GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION
They matter. Full stop
How we use capital letters For our clients to be receiving a joined up service from the UK firm, we all need to be using language in the same way. Please try to adhere to the following guides Departments - initial upper case (Marketing department, Tax department). Teams - initial upper case (Marketing team, Corporate Finance team). Disciplines - initial upper case (Tax, Audit, Corporate Finance). The exception is when we are describing the services we provide so ‘we provide tax advice to…’. Sectors - initial upper case (Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing). The exception is if you are talking about the sector in general terms so ‘the retail market’. Job titles - initial upper case when talking about a specific role (Managing Partner, Head of Advisory) but lower case for generic roles (partner, audit senior, marketing manager). Government - initial upper case if you are saying ‘the Government’ but lower case if it’s ‘a government’. Member firms - initial upper case when preceded by BDO eg BDO Member Firm, otherwise lower case eg the member firm in France. When referring to BDO as ‘the firm’ or ‘the network’ there is no need to use a capital ‘F’ or ‘N’. Big Four - spelt out, with initial upper case. Refers to (with acceptable abbreviations in brackets): PwC, KPMG, Ernst & Young (E&Y) and Deloitte. Books, films and publications etc - should be referred to with initial upper case, not in quotation marks or italics eg The Times. Always check to see if the word ‘The’ is part of the title.
How we use numbers % vs ‘per cent’ – always use the % sign to indicate percentage. Numbers - one to ten should be written in full, 11 and above should be in figures. Exceptions include sums of money, times, distances and percentages: £8, 9am, 5km and 2%. Also, in titles, numbers below 11 can be written as numerals to save space. Fractions - avoid fractions where possible, ‘£500,000’ instead of ‘£0.5m’. Dates - should be in the format ‘1 January 2011’. Note we never use date suffixes – always 1, never 1 st , always 2 never 2 nd etc. Quarters - best practice is to write in full each time eg third quarter, except for charts and graphs where Q1, Q2 etc may be used. For some publications it may be appropriate to use Q1, Q2 etc within copy (eg PCPI). Times - use the 12 hour clock in the following format eg 1pm, 8.45am ie no space between the number and ‘am’/‘pm’. Noon, midday and midnight are also allowed. Phone numbers - preferred format is to include the international prefix ‘+44 (0)20 7486 5888’. Million and billion - write in full unless referring to money eg ‘£5m’, ‘£5bn’, ‘5 million people’.
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