This guideline outlines the standards and principles for producing professional publications with Alameda. It offers clear instructions and best practices to ensure consistent and human-centred writing. Alameda aims to produce rigorous quality writing that reaches a general rather than specialist audience, as such we strive to not be limited by the conventions of academic writing. We also encourage experimentation with style and form that push the limits of traditional research publishing. These guidelines apply for specific Alameda commissions, in particular for dossiers, as most Alameda publications will run through third party websites, newspapers, journals and magazines. 

Language and Style

• • British English: All Alameda publications must adhere to standard British English, including spelling and grammar. Utilise ‘labour,’ ‘nationalisation,’ and employ single quotation marks.

• • Accessibility Alameda strives to produce quality publications that are accessible to as wide as possible an audience, try to avoid the conventions and pitfalls of academic writing, strive to reach an audience imagined as a generally informed intelligent reader.

• • Ampersands: Limit ampersands to official titles or names; otherwise, spell out ‘and.’

• • Accents: Maintain accurate accents in non-English languages following their original spelling.

• • Acronyms: Spell out acronyms in full, except for universally recognized ones (e.g., NGO, MP, UFO).

• • Jargon: avoid technical jargon unless absolutely necessary.

• • Brackets: Employ round brackets () to replace dashes or commas around non-defining phrases. Add punctuation before the closing bracket if the entire sentence/quote is enclosed.

Titles and Headings

• • Books/Films/Songs/Games: Capitalise the first word and all significant words in titles, excluding articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.

• • Bullet Points: Omit punctuation at the end of bullet points in itemised lists.

• • Subtitles: Capitalise subtitles if the original title does so.

• • Headlines, Articles, Chapters: Capitalise the first word, proper nouns, and the word following a full stop, question mark, or exclamation mark.

• • Single Letters: Capitalise single letters in expressions like C-list, F-word.

Punctuation

• • Colon and Semicolon: Use a colon to introduce a logically connected subclause. Utilise a semicolon to link two related independent clauses or in complex lists.

• • Comma: Surround non-defining clauses with a pair of commas. Use ’s for possession and just ’ for plural nouns ending in s.

• • Dashes and Hyphens: Utilise n-dashes (–) for brackets or commas, surrounded by spaces. Avoid m-dashes (—).

• • Ellipses: Indicate missing text in quotations with an ellipsis.

• • Abbreviations: Do not use full points or spaces in abbreviations. Employ figures and symbols for percentages, measurements, and currency.

• • Numbers: Spell out numbers from one to ten; use figures for numbers above ten. Utilise ‘m’ or ‘bn’ for large round numbers.

Measurements and Academic Writing

• • Metric System: Use the metric system exclusively; avoid obscure imperial or British measurements.

• • Italics: Use italics for distinct text within your writing, titles of complete works, and when quoting untranslated text.

Quotation Marks

• • Punctuation in Quotes: Place punctuation inside quotation marks if required in the original form; otherwise, place it outside.

• • Other Punctuation: Utilise the minimum necessary punctuation while retaining sentence meaning.

Citations and Terminology

• • Intellectual Citations: Cite intellectuals and their schools of thought only when essential to the argument.

• • Citations: Citations are discouraged unless absolutely necessary; use footnotes for additional clarification when needed.

• • Footnotes: Only employ footnotes when you want to add an additional point that would disrupt the flow of a paragraph

Please feel free to contact us in our Publishing chat in case you have any questions.