Our grammar and punctuation choices play a big role in bringing our clear, creative, calm, and confident voice to life. A few pieces of advice:

• • We don’t use the Oxford comma in order to keep our writing clear and conversational, unless there is a functional use that might cause confusion or even get us into legal issues.
  • Use exclamation marks sparingly. If something is especially exciting, an exclamation mark may be appropriate, but for the most part we end our sentences in periods. Exclamation marks aren’t exactly calm.
  • Find semicolon alternatives. For long, somewhat complicated lists, semicolons can be helpful. Otherwise, we use commas, brackets or em dashes to separate out clauses or add emphasis. If in doubt, try to turn one long, complex sentence into two simple ones.
  • Use a single space between sentences. Today’s word processors automatically add padding between sentences to help with legibility, so we no longer need to add an extra space.

Apostrophes 

There are two ways to use apostrophes: to show possession or to make a contraction. Apostrophes never make a plural.

Here’s how we use apostrophes to show possession:

• • Singular noun = That is Jim’s account.
  • Singular noun that ends in s = We love Brussels’s transit system.
  • Plural noun = Pick up the women’s jackets.
  • Plural noun that ends in s = I like the attendants’ uniforms.

Sometimes proper nouns sound like they’re plurals. American Airlines is one company, so their fleet would be American Airlines’s fleet. Since this still sounds a bit awkward, try rearranging the sentence or using appropriate abbreviations to avoid these instances.

We use contractions often to help convey our relaxed and approachable brand voice. We use the same contractions you would in your everyday conversations (we’re, we’ll, can’t, won’t, you get the idea). We avoid spelling out contractions that might blur together in speech but you wouldn’t typically see written in the English language, like wouldn’t’ve or this’ll. This makes us sound a bit too playful and juvenile.

When writing contractions, we use apostrophes to show where a letter has been left out.

Quotation marks

We use quotation marks for actual quotes and for article titles we’re referencing. We never put them around the names of our partners or any of our features.

Hyphenation

Hyphens help clarify our message when we use compound words. For example, the phrase “a small wedding magazine” could refer to a small magazine about weddings or a magazine about small weddings.

We hyphenate words that come before a noun to modify it as a single idea.

We don’t hyphenate adverbs that end in ly.

Hyphens and dashes are not the same thing. Dashes are longer and indicate added emphasis or signal a parenthetical thought.

We use en dashes (the shorter ones) between spans or estimates of time, distance and other quantities.

We use em dashes (the longer ones) to indicate a pause or an aside, just like a comma.

The way words look on a page — even before or without design — has a bigger impact on branding than you might think. We want to make sure we’re consistent across formats and channels, and that our format decisions reflect our overarching brand voice.

Headings

We use sentence case titles and headings to further emphasize our calm demeanor. This means that only the first word in a title or heading is capitalized, with the exception of proper nouns that always need to be capitalized. We only use periods or other punctuation in titles and headings when it’s necessary to make the headline grammatically-correct and we don’t capitalize the first word after a colon in a sentence or a title.

Dates 

Since we write like Americans, we use their date style, too: [Month] [date], [year]

Times

For times of day, we always use the 12-hour clock and include capitalized AM/PM on creative or lowercase am/pm on written assets. We also list the timezone as a three-letter abbreviation.

Numbers

We use digits for numbers higher than nine and commas to punctuate numbers greater than three digits. In countries where full stops are used instead of commas, we follow local practices for that market. Just make sure everyone’s on the same page.

For extra big numbers (in the millions or billions) we write the number in figures without zeros, then add the appropriate word with a space in between.

We write out fractions as words or use percentages. Speaking of which, for percentages we use digits followed by the % icon, no matter what.

We don’t use the “+” symbol with numbers, unless we are very tight on space for copy in an ad. Otherwise we say “more than” or “over” to show that our numbers are not absolute in a calmer, less salesy way.

Sources and citations

For most digital written assets, we hyperlink our sources so that readers can click through to see where we found our information.

Hyperlink best practices

• • Hyperlink the source from the specific part of the sentence that requires proof.
  • Avoid embedding a third-party hyperlink in the first 2–3 paragraphs as much as possible, in order to keep readers on the page.
  • Select for hyperlinks to “Open in a New Tab”, so that readers can easily come back to the PressReader asset.
  • Consider conducting backlink outreach to ask high priority publishers to link out to our content and help build our authority.

For external presentations, cite key sources on the slide using the APA footnote style.

Digital media

Email addresses

We write email addresses in all lowercase and don’t underline them.

Note: We always address our emails to someone specific. We never write “Dear Sir or Madam” or “To Whom It May Concern.” Keep it casual and use the recipient’s name.

Websites

We are sending people to landing pages and websites all the time. To keep things clear, never write out the entire URL. Instead, insert a descriptive hyperlink.

In printed communications, or where hyperlinks aren’t appropriate, remove the https ://www and exclude the final backslash. Also, make sure the URL isn’t underlined.

Internal communications

Guidelines on how to communicate internally, including across email, Slack and in meetings, can be found in the Employee Etiquette Handbook.

As part of our goal to sound clear, creative, calm, and confident, we keep our language choices simple and conversational. We believe that using simple language well actually requires more creativity than using complex words.

Accessibility and inclusivity

We want to make our readers feel comfortable and included. We focus on using that language that the majority of readers will understand and nobody will find offensive. This means choosing simple words that align with our clear voice attribute and avoiding terms that may be sexist, racist, classist or ableist in nature.

• • Review your writing word by word, asking yourself if there’s any chance your readers will need a dictionary to understand one of your choices.
  • Remove gendered terms like “guys” or pronouns that not everyone will relate to. Choose terms like “y’all” and “folks” instead and use “they/their” pronouns.
  • Remove classist terms like “ghetto” and ableist terms like “lame”, “dumb”, “blind” or “crazy”, including when they’re part of a larger concept such as “blind spot.”
  • Consider how other word choices might impact a marginalized group. If in doubt, choose something different.

Words to lose

Here are some of the terms we really try to avoid:

• Clients (use partners)
• Assist (use help)
• Bleeding edge
• Leverage
• Revolutionize
• Disruption
• Immersive
• Dynamic
• Utilize
• Ecosystem
• For the people
• Optimize
• Out-of-the-box
• Forge
• Paradigm shift
• Game-changer
• Fashionista
• Tackle challenges
• Unique
• Inspirational
• World-renowned

Glossary

Here’s how we use some specific words at PressReader: