Clear and error-free writing helps build confidence that we are a credible and capable organisation. Keeping consistent allows us to communicate our brand and talk about our work more effectively.
This guide covers most of the major style questions you are likely to have but is not an exhaustive list. Please let the UK communications team know if you would like to see any additions/amendments made to this guide. Please note, we use The Economist style guide as a base for our work.
For information about the visual identity of our brand and how to apply brand assets, refer to the Farm Africa brand guidelines.
Farm Africa should be used with the singular. Eg: 'Farm Africa is a charity’ and ‘What is Farm Africa?’
However, when you want to write about Farm Africa in the first-person, use we. Eg: ‘We are a non-governmental organisation’ and ‘About us’.
Farm Africa can be described as:
Never refer to Farm Africa as FA or Farm. Always use our full name.
Never write FARM-Africa. This is the way we used to refer to ourselves before we refreshed our brand in 2012.
All published materials should include our charity number. You can either write:
Farm Africa is registered in England and Wales as a charity no. 326901
or
Registered charity no. 326901
- districts:
district should always be written with a lower case 'd' and does not need a definite article. For example, 'Farm Africa's sorghum and green grams project is based in Mwingi district'.
- Eastern Africa:
East Africa has a capital E for East as it is a specific geographical region. But Farm Africa doesn’t work everywhere in East Africa, which includes Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, North and South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Therefore we talk about Farm Africa working in eastern Africa, with a small ‘e’.
- Ethiopia:
Administrative units:
kebele – the smallest unit, similar to a ward/sub-district
woreda – a district, made up of a few kebeles
zone – a few woredas
region – a few zones
Bale eco-region is the name of the region.
You should write Semu Robi not Semi Robi
- Kenya:
A province is a region of Kenya. Kenya’s Western Province is a specific geographical area, but western Kenya is simply the west of Kenya.
- Tanzania:
Dar es Salaam is not the capital of Tanzania - the capital is Dodoma. However, Dar is the largest city in Tanzania and the economic centre.
When writing about our partners and funders and how they interact with Farm Africa, we must be consistent. For example, SOS Sahel is a partner organisation. Farm Africa implements projects in partnership with SOS Sahel.
When writing about donors you MUST get approval from the account manager and guidance on how the donor’s name should be written from either the communications team or the programme funding team.
- Patron:
Our patron is Michael Palin CBE. Always include the 'CBE' and make sure your use of his name is approved by the UK Communications team.
- Ambassadors:
Make sure you have cleared any use of our ambassadors' names with the UK communications team.
Always use the full title, name and suffix for our ambassadors Lord Plumb of Coleshill DL FRAgS and General Sir Peter de la Billière KCB KBE DSO MC DL.
Haile Gebrselassie has no ‘E’ after the R in his surname, one L in both names, and double ‘S’ towards the end.
Never give enough information to identify an individual. This example is fine to use:
The Nou Forest is home to Thomas Bayyo, his wife and children.
Where at all possible use the correct image to go with the case study – if this is not possible then an alternative image may be used. The image caption must not say it is the beneficiary if it is not. Rephrase, eg ‘An example of drying fruit...’
- "can’t afford to pay school fees"
Primary school education is free in the countries we work in – however families need money for uniforms and schoolbooks to send their children to school. So we should not say that families can’t afford to pay school fees .
- "multiple wives"
- "peasant farmers"
We work with smallholder farmers, rural farmers, small-scale farmers, but not ‘peasant farmers’.
- "vets" or "paravets"
Community animal health workers have basic veterinary skills, but they are not vets or paravets (sometimes known as barefoot vets), and they do not use antibiotics.
- "drought-tolerant"
We provide seeds for drought-tolerant or disease-resistant crops, rather than drought-tolerant seeds.
- "poor"
We can use the word ‘poor’ in an economic sense, but it must be clear that we are not using it as a term of sympathy – eg ‘those poor farmers don’t have enough food’.
- "self-sufficiency"
Self-sufficiency is growing enough to have some to sell to buy food for a broader diet and meet other household expenses. It isn’t just growing enough food to eat.
- "slaughtering" and/or "de-stocking"
Any copy about slaughtering and de-stocking must be very carefully phrased. It needs to be clearly put in context and demonstrate the benefits. Please seek approval from the UK communications team before publishing any copy regarding this sensitive area of our work.
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Although Farm Africa works in a complex professional field, our writing style should not use internal acronyms, shorthands or jargon that members of the public would not understand.
| Use this: | Instead of this: |
| use | utilise |
| can | is able to |
| also / and | additionally |
| change | transition |
| enough | sufficient |
| activity | intervention |
| affected | impacted (on) |
| supporting / helping / enabling | empowering |
| ability | capacity |
| disadvantaged, vulnerable, marginalised | poorest of the poor |
| most | majority |
| the way we do things / method | methodology |
| help | assist / assisting |
| project / programme | initiative |
| knowledge / experience | learnings |
| young people | youth |
- Other tips:
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Affect is always a verb – to change or influence something, eg ‘The drought affected the cassava harvest.’
Effect is usually a noun. It is something that is brought about by a cause, eg ‘One effect of the project is farmers can grow more cassava.’
However, effect is also (rarely) used as a verb. It means 'to make something happen', eg 'The farmers hope to effect a change in their fortunes.'
Alternate is always an adjective, meaning 'every other'. It should never be used as a noun.
Alternative as a noun, means one of two, not one of three, four, five or more.
Use two commas when inserting a clause in the middle of a sentence eg “The style guide, printed on yellow paper, was sent to everyone.”
Unless inserting a clause as above, do not allow a comma to divide a subject from its verb eg “Chief Executive Nicolas Mounard called in for tea”, not “Chief Executive, Nicolas Mounard, called in for tea”.
When writing letters, you do not need to use a comma after 'Dear xxx' and 'Yours sincerely'.
We never use 'to' after the verb 'help'. For example:
You will find specific terms in the A-Z section of this guide, but in general we use hyphens in these ways:
We use British English rather than American English or any other kind, unless we are using the registered name of a company that happens to use American English spelling. For example: Alcan Aluminum or Carter Center.
We don't extend this rule exception to place names or government institutions (Pearl Harbour, Department of Defence, Department of Labour).
That defines, which informs.
This is the house that Jack built.
But
This house, which Jack built, is now falling down.
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Farm Africa
This is a golden rule: Always write Farm Africa in full. We never write FA or Farm.
Measurements
Measurements, such as km or kg, can be abbreviated without explanation. There should be a space before these, but no full stop afterwards, for example: 'This autumn, we want to walk 100 km to raise funds for Farm Africa.'
In general, we avoid using acronyms. Acronyms assume knowledge, break up text unnecessarily and can confuse the reader.
There are some exceptions:
Please note - just because something is abbreviated to a set of capital letters, it doesn’t mean that the words necessarily take upper case when written in full, eg non-governmental organisation (NGO).
It’s vital that internal abbreviations (SMT, POM, etc) be avoided in communications aimed at an external audience.
It’s good practice not to overuse acronyms internally. Acronyms used on a daily basis in one team may mean nothing to people who work in another, or to staff new to Farm Africa.
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Apart from at the start of sentences, capital letters should be used rarely. They break up text, which slows the reader down, and misuse can give the misleading impression that something is more important than it actually is.
The general rule is that they should be used for names of people, organisations and institutions – and very little else.
Headings:
Only use them for the first word of headings (also known as writing in 'sentence case').
Do use capital letters for:
Do not use capital letters for:
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Whether or not ages should be hyphenated depends on their usage.
20-year-old Joyce is a fish farmer in Kitui.
or
Fish farmer Joyce is 20 years old.
We write dates in this format: 2 October 2014
not:
October 2 2014, 2nd October 2014, 2nd of October 2014 or any other variation.
We also do not shorten months (eg Oct rather than October), and we never write dates numerically (eg 02/10/14).
These should be lower-case and hyphenated, i.e. north, south, east, west, north-west, north-west, south-east, etc.
This applies even when referring to parts of countries or regions, eg eastern Africa, south-west Tanzania, except where these are part of the country’s actual name, eg South Sudan.
Currencies
When writing about the currencies of the countries we work in, use the following formats:
100 Ethiopian birr (100 Br)
100 Kenyan shillings (100 KSh)
100 South Sudanese pounds (100 SSP)
100 Tanzanian shillings (100 TSh)
100 Ugandan shillings (100 USh)
The first time a currency is mentioned it should be written out in full with the abbreviation in brackets, and then the abbreviation can be used from thereon.
Millions
There should be a space between the number and the million, eg £3 million. However, for reasons of space in charts or tables, £3m is acceptable.
Use £500,000 rather than £0.5 million, but for figures above £1 million don’t include the zeros. Eg: £1.2 million rather than £1,200,000.
Numbers up to ten should be written as a word. For numbers over ten write them as a number, eg 11, 50, 101.
London phone numbers should be written in this format: 020 7430 0440
Other UK phone numbers and mobile phone numbers should be written in two sections: area code and number, eg 0161 416215 or 07770 410012
Non-UK phone numbers should be written with the country code as a prefix, in this arrangement: +254 20 273 2086
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Don’t use this unless it is part of a brand name or company (eg Abel & Cole or Marks & Spencer)
In general, bullet points should always start with a lower case and only the final one should have a full stop, for example:
Farm Africa works in three areas:
The exception to this is if the bullet points are full, stand-alone sentences. Then they should all start with an upper case and have a full stop at the end of each one, for example:
Farm Africa works in four countries:
A dash, –, (also known as an 'en dash' 'ndash' or 'n-dash') is different from a hyphen: -
Microsoft Word formats dashes automatically if you type 'space - hyphen - space', or you can press 'Alt' and the minus key on the number pad of your keyboard to produce a dash.
Dashes should be used to insert asides into sentences – like this – and to separate non-numerical date ranges, eg June – July 2012 (but use June to July 2012 when writing in full sentences).
Dashes can also be used to introduce an explanation of what precedes it – in other words, to clarify what you’ve just written.
Don’t overuse dashes – however attractive it seems – because, if you do, your reader – however much they want to follow what you’re writing – will run into difficulties.
Only use italics for names of publications. For example, 'There is an article about Farm Africa in The Times'. Italics are difficult to read, especially online, so don't use them in any other way.
% is fine to use on the website. Per cent (two words) is better in printed materials.
Use single spaces after full stops to separate sentences. When checking a document, also make sure there is only a single space between words.
Use double quotes for reported speech, and single quotes for speech within speech. Double quotes should only be used for speech, not for any other reason.
Place full stops and commas inside the quotes for a complete quoted sentence; otherwise the full stop comes outside. For example:
Dan told me: "Anna said: 'Your style guide needs updating,' and I said: 'I agree.'"
but
Dan told me: "Anna said updating the guide was 'a difficult and time-consuming task'."
or
Updating the style guide was “difficult and time-consuming”, Anna told Dan.
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Afro-alpine – hyphenated word (with capital A for Afro)
aqua shops
capacity building
collection bucket (not collecting bucket)
community-based (but generally ‘based’ can be left out: a community-based organisation is more simply a community organisation)
cross-breed and cross-bred
eg (not e.g.)
eco-tourism
farmland
good practice
grassroots
green grams but green gram crops
health worker
land use
learnt (as the past participle of 'to learn' - not 'learned', eg 'the farmers learnt how to process sorghum')
long-lasting
long-term planning but in the long term
microcredit
microfinance
policymakers
postharvest (not post-harvest or post harvest)
Prosopis (with a capital 'P'. Read more about the use of capital letters here)
PS (not P.S.)
self-help
self-sufficient
semi-arid
set-up (noun or adjective) but to set up (verb, no hyphen)
small-scale (as in small-scale farmers) but (production was on a small scale)
smallholder
sub-Saharan Africa
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