English (UK) style guide

Use this page when the brief calls for UK English. The shared house voice, mechanics and localization review still apply. A change of locale changes spelling and idiom; it does not change the product, the facts or the reader’s task.

Spelling and vocabulary

Use colour, favourite, centre and modelling. Write licence for the noun. Use license for the verb: The company licenses the software. For this locale, prefer organise, optimise and personalise. These are house choices; an -ize spelling is not proof that a text is American.

Keep a proper name, an exact interface label and a machine-readable identifier in their supplied spelling. In prose, colour can describe a property whose code identifier is color. Do not turn that identifier into colour or change a quoted Color label.

Choose vocabulary for the thing described. Mobile phone is a useful UK equivalent of cell phone; program remains appropriate for computer software, while programme can describe a schedule or series. Use full stop when naming the punctuation mark in ordinary UK prose. A file extension or version may need its separator described as a dot.

Do not treat simplification as a US-to-UK word conversion. Configure and set up can differ in scope, and app, program and process do not always identify the same thing. Follow the word-usage guidance and the product’s terminology.

Idiom and sentence construction

Prefer familiar UK phrasing where it preserves the relationship: fill in a form, at the weekend, Monday to Wednesday. A date range does not by itself settle whether a service operates on both boundary dates; state the relevant opening or closing time when it matters. Different from is a useful neutral construction without declaring every other form ungrammatical.

Contractions can make instructions and explanations natural: don’t, can’t, it’s. Keep the full form when contrast or an important condition needs it. A contraction must not hide whether they’d means they had or they would in the sentence.

Use a complete sentence when it carries a condition, action or result. A compact label can be a phrase. There is no UK rule that every sentence should become a fragment or contain only one verb. Ending a sentence with a preposition is often natural: Choose the folder you want to save in.

Preserve time, possibility and responsibility. The file could not be opened reports a failed attempt; The file cannot be opened can describe a current limitation. Do not standardise both to the same message. Use passive voice when the actor is unknown or irrelevant, and name the application when its action matters. Avoid inventing a printer failure while rewriting This document will not print.

Compounds and possessives

Use established compound spellings. A hyphen can make an adjective’s scope clear: read-only file, 16-bit value, up-to-date list. The corresponding phrase can be open: The list is up to date. Check the particular compound rather than applying that pattern to every word after a noun.

Do not hyphenate an -ly adverb and its adjective: newly created file. Distinguish re-create when it means create again from a potentially confusing reading; do not attach a hyphen to every word beginning with pre, re or un. Let the layout handle line breaks instead of inserting guessed word divisions.

Use an apostrophe for possession, not an ordinary plural: the designer’s file, the designers’ files, PCs. A singular personal name ending in s can take ’s: James’s file. Use the proper apostrophe in rendered prose. For protected product names, follow the naming rules or rephrase the relationship: the settings in FontLab.

Punctuation

Keep punctuation outside quotation marks when it belongs to the surrounding sentence rather than the quotation. For example: The reviewer called the layout “too crowded”. A question mark that is part of the quoted words stays inside: She asked, “Which file?” Use the shared mechanics for interface labels instead of adding quotation marks around every control.

Use commas to show the sentence’s structure. Use the house serial comma in a list of 3 or more items. Do not delete it merely because the text is in UK English. Keep commas that mark an inserted clause. Follow the shared punctuation guidance for the house choices.

Use – (U+2013) for an appropriate range or a spaced dash. Use − (U+2212) for a mathematical minus sign, as in −2.5. Keep - when literal input requires the ASCII hyphen-minus. Two ASCII hyphens are not two en dashes. Prefer a colon when introducing an explanation, as in the shared house voice.

An ellipsis is …, not three full stops. Preserve one that belongs to an exact interface label; do not add one to imply that a stalled operation is progressing. Follow the shared rules for heading case, list punctuation and exclamation marks.

Numbers, dates and addresses

Use a decimal point in UK prose: 12.5 mm. For counts, units and number styling, follow the shared mechanics rather than introducing a separate one-to-nine rule. Let the application format dynamic values; a localized display must not change a stored value or required input syntax.

In prose, 13 September 2026 is clear. Use the shared ISO convention for numeric documentation dates unless a localized interface or specified data format requires another form. Keep a version such as 1.2.0 as supplied.

Use postcode for a UK postal code. Do not turn a US state into a UK county by changing the field label: those fields describe different address systems. Likewise, a reference to an actual overseas institution remains a reference to that institution. Explain an unfamiliar acronym when needed; replacing it with a British organisation changes the fact. See names, addresses and formats.

Messages and localized interfaces

Retain the precise validation condition. Enter a filename can explain an empty filename field; That’s not right loses that information. Distinguish insufficient memory from missing storage space, a failed attempt from an unavailable action, and a warning from a completed result. Use the shared interface feedback rules for the message structure.

For a singular person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant, they, them and their are available without a special last-resort rule. Preserve a specific person’s pronouns and the roles or relationships that matter to the task. Follow accessible content for the common inclusion principles.

Use the displayed key names and tested combinations for the target platform and keyboard. An English locale does not authorise duplicate access keys or make one application’s key-tip syntax portable. Follow interface actions for gestures and messages and variables for parser syntax. A %c token is not evidence that the substituted character must be a letter.

Use a verified localized link destination. Do not construct one by replacing a domain with .co.uk or editing a language segment. Preserve the URL unless an equivalent destination has been checked.

Speech

Use a recognizable UK pronunciation for ordinary words and the approved pronunciation of product names. Check an unfamiliar acronym with the audience and the product terminology rather than assuming that every acronym is read as letters or as a word.

If a listener must reproduce a URL, version or identifier, speak every necessary part in order. Omitting a scheme, dot or separator depends on what the listener must do, not on a blanket narration rule. Check captions and timing with the shared audiovisual guidance.