We use a 24-hour clock, with a colon, in all circumstances, labeled GMT or BST.
Don't use this morning, tonight, last night on digital, except on liveblogs. We use absolute time references, not relative ones.
Use the name of the day instead and specify a time if required.
For international stories, state the local time first, followed by a GMT/BST conversion.
You only need to establish the time zone once.
GMT stands for Greenwich Mean Time. This is synonymous to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). BST stands for British Summer Time. Clocks in the UK are set to GMT between the end of October and the end of March and BST from the end of March till the end of October.
Spell out the units of measurement in time sequences:
ie "The trip to the International Space Station took 50 hours, 23 minutes, 14 seconds."midnight: Avoid using the term if it would create ambiguity about what day something is taking place, since some users’ understandings may vary. Instead: 23:59 on Thursday or 00:01 on Friday.
When describing events that have occurred within a seven-day time period either side from the writing of the story, it is acceptable to use days of the week such as "Monday."
Don't use tomorrow, today, yesterday on digital, except on liveblogs. Use the day's name instead.
ie "The incident occurred in the early hours of Monday"For any period of time beyond these seven days either way, use a month and a figure for dates. Put the day before the month.
Don't use the 12/04/2021 formulation, as this will be understood in the US and in AltText as 4 December rather than 12 April.
Do not include suffixes after the day.
When writing about any sporting season, academic or tax or financial years etc, the preferred style is 2020-21.
When writing about historical events, AD goes before the year with no gap and BC goes after the year:
ie The Roman Empire ruled the area around the Mediterranean Sea from 146BC till AD330.Note: While BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) are being used more in academia, BC/AD are still used in news reporting across the industry.