname of anyone interviewed
- Role on the PTA or at the school, ie, PTA chair, PTA member, PTA volunteer
- PTA name (not the name of the school)
- Location (include the county for smaller places)
- Number of pupils at the school – can be approximate.
Case study contributors are written like this: Lucy Armstrong, PTA chair, St Swithin’s School PTA, Tunbridge Wells (210 pupils)
- A contact email address
- A postal address for a copy of the magazine
- Please ask if they would like it posted to their home or the school. Most people choose their home address.
You can say this:
We send a complimentary copy of the magazine to all our contributors. If you would like to receive a printed copy in the post, please forward the address to which you'd like it sent. This can be either your home address or that of the school.
Notes for designers:
I prefer simplicity over complex designs. When I make changes to the layouts, it’s usually to simplify them. I think that especially with submitted images, a page can easily become cluttered.
I don’t usually mix photos and vectors, except for cover stories where we need photos for case studies and graphics for the article itself.
I appreciate a good visual metaphor – like using magnets to symbolise attracting people to events or fitness representing getting ready for fundraising. If you think of a fitting visual metaphor, I’m open to rewriting the headline to incorporate it – an ideal way for writers and designer to work together in my experience.
We have three headline typefaces:
Fira (and condensed): Use as you see fit, usually in black.
IvyPresto: I typically only use the bold and bold italic versions. Can be in a colour
PT Serif: This is used only for small headlines, such as on openers. It also serves as the body copy typeface.
At the end of the process, I always review the dummy and may adjust a few headline typefaces if there’s repetition. It’s hard to keep track mid-issue, so I’m happy to make those changes.
Please do change pull quotes to be between two to four lines long and vary their widths on the grid.
I like it when designers paste simple vectors directly into InDesign, as it allows me to easily tweak or change colours. I prefer not to have vectors linked with additional elements added in InDesign.
As a production note, please ensure that all single-page articles are labeled as page 1 and all spreads are labeled as pages 2–3. This is only important when I’m preparing the PDFs, but it makes the process much easier.