Abbreviations, contractions and acronyms

Don’t use full stops after any abbreviations, contractions or acronyms and close up space between letters.

Abbreviations

These are formed by omitting letters from the end of a word.

DO    Medical Sciences → Med Sci
DO    Doctorate of Philosophy → DPhil
DO    ante meridiem → am
DO    post meridiem → pm

Contractions

These are formed by omitting letters from the middle of a word.
DO    Mister → Mr
DO    Doctor → Dr
DO    The Reverend → The Revd
DO    Saint → St
DO    Street → St
 

Acronyms

These are formed from the initial letters of words (whether the result is pronounceable as a word or as a series of letters) and should be written as a single string of upper-case letters.

DO    British Broadcasting Corporation  →  BBC
DO    Master of Arts  →  MA
DO    Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome  →  AIDS
DO    Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences  →  MPLS
DO    Planning and Resource Allocation Committee  →  PRAC
DO    Pro-Vice-Chancellor  →  PVC
DO    Portable Document Format  →  PDF

When using an acronym that may be unfamiliar to your readers, spell it out in full the first time it is mentioned, with the acronym following in brackets; thereafter, use the acronym alone.

DO    The decision was made by the Planning and Resource Allocation Committee (PRAC). There are several meetings of PRAC every term.

Ampersands

Ampersands should only be used if they are part of official titles or names. Otherwise, spell out ‘and’.
DO    Johnson & Johnson
DO    Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education

People’s initials

Use a space to separate each initial.

DO    J R R Tolkien
DO    L M Montgomery
DO    C S Lewis

Measurements

When discussing large numbers in text, it is fine to use k/m/bn as shorter ways of spelling out 1,000/1,000,000/1,000,000,000, as long as you are consistent throughout the document. For multiple millions/billions you can use a mixture of words and numbers (eg 7 million, 8bn); again, ensure you are consistent throughout.

References

Page numbers should be referred to with a single ‘p’ for a single page reference or ‘pp’ for a range of pages; line references with ‘l’ and ‘ll’. In both cases close up the numbers to the ‘p’ or ‘l’. 
Note, however, that some typefaces do not differentiate between a lower-case ‘l’ and a number 1. In such cases, either change the typeface to the University’s recommended font, Noto Serif, or, if a different typeface must be used, spell out ‘line/s’ in full.

DO    The first mention of orcs in The Fellowship of the Ring is on p21 of the 1954 edition.
DO    Dates of term are published on pp7–8 of the Examination Regulations.
Names of universities, degrees etc
See Names and titles for details.

Latin abbreviations

Where possible, try and avoid Latin abbreviations in your writing as they can be confusing as people are not used to seeing them online. Screen reading software is often unable to pick them up correctly. It’s better to avoid these abbreviations, and (re)write sentences using ‘such as’, ‘for example’, ‘like’, ‘that is’ or ‘meaning’.

If you must use Latin abbreviations, make sure you know what they mean and when to use them. Do not use full stops after them and don't italicise them – see the Highlighting/emphasising text section for when to italicise. 

• etc [et cetera] – means ‘and the rest’; use to indicate the continuation of a list
  DO    Oxford offers many language courses: Russian, French, Spanish etc
  [the list could continue with the other language courses offered].
  DO    Oxford offers many language course: Russian, French, Spanish and so on.
• eg [exempli gratia] – means ‘for example’ or ‘such as’; use with examples which are not exhaustive (and do not follow with a comma) 
  DO    Oxford offers many language courses, eg Russian, French and Spanish 
  [those are some, but not all, of the language courses offered].
  DO    Oxford offers many language courses, such as Russian, French and Spanish [those are some, but not all, of the language courses offered].
• ie [id est] – means ‘that is’; use with definitions or lists which are exhaustive (and do not follow with a comma)
  DO    Catch a Blackbird Leys bus, ie numbers 1, 5, 12 or 100.
  [those are the only buses which go to Blackbird Leys]
  DO    Catch a Blackbird Leys bus: numbers 1, 5, 12 or 100.
  [those are the only buses which go to Blackbird Leys]
• ibid [ibidem] – means ‘in the same place’; use when making a subsequent reference/citation to a publication or other source mentioned in the immediately preceding note (that is, no references to anything else have appeared in between)
  DO    For a fuller explanation of telepathy, see Brown [Speaking with the Mind, Chicago (1945) p125]; Brown also gives further information on cats and telepathy [ibid, p229].