Grammar & style

Contents:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

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A / an

• With words beginning with ‘h’ (e.g. historic), judge whether the ‘h’ is silent (e.g. ‘the birds were left for an hour to acclimatize’) or hard (‘a historic day’).
• Before acronyms, use whichever ‘sounds’ best (e.g. ‘an NIH grant’, ‘a NERC studentship’), although ‘an’ should always be used before an acronym that begins with a vowel (e.g. ‘an EPSRC fellowship’).

Abbreviations

• See Abbreviations

Accents

• Retain, or put in if missing, the accents for proper names such as Schrödinger, Poincaré, etc. Add (if not yet present) correct spelling to pre-edit spelling correction.

Adjectival forms

• Hyphenate compound adjectives that will benefit, e.g. ‘high-performance’ (apply or remove consistently throughout article), sea-level change (note that “sea level” alone is not hyphenated) etc.

Americanisms

• Avoid, except where necessary (e.g. in an American reference in the reference list).
• For ‘likely’ versus ‘probably’, see below
• Take care with ‘quite’: Americans tend to use this to mean ‘very’ as opposed to the usual British meaning of ‘rather’. Query if unsure.
  • American use: ‘quite right’
  • British use: ‘quite unsure’

Amongst

• Use ‘among’ instead.

Apostrophes

• e.g. ‘results for 5 days’ data’—plural possessive.
• e.g. ‘The IUCN’s Red Data Book’—singular possessive.
• e.g. James’s but Sedges’—apostrophe used only when the name is pronounced ‘-iz’.
• e.g. ‘The Darwins left a great legacy’—no apostrophe in the plural of a family name.
• In French names (e.g. Descartes’s), an ‘s’ is added after the apostrophe because the last syllable is not pronounced, but with characters from Classical times no ‘s’ is added after the apostrophe (e.g. Mars’ and Socrates’) .
• e.g. ‘The AIDS pandemic became widely recognized in the 1980s’—plural, no apostrophe needed.
• Avoid ‘it’s’ for ‘it is’ and ‘don’t’, ‘won’t’, etc.
• Plurals of mathematical variables should use an apostrophe e.g. α’s. Where possible reword the sentence to avoid using a plural.

Articles

• Watch out for over-usage and proper usage of definite (‘the’) and indefinite (‘a’) articles. Definite and indefinite articles should not be added unless necessary.

Autumn vs fall

• ALWAYS use ‘autumn’, not the American form ‘fall’.

B

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Better than

• ‘Better than’ should be used in preference to ‘better compared with’.

Both

• ‘Both’ should be placed directly before the word it modifies (e.g. ‘We found that both the adults and the juveniles reacted similarly’).
• Replace with ‘the two’ where appropriate, e.g. ‘a difference between the two’

C

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Capitalization

• Remove spurious capitalization; for example, in the text use ‘figure 1’, ‘table 2’, ‘equation (3.4)’, ‘theorem 5.6’, ‘preposition 7.8’, ‘the appendix’, i.e. no capitals (except, of course, when they start a sentence). Also note that these words should always be given in full (except for a figure from another article, in which case use ‘fig.’).
• Use capitals for words derived from names - Cartesian, Gaussian, Hamiltonian, Abelian, etc. - except for the following: boson, fermion, ohmic, voltaic, coulombic.
• Full caps should be used for most abbreviations/acronyms (e.g. face-centred cubic (FCC)). See Abbreviations.
• Use Equator, North/South Pole/Hemisphere.
  • Capitalize recognized geopolitical regions (e.g. Southeast Asia, Western Europe), but not points of the compass (western China, southern England). Note the context of use; for example, East Africa refers to the UN subregion made up of 20 countries; eastern Africa refers more generally to the easterly region of the African continent.
• Use the Earth, Moon, Sun, Universe, Solar System, etc., when our Galaxy is meant, but set general references to suns, moons and other galaxies in lower-case.
• Capitalize TRUE geological periods: Early, Middle, Late, Upper, Lower, Recent, Mid-.
• Use a capital ‘T’ in ‘The’ for ‘The Philippines’ and ‘The Netherlands’ etc.
• Laws, such as Newton’s First Law, Moore’s Law and Stoke’s Law, should have uppercase first letters.

Can / may / might

• ‘Can’ suggests ‘possibility’ in the sense of the likelihood of being able to do something (e.g. ‘The results can be considered valid…).
• ‘May’ is used as a formal and polite means of request (instead of ‘can’) or as a way of indicating that permission is granted for something. Like ‘can’, ‘may’ can also indicate possibility in the sense of probability rather than likelihood (e.g. ‘The specimens may have been contaminated…).
• ‘Might’ also suggests ‘possibility’ (e.g. ‘it might be possible to reconstruct the phylogeny by using a molecular approach’) but it is also a weaker form of ‘may’ (‘It might have been the case that…’).

Carer vs care giver

• Use the UK English word ‘carer’ (care giver is US English).

Centuries

• Spell out, e.g. ‘nineteenth’ not ‘19th’.

Chemical equations

• Chemical symbols should be set roman (not italic), e.g. NaCl, H₂O.
• Conformations of chiral molecules (i.e. cis-, trans-, iso-) are always italicized.
• When referring to a class of compounds, iso is upright and without a hyphen, e.g. isonitriles, isocarbonyls.
• Italicize N-tert-, and bis- is upright.
• Long chemical formulae should not be split over lines where possible. Where it is impossible not to split a formula then hyphens should not be used.

Chimpanzee vs chimp

• Spell out in full and use ‘chimpanzee’.

Colon vs semicolon

• Colon: use to balance, explain or in another way complete a sentence and to introduce a list.
• Semicolon: more than a comma, but less than both a colon and a full point in strength, it splits a sentence into linked clauses of essentially equal importance (e.g. ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a lot can be too.’). Semicolons are preferable to commas in long run-on lists.

Commas

• Make sure commas are used in the following situations.
  • ‘[Subject] … [verb] …, [subject] … [verb] ….’
  • ‘[Preposition] … [verb] …, [subject] … [verb] ….’
  • Parenthetical clauses
• Oxford commas are to be avoided in run-on sentences, unless the sentence requires one for sense.
• Oxford commas are required in lists (see Lists section).

Commercial products

• For example, Plexiglas (not plexiglass), Plasticine, IBM PC, Macintosh (follow OED, The Collins English Dictionary or Chambers).
• Do not remove trademark symbols (^®, ™) if they have been provided, but these do not need to be queried if they have not been included. The symbol should appear only after the first mention of the product in the abstract and the text.
• Manufacturers/suppliers: a brief address (e.g. town, state, country) is permitted, but should not be requested if the author has not included this; do not repeat the address after first mention (see also Full postal address).

Compare to / with

• Use ‘compare to’ when describing or indicating similarities, i.e. likening one thing to something else.
• Use ‘compare with’ when (i) a contrast is being drawn or a distinction made (i.e. when indicating difference); (ii) in an intransitive construction (e.g. ‘These results compare well with those of Forbes (1990)’); or (iii) when the past participle ‘compared’ introduces a secondary clause (e.g. ‘Compared with the previous year, offspring fitness increased threefold’).
• ‘Better compared with’ should be changed to ‘better than’.

Common

• When referring to something that occurs often use ‘most common’ or ‘most frequent’ not ‘commonest’.

Comprised / comprising / comprise

• Unlike ‘consist’, do not add ‘of’ afterwards.

Computer terms

• Use small caps for the lower case letters of any term that is always used to refer to software (e.g. Mathematica, Clustal X, Word), unless the name forms an acronym or is also the name of the publisher (e.g. GLIM, SPSS).
• Do not use small caps for computer languages, things that could be either a computer language or software (e.g. Java, Fortran, Matlab), or databases (e.g. SwissProt, BioCarta), or R packages.
• Operating systems should be classed as software (e.g. Windows, Linux).
• Company names and makes of computer should be written in normal font (e.g. Microsoft, Apple).
• See computer software list for examples of terms that should and should not be written with small caps.
• Versions may be referred to by the abbreviation ‘v.’, except at the start of a sentence. It is not necessary to insert 'v.' if the author did not use 'version' (e.g. CellML 1.1 DOES NOT need to be changed to CellML v. 1.1).
• Retain Courier or similar fonts when referring to routines or algorithms. URLs should never be written in courier.
• 'Grid' (when referring to the specific UK Grid) but 'grid' otherwise.

D

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Dates

• Dates are expressed in the form, 'day month year': e.g. 9 April 1995.

dimensional

• Spell out, instead of ‘2D’ or ‘3D’, or even ‘3-D’.
• These should be adjectivally hyphenated.

Downscale vs downmarket/ upscale vs upmarket

• Use British spelling (downmarket/upmarket).
  • The company wants to break away from its downmarket image.
  • To get more viewers the TV station was forced to downmarket.
  • How should we approach downscaling models to predict the habitats within the future ranges of species where populations will colonise at the leading edge of an expanding range, or persist at the trailing edge?

Due to / owing to

The following guidelines are suggestions rather than rules; follow the style used by the author.

• ‘Due to’ is used for expectation (e.g. ‘The data are due to be compiled today’).
• Do not start a sentence with ‘Due to’.
• ‘Owing to’ should be used when a cause is being attributed (e.g. ‘Owing to poor weather, we were unable to obtain any results that day’).
• Replace ‘due to’ with ‘owing to’ where ‘due to’ is used to mean ‘because of’ (note, do NOT change ‘because of’ to ‘owing to’).
• If there is a sense of obligation, then either phrase may be used.

E

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Educt

• Avoid using 'educt' – query author.

Effect / affect

• The effect of an action will affect something.

Ellipses

• Use ‘...’ within continuous text.

Email addresses

• Should be lower-case.

Emphasis

• If an author has indicated certain words or phrases to be italicized, then this is fine. However, extended passages of italicized text should be made roman and the author queried.

Em rules and en rules

• A pair of em rules (or dashes) is used to indicate asides and parentheses, in a way similar to commas, but forming a more distinct break. (Commas are preferred for short parenthetical remarks.) No spaces should be put between the em rules and their associated asides.
• An en rule has the following uses:
  • to indicate a range of numbers, e.g. ‘20–100 keV’ (but note the expression, ‘from 20 to 100 keV’; avoid ‘from 20–100 keV’);
  • between interactions, e.g. photon–photon;
  • with log–log (often seen when describing the axes of a figure);
  • between linked names, e.g. Hartree–Fock.
• An en rule should not be used in ‘between 20–100 keV’; ‘between 20 and 100 keV’ is the preferred form.

Enquire vs inquire

• Enquiry is used to refer to something being asked, e.g. I enquired about the lack of funds in my account.
• Inquiry is used to refer to making an investigation, e.g. we inquired into the evolutionary purpose of legs.
• The distinction between the meanings and spellings only exists in British English; no distinction is made in US English (thus this may need amending in papers written US English).

Ethics statement

• No heading required and small point font size.
• Style as one paragraph, regardless of how long section is.
• All Authors should include details of animal welfare (such as species, number, gender, age, weight, housing conditions, welfare, training and the fate of the animals at the end of the experiment) and steps taken to ameliorate suffering in all published papers that involve non-human primate research. These details should be included in the Methods section of the article.
• This must be included where experiments have been carried out on humans, animals or fish.
• A brief statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments must be included at the end of the article before the acknowledgements section.
• Where no statement has been included by the author, please query.
• If in doubt about whether an ethics statement is necessary, query the author.
• Ethics statements are only required for Research papers (ie. not Reviews).
• Examples are:
  • This study conforms to the terms of the Declaration of Helsinki (human trials).
  • This study meets the terms of the ethics committee at the institution where the trials were carried out (animal trials).

F

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First, … Second, … vs Firstly, … Secondly, …

• Neither style is preferred, but please make sure either style is used consistently within a list.

Fig. or Figure

• When referring to a figure, the full word should always be spelled out (ie figure 1). This includes references to figures in the ESM. The abbreviation 'fig.' should only be used to refer to figures from other papers.

-fold

• Use twofold, threefold, etc. rather than two-fold, three-fold, etc

Footnotes

• Use superscripted Arabic numerals for footnotes, except in tables
• In the text, the footnote symbol should appear after punctuation where appropriate
• Add article footnotes left-aligned on the page in Proc A, Trans A, or at the base of the second column (left aligned) in Biol Lett, Trans B, Interface. Notes Rec does NOT have footnotes.

G

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Gender vs. sex

• These have two different meanings.
  • Gender is the social meaning of masculine and feminine.
  • Sex is the biological definition of male and female.

Genetics

• In general, genes are italicized and proteins are set as roman. If in doubt, query the author.
• Generation numbers should be subscripted (e.g. F₁, P₂).

Great Britain vs United Kingdom

• Great Britain refers to England, Scotland and Wales.
• United Kingdom refers to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Greek letters

• Abbreviations with Greek letters are hyphenated (e.g. TNF-α, δ-GTP) and the Greek characters are roman.
• When a sentence begins with a chemical that has a Greek letter prefix the first English letter should be capitalized (e.g. ‘γ-Herpesviruses were studied.’). The same applies to substances that have an English alphabetic prefix, e.g. F-Actin (but ‘F-actin’ in mid-sentence).
• Try to avoid starting sentences with such prefixes.

H

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Honours and awards

• Single space but no comma between them in lists after names.

Hyphenation

• Do not use in an adverbial context, i.e. following words ending ‘-ly’ (e.g. ‘correctly-estimated values’ should be ‘correctly estimated values’).
• Only hyphenate phrases such as ‘well known’, ‘best fit’ and ‘density dependent’ when used adjectivally, e.g. ‘best-fit line’, ‘density-dependent factor’.
• Do not use in phrases containing a numbered unit in, e.g. ‘The 14 m wide gap’, not ‘The 14-m-wide gap’.
• Do not use when a proper noun is involved, e.g. ‘West African parrots’.
• Note: not all multi-word UK place names are hyphenated (e.g. Southend-on-Sea but Newcastle upon Tyne).
• Do not hyphenate Latin terms when used adjectivally (e.g. post hoc results), but note that post-mortem is consistently hyphenated.
• p-value, t-test and χ²-test should be hyphenated.

Hypotheses

• Hypotheses and generalizing statements always take the present tense.

I

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If vs whether

• if: used to introduce a clause, often in indirect speech, e.g.
  • ‘I do not care if he likes it or not’
• whether: used especially in reporting questions and expressing doubts, e.g.
  • ‘I wasn't sure whether you would like it.’

In contrast / by contrast

• The noun 'contrast' may be followed by between, 'with', or to (e.g. There is a sharp contrast between data set 1 and data set 2.)
• When 'contrast' is used as a transitive verb, both 'with' and 'to' may follow, though 'with' is more common (e.g. Most scholars contrast the findings from the 1980s with those of the 1990s.)
• When comparing data with one another 'by contrast' can be used (e.g. Data set 1 demonstrates that the flies were able to fly backwards. By contrast, data set 2 shows that the results of data set 1 are flawed.)

Increase / decrease

• ‘increase/decrease of [value, e.g. 10]’ vs ‘increase/decrease in [noun, e.g. speed]’

Infer vs imply

• To infer something is to deduce, surmise, conclude or presume.
• To imply something is to hint or insinuate, or to indicate, import or mean. Thus something is inferred from something that is implied.

It / she

• Use ‘it’ when referring to countries or to ships and nature.

Italics

• Italicize Latin phrases that incorporate English words (e.g. per se, a priori, in absentia, in infinitum, in situ, in toto, in utero, in vitro, in vivo, pro rata) but keep roman otherwise (e.g. ad libitum, de novo, versus) with the exception of ‘sensu’ and ‘ab initio’, which should be italicized.
• Conformations of isomers (i.e. cis-, trans-) are always italicized.
• Normally genes are italicized, proteins are roman.
• Italics in e.g. italic headings should be reversed out:
  • (a) In vivo model
• Mathematical terms (and their super/subscripts) in italic headings should retain their own formatting.
• Statistics: Student’s t-test; ‘t’ should be italic.
• Chemical formulae (e.g. NaCl, H₂O) should not be set in italics.
• In silico is an expression used to mean "performed on computer or via computer simulation." While it is not actually Latin, it should be italicised as it is intended as a companion expression to other latin phrases like in vivo and in vitro.

Journals

• The names of all journals should be italicised in the body text as well as the reference list.

Latin names

• Always in italic (or reversed out in e.g. italic headings).
• At the first occurrence, Latin names should be written in full:
  • Escherichia coli
• Genus should be abbreviated at subsequent occurrences:
  • E. coli
• Where a Latin name starts a sentence (or a heading) the genus should be written in full:
  • Onthophagus taurus has a dimorphism in the length of the horns carried on the males’ head.

Likely vs probably

• Normally these are interchangeable, often attached to another qualifying adverb (e.g. most probably, very likely). However, (chiefly) an American adverbial usage of ‘likely’ is demonstrated by the following examples.
  • The specimens were likely contaminated during transit.
  • An understanding of how these resistance gene products interact with viruses will likely give us a much better understanding of how plants evolved resistance against viruses and other pathogens.
• Here it is preferable to use ‘probably’. In some less obvious cases, it may be necessary to check with the author the precise meaning that is intended—as with ‘quite’ (see Americanisms) the author may actually mean to convey 'possibility' rather than 'probability'.

Lists

• Use ‘(i), (ii) and (iii)’, etc., in preference to ‘(1), (2) and (3)’ or ‘(a), (b) and (c)’. But follow author’s lead if there is a logical system in operation.
• For a list within a list, follow alphanumeric order, as followed for figures.
• Use Oxford commas only in lists (not in run-on text).
• See Lists section for examples.

Mucus vs mucous

• Use ‘mucus’ when in the noun form e.g. the mucus is found …
• Use ‘mucous’ when in the adjectival form e.g. the mucous layer is found…

Nature / nature / Nature

• Use ‘Nature’ when referring to the journal e.g. as published in Nature …
• Use ‘nature’ when referring to the natural world e.g. the nature of the element …
• Use ‘Nature’ when referring to Mother Nature e.g. it is Mother Nature’s way …

Neither and neither…nor

• Position directly before its subject (e.g. instead of ‘…, which neither is conclusive nor inconclusive’, write ‘…, which is neither conclusive nor inconclusive’).
• ‘Neither’ is always paired with ‘nor’ (e.g. 'From the subjects tested neither bats nor bees showed any positive results.')

Numbers

• Spell out one to nine, unless linked with a unit (e.g. eight months, three weeks, 3– 4 m, 4 years) or in a statement such as ‘from 1 to 20’. Use figures for 10 and upwards and in ranges that go above 10 (for both units and non-units; e.g. 7–13 births). Note:
  • (i) ‘a ratio of 1’; ‘sixteen 22.5° rotation transformations’;
  • (ii) ‘day 3’ (a specific reference to a point of time).
• Write numbers in full at the start of a sentence (and units if they follow), or rewrite the sentence.
• Use thin spaces (never commas) to demarcate tens of thousand quantities or above (e.g. 1000, 10 000, 100 000,
  • 1 000 000, 10 000 000).
• Use ‘one-quarter’, ‘one-half’, etc., not ‘¼’, ‘½’.

Only

• Position immediately before the word it modifies.
• E.g. ‘We only use the data from these experiments in the discussion that follows’ should be changed to ‘We use only the data…’.
• The above example could be (mis)interpreted as meaning that these researchers alone use the data in these experiments as opposed to meaning that they use only the data from these experiments).

Optical isomers

• Use small capitals for optical isomers, e.g.:
  • 'Labelled L-tryptophan was extractable from plant tissue after feeding and showed no measurable isomerization into D-tryptophan.'

ORCID

See ORCID

Order

• Use ‘of the order of…’ rather than ‘in the order of…’ or other variants when the sentence refers to an approximation, e.g. ‘The data were of the order of…’.
• Use ‘in the order of…’ when describing a sequence, e.g. ‘The information is carried in the order of firing of the neurons in the population’.

Orientate

• Use ‘orient’ instead.

Parentheses

• Parentheses should always be upright roman – never italicised. This applies to all journals.
• Use parentheses inside parentheses (()), not square brackets or other in the text.
• Use parentheses inside parentheses (()), not square brackets or other in simple equations where practical, but only make these changes when:
  • the change will not alter the mathematical meaning and
  • the change can be applied consistently throughout the article (e.g. do not make the change in simple equations if more complex equations use square brackets in the same paper).

Part vs partially

• Use ‘part’ when meaning ‘in part’.
• Use ‘partially’ when a bias is indicated.

Per cent

• Always use % (figures, tables and text), unless not used as part of a percentage (e.g. "the per cent at which this occurs varies according to the temperature.")
• Always 'per cent' (two separate words).

Proper nouns

• ‘Young’s modulus’ but ‘the Young modulus’
• ‘Green’s theorem’ but ‘the Green theorem’

Proven vs proved

• These are both valid past-participles of the verb “to prove” so either can be used in that context. If it is used as an adjective before a noun, e.g. the proven test, then “proven” should be used.

Quotations

• Displayed quotations should be small type and are indented. Do not enclose within quotation marks. The page number should be included within the reference citation.
  • Example:
    • We pay more attention to a single story told well (even if false)
    • than to reams of hard data (even if accurate).
    • [13, p 3]
  • Include reference and specific page (EXCEPT Notes Rec); query the author if these are lacking.
  • They should not be altered. Only query if there is a concern over e.g. inconsistency of capitalization, misspelling, etc.
  • Text given in square brackets within a quotation should be roman.

Quotation marks

• Single and not double quotes should be used, this includes titles in the reference list (see References).

• When apostrophes are used by an author to highlight a specific term or phrase in the article, only use in the first instance of the term and NOT throughout the article.

Section

• Replace ‘section’ by the symbol §, except when it begins a sentence.
• Examples
• section 4, subsection (b), subsubsection (iii) = §4b(iii)
• sections 2 and 3 = §§2 and 3
• subsections 2a and 2b = §2a,b

Schematic

• Use alone, and not with ‘representation’, etc.

Similar

• ‘Similar to’ not ‘similar as’.

Singulars, plurals and collective nouns

• Plurals: data, errata, criteria, mosquitoes; both lemmas and lemmata are permitted – follow the author’s original, but make consistent throughout the paper.
• Singular: datum, erratum, criterion, each (is), neither… nor (is), dynamics, genetics, mosquito.
• Collective nouns (e.g. staff, government, number, the Royal Society) can take either a singular or a plural form of a verb, but ‘is’ is normally more correct. The Royal Society is what is known as a body corporate, made up of Fellows, but it should be referred to as a singular entity (i.e. ‘The Royal Society published a report on infectious diseases, in which it stated that…’). Note: the Akaike information criterion consists of a number of criteria.

Species names

• Write in full upon first appearance in an abstract and text and abbreviate the genus name thereafter, except at the beginning of a sentence (and where abbreviation could cause ambiguity).
  • Where two genera are discussed that start with the same letter, it is customary to use more than the first letter in abbreviations to permit the reader to distinguish between genera, e.g. Atta and Acromyrmex, should be abbreviated to "At." (= Atta) and "Ac." (= Acromymrex), (not A.).

Split infinitives

• Avoid where possible, but sometimes these actually promote understanding and text flow.

Structures

• Centre in the column (except left-align for Biol Lett, Proc B and Trans B).
• Number chronologically within each section (e.g. 3.1) and right-justify the structure number in parenthesis.
• In the text, cite as, for instance, ‘structure (3.5)’.
• Reference structure parts as, for instance, ‘structure (4.2)₂’ when referred to individually. (However, author may have a logical reason for labelling differently, for instance, ‘structure (3.4a)’ – in which case, leave as is.)
• When referred to collectively, reference as, for instance, ‘structures (6.24)’. In an appendix, use, for instance, ‘structure (B 4)’ (note the fixed – but not full – space) and for structure parts ‘structure (B 4a)’.

Tautology

• Watch out for this (e.g. ‘herbivory on the plant’, ‘plankton organisms’) and edit appropriately.

Taxonomy

• Style for taxonomic designations follow the following order and style:
  • Phylum, Class, Order (Suborder), Family (Subfamily), Genus, species, (subspecies)
• Where the actual terms ‘phylum’, ‘order’, ‘class’ etc are used in the text they should be lowercase, e.g.
  • The order of the family Hominidae is Monotremata.
  • Rumininantia is a suborder.
  • The genus and species are Rosa caroliniana.
• Where the name of the person who first described the organism is given, follow the author’s use of parentheses, e.g.
  • Pan paniscus Schwartz
  • Chaerephon plicata (Buchanan)
• A date may be given, this should not be considered a reference (do not link to the reference list or query for a reference in these instances):
  • Pan paniscus Schwartz 1929
  • Macropus rufogriseus (Desmarest 1817)
• The name may have been abbreviated:
  • Quercus alba L.

Tense

• Preferably, the author should refer to experiments in past tense, not present tense (e.g. ‘The number of eggs that were laid by hen A in an hour…’ not '...are laid by hen A...'). However, if the paper has been written consistently in present tense, leave as author supplied. If there are only a few sentences to change, then correct to past tense.

That vs which

• ‘That’ is used in a defining clause to refer to a specific object (e.g. ‘The number of eggs that were laid by hen A in an hour…’, ‘The initial experiments that we conducted…’, ‘This study demonstrates that…’).
• ‘Which’ is used for qualification or descriptive purposes (e.g. ‘Overall, the number of speckled eggs, which had been laid by hen A, was greater than the number of non-speckled eggs’ or ‘This paper highlights growing concerns over population growth, which is a key determinant of demographic stability’). Note: in some sentences a defining ‘which’ should be used for clarity’s sake, especially to avoid more than one instance of ‘that’ (e.g. ‘the data which we used led us to the conclusion that…’), but this is a context-specific judgement.

The Royal Society

• Usage: when referring to the Royal Society, ‘the’ should only appear as ‘The’ at the start of a sentence.

Time

• Use the 24 hour clock (e.g. 22.45; not 22:45).
• am/pm is not included as it is 24-hour clock.
• GMT is assumed unless stated otherwise.
• Note ‘AD 2000’, but ‘2000 BC’ and ‘100 000 BP’.
• Use words for centuries (e.g. ninth century).
• Decades may be referred to in figures (e.g. 1970s – note, no apostrophe before the ‘s’) or in words (e.g. Seventies – note capital ‘S’).
• Specific dates should be given in the form ‘[day] [month] [year]’ (e.g. 26 June 2002).
• Date (year) ranges should be given in full, (e.g. use ‘from 2001 to 2005’ not ‘from ’01 to ‘05’).

URL

• URLs should always be retained as provided by the author.
• If a URL is too long to fit on one line, do NOT insert a hyphen; try to break it at a suitable place.

Viruses

• Names of virues should be set in lower case Roman. The exceptions are those with proper nouns in the name, which should be capitalised, and those with latin names, which should be italicised. Viral genera and families should be italicised.

Was vs were

• For instance, write ‘if it were possible’ rather than ‘if it was possible’. This is a non-factual conditional introduced by ‘if’ – turning this phrase around to read ‘were it possible’ makes this more intuitive.

Whilst

• Use ‘while’ instead.

Year

• Do not abbreviate years in the text (use 1999, not '99).
• See sections on Abbreviations and units.