Capitalisation

You should avoid unnecessary use of capital letters in text. Sentence case is easier to read and feels more relaxed.

Words that are always capitalised include:

  • proper nouns - England
  • proper names - University of Bath
  • composition titles - titles of books, movies, songs, television programmes, lectures, speeches, etc., e.g. Admissions Guide, Independent on Sunday
  • UCAS
  • Tariff
  • Customer Experience Centre
  • Qualifications: A level Physics (Note: When it’s a subject, rather than a qualification, use lowercase: Students that study physics become astronauts)
  • Exam Results Helpline
  • Year 12 (or Yr 12, if space is limited)

Proper names are capitalised apart from when making general reference to an organisation, i.e. when not using their full title, use lowercase. For example,

  • The university website contains detailed information about accommodation.
  • The University of Bristol’s website contains detailed information about accommodation.

Words that are never capitalised include:

  • web-link, odbc-link and xml-link
  • unconditional and conditional offers
  • search tool
  • collection tool

More about groups, organisations and departments

Titles and headers

Titles and headers should be written in sentence case, so only the first word is capitalised - How to write your personal statement - unless any of the words are proper nouns, e.g. Register to use Apply.

More about titles and headers

UCAS terminology

Offers and replies, e.g. conditional, unconditional, firm, insurance, decline, are lower case. For example:

You can accept an offer as an insurance choice if your firm choice is conditional.

Parts of the application, e.g. personal statement, reference, predicted grades, search tool and precision marketing data service are always lower case.

References to higher education should be lower case, as well as UCAS' audiences, e.g. students, parents, advisers. Please note higher education staff can be shortened to HE staff.

Standards used for UCAS terminology should be followed to ensure consistency. UCAS products and services are written using title case. A full list of terms is on the UCAS terms section but here are some examples:

  • Adjustment
  • Applicant Status Reports
  • Apply
  • Clearing
  • Course Finder
  • Entry Profiles
  • Exam Results Helpline
  • Extra
  • Personal ID
  • Tariff
  • Track

Exceptions:

  • The ucas-link products – web-link, xml-link, odbc-link - are always written in lowercase (see Web terminology for further information).
  • The results embargo agreement
  • A level results day is on
  • SQA results day is on
  • MOVEit – a mix of lower and uppercase

See also