• Accented characters

    Accents, also known as diacritical marks, are marks appearing on words that English has borrowed or absorbed from other languages.

  • Australian, American and British spelling

    Where British and American spellings differ, Australian spellings may reflect one or the other, sometimes inconsistently.

  • Compound words

    A compound word is created by joining 2 or more words together to form a new word, sometimes using hyphens.

  • Compound nouns and verbs

    Compound nouns can be formed in various ways (e.g. noun + noun, noun + verb, verb + noun, adjective + noun, noun + adjective).

  • Compound modifiers

    A modifier is a word or phrase that provides additional information, or ‘modifies’, another word. Learn when to use hyphens in compound modifiers.

  • Exceptions to the modifier rule

    Learn when to use and not use hyphens in compound modifiers and word combinations.

  • Special cases of compound words

    Some types of compound words follow their own rules for hyphenation.

  • Text accessibility

    Make your text accessible by considering language, tagging and headings, links and design.

  • Capital letters

    Capital letters are used to give prominence to particular kinds of words.

  • Capitalisation styles

    Five different styles of capitalisation can be applied to titles and words in English.

  • Common nouns

    In English, capital letters are not used for common nouns, with some exceptions.

  • Proper nouns

    Capital letters distinguish proper nouns from common nouns. Learn when and when not to capitalise proper nouns and terms derived from them.

  • Qualifications and job titles

    Use maximal capitals for qualifications and full formal job titles, but do not capitalise shortened forms or plurals of these.

  • Organisations and institutions

    Use maximal capitals for full formal (unique) names of organisations and institutions, but not necessarily for their shortened forms.

  • Political parties

    Use maximal capitals for full formal names of political parties, as well as for all uses of the party descriptor.

  • Geographical features, places and buildings

    Use maximal capitals for full names of geographical features, places and buildings, but not necessarily in their shortened forms.

  • Conventions, treaties, protocols, codes and projects

    Use maximal capitals for the full formal (unique) names of conventions, treaties, protocols, legally enforceable codes, projects and similar entities, but not n

  • School and tertiary courses

    Use maximal capitals for the full titles of school and tertiary subjects, but not for the names of general curriculum areas.

  • Alternative (alt) text

    Alt text is a written description of the main message that users are expected to derive from nontext content (e.g. graphs, photographs) and from tables.

  • Brand names and trademarks

    Capitalise commercial and proprietary names.

  • Events and special days

    Use maximal capitalisation for the names of significant events and special days.

  • Legislation

    Learn how to capitalise Acts, Bills and delegated legislation.

  • Bold, underlining and italics

    Contrasting fonts within a typeface can be used to set particular words, phrases and titles apart in running text; distinguish headings from running text; and c

  • Lists

    Lists allow information to be presented in an orderly, logical and concise way. Lists can simplify complicated material by breaking it into smaller items.

  • List structure

    Effective lists consider list length, parallel structure, introductory text and the order of items in a list.