Web terminology

Email, internet, website, homepage: these words are all now part of common spoken English and are widely understood. As such please do not worry about trying to support them with hyphens, inverted commas etc. Treat them all as normal nouns – one single word and lowercase.

  • We will notify you by email, not we will notify you by e-mail.
  • Information is available on the internet, not information is available on the Internet.
  • Information is available on the website, not information is available on the web site.
  • More details can be found on our homepage, not more details can be found on our home page.

Web page: sentence case, two separate words.

Web chat: sentence case, two separate words.

  • They attended a web page workshop, not they attended a webpage workshop.
  • online: lowercase, no hyphen
  • drop-down: lowercase, with a hyphen
  • odbc-link: lowercase, with a hyphen
  • xml-link: lowercase, with a hyphen
  • web-link: lowercase, with a hyphen
  • CSV: all uppercase
  • JPEG: all uppercase
  • PDF: all uppercase
  • URL: all uppercase
  • Wi Fi: uppercase W and F, with no hyphen

Website addresses (URLs)

When quoting a specific URL it should be all lowercase and start 'www.'; you do not need to include 'http://' or 'https://'. For example:

  • www.ucl.ac.uk not http://www.ucl.ac.uk.
  • www.ucas.com not https://www.ucas.com

The format of the text you should use for a URL varies, according to whether it is being quoted in print, or in a web page or online document.

Print

Letters – black text, not bold:

Go to www.tda.gov.uk for more information.

publications – black text, bold can be used for emphasis. For example: in a list:

  • Check the university's website
  • Speak to a careers adviser
  • Go to www.tda.gov.uk

If the publication is printed in colour, direct URLs (that go to the website) should be red, bold text.

Go to www.ucas.com for the latest information.

Online

Use hyperlinks:

View a list of UCAS online systems and how they should be written (using upper and lowercase letters).