Style guide

The University of Oxford Style Guide aims to provide a guide to writing and formatting documents written by staff on behalf of the University (or one of its constituent departments etc). It is part of the University’s Visual identity guidelines which enables the University’s formal documentation to be presented consistently across all communications and is the graphic expression of the University.

Although this style guide is freely available online it has not been written with public or external use in mind. The University of Oxford Style Guide does not purport to compete with OUP’s professional writing guides and dictionaries.

Download the University of Oxford Style Guide here:

The University of Oxford Glossaries, an appendix to the style guide comprising terms and abbreviations in use at Oxford, is now available and can be downloaded here:

New: 1-page style guide

For ease of use, we have created a 1-page quick reference guide with the most commonly requested information available in A–Z format. Download your guide here:

Please address any queries on the style guide to [email protected].

Changes to Hilary term 2016 edition

The following items have changed in the HT 2016 edition:

• how to refer to page and line numbers (p3)
• capitalisation examples for names of courses/subjects (p4)
• further examples of various punctuation items (pp9–16)
• further examples of titles: associate professors, peers and clergy (pp17–19)
• list of college/hall names and appropriate shortened versions (p22)
• list of Oxford street names with apostrophes or without expected apostrophes (p22)
• how to refer to multiple masters’ or bachelors’ degrees (p24)
• correction to US spelling of ‘practice’(p25)
• using ‘they’ as a gender-neutral singular pronoun (p26)
• formatting footnotes and footnote markers (p27)

Thanks to everyone who has given us feedback.