Italics and capitals

Never use italics online, or write out words using capital letters.

Do not use italics in digital content 

You should avoid italics when writing content for the web. Italics make text very hard to read for people with a range of conditions, including dyslexia and visual impairments. 

Using italics in printed content or signage 

If your content is for print, you should use italics for:  

• Titles of publications (books, newspapers, magazines, journals, brochures) 

• Titles of campaigns, television and radio programmes and advertisements 

• Titles of plays, films, conferences, CDs, works of art, exhibitions and vehicles (ships, aircraft, spacecraft and locomotives) 

• Lesser-known foreign phrases and expressions 

Titles of essays, articles, songs and short poems should be roman (non-italic) and in single quotes.

Unless in a bibliography, the definite article in a sentence referring to a newspaper should be lower-case roman except for The Times and The Economist. If the definite article doesn’t refer to the newspaper, it should also be lowercase roman. 

When to use capital letters

Acronyms

Only certain acronyms should be written using all capitals. Never use capitals for anything else as they cause accessibility problems.

Example

• NHS, NATO, USA

or

• Covid-19

You can read more about capitalisation in acronyms in our blog post from June 2020.

Blog: Covid-19 and dealing with new acronyms

Sentences, headings, and buttons

Use sentence case

Write in sentence case, following normal grammatical rules where capital letters are used for the first letter of the first word, for example:

• You should include a timetable in your research proposal.
• This page gathers information on funding opportunities for postgraduate research applicants.

Use sentence case for headings, subheadings and buttons to make them easy to scan.  Do not use initial capitals for emphasis.

Proper nouns 

You should use initial capitals for proper nouns, which have specific names. For example: 

People

• Mona Siddiqui
• the Duke of Edinburgh

Places

• Glasgow Green
• Nicaragua

Job titles

• the Deputy Head of Institute

Team titles

• Graphic Design team

Names of events

• The Postgraduate Virtual Open Day

Names of institutions

• The University of Edinburgh
• Welcome to the University of Edinburgh

Nationalities, languages and religions

• American
• Spanish
• Judaism 

Days of the week and months of the year

• Monday
• August

Subject areas

Don't capitalise subject areas unless they form part of the title of a programme of study or course. 

• They improved the Informatics laboratories. 

but

• She took informatics in her second year.

University terms

Always capitalise when referring to the University of Edinburgh, and when referring to specific Schools or Colleges of the University, for example:

• The College of Science and Engineering is running a learning event on 3 March. 

but

• Open days are taking place in many universities and colleges around the country.

and

The School of Biological Sciences is one of seven Schools in the College of Science and Engineering.

Referring to the University

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