House Style Guide -

The intention of this style guide is to advise on best practice for ensuring readability
To ensure consistency throughout your book
To help you to write in a way that will get your message across consistently and effectively
To avoid common errors

General

We mostly use British or Canadian English. If you write in American English, it will be a lot harder for me to proofread as I don’t understand the rules of American English style.
In British English, use a single quote mark for colloquial expressions, and double quote marks for reported speech.
Please use e.g. and i.e. with periods / full stops.
Please spell authors’ initials without periods / full stops, e.g. JRR Tolkien.
For grammar-checking, we recommend Harper: the only grammar-checker that does not use AI. It also has Canadian English as well as US and UK English.

Plain English (for non-fiction)

Avoid excessive formality (e.g. “subsequent approval of which will be a pre-requisite to the raising of any internal order mechanism” – what does this mean?)
Avoid passive voice unless you’re deliberately de-emphasising the source of the action.
Explain any in-group jargon that you use, e.g. “casting a circle (delineating the space to be used for a ritual)”. You can use discretion for this, because it depends on your audience.
Expand acronyms the first time you use them, e.g. “LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual)”
Avoid using unfamiliar terms without any explanation
Explain procedures step-by-step. This makes them more accessible.
Separate dependent sub-clauses with a comma
Avoid over-long sentences
Avoid run-on sentences, as they are ungrammatical. This will make your writing sharper and punchier.
Use nouns and verbs correctly
Capitalise correctly and consistently
You can spell ‘meow’ as meow or miaow, regardless of The Guardian’s preferences

Plain English (for fiction)

Avoid passive voice unless you’re deliberately de-emphasising the source of the action.
Expand acronyms the first time you use them, e.g. “LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual)”
Separate dependent sub-clauses with a comma
Avoid run-on sentences, as they are ungrammatical. This will make your writing sharper and punchier.
Consider revising over-long sentences with many dependent subclauses, unless you’re using them for deliberate effect in the manner of Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Capitalisation

If you’re writing about contemporary Pagans, use a capital P
If you’re writing about ancient pagans or polytheists, use a lower-case p
Use a capital letter for Druids, Wiccans, Heathens, Kemetics, Religio Romana (and any other contemporary Pagan tradition)
Use lower-case letters for the name of a philosophy, e.g. polytheism, animism, anarchism (unless it is a specific named tradition like Stoicism or Epicureanism)
All proper nouns should be capitalised (unless it’s the name of a person who spells their name in lower case, like bell hooks or e e cummings)
Use all caps for acronyms (e.g. UNDRIP, UNWRA, LGBTQ+) but spell out what the acronym stands for the first time you use it.
When you spell out an acronym, use title case, e.g. United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Punctuation

The finer rules of punctuation can be a bit of a dark art. Check out our blogpost about the Oxford comma and other punctuation, and the differences between US and UK English.

We recommend Harper: the only grammar-checker that does not use AI. It also has Canadian English as well as US and UK English. Unfortunately, it doesn’t flag run-on sentences.

Scribblr has an excellent set of guides to punctuation.

Punctuation

Italicisation

There is no need to italicise foreign words. Just put a translation in brackets after the word.
Italicise book titles, film/movie titles, TV shows, etc.

Footnotes and endnotes

Add footnotes with citations to explain the source or the context of your assertions. This saves readers from flipping to the back of the book, only to find a note that says ‘Ibid.‘
Add the citation in endnotes as well

Citations

Pick a citation style you like and stick to it throughout.
- APA Citation Style
- MLA Citation Style
- Chicago/Turabian Citation Style
- IEEE Style
- any other widely recognised style
In footnotes, add the citation without the URL to avoid clutter, but link to the source so that ebook readers can click on it
In endnotes, include the URL so that print readers can access it

Exercises

Place exercises and reflections at the end of each chapter
If you really need to place them in the middle of the chapter, provide a list of exercises at the start of the book

Diagrams and illustrations

Please use the highest resolution of image available to you. Bear in mind that the image will be reproduced in monochrome (black and white), so consider whether it will work in monochrome.

For photos, use the JPEG file type. For diagrams and drawings, use GIF or PNG.

Headings

Make sure to use the heading styles provided in your word processing software. This enables us to create a table of contents for your manuscript (important for both the print and ebook versions).

Heading 1 – the title of each chapter
Heading 2 – section headings
Heading 3 – subsection headings
Heading 4 – if you need a subsubheading!

I personally prefer sentence case for headings, but if you prefer title case, go ahead – just use it consistently!

Font

Please do not use Times New Roman, Arial, Comic Sans, or Comic Neue. This is because I find these fonts aesthetically unpleasing.

Inclusive terminology

Black people (not black people)
the Deaf community, Deaf people
Disabled people (not “people with a disability”)
Disabled (not “handicapped”)
Indigenous people (not “indigenous people”, and definitely not “native” or “aboriginal” unless you are Indigenous and you identify that way). Where possible, use the name of the specific First Nation – the name they call themselves, and if necessary, the name they’re generally known by in brackets, e.g. Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).
LGBTQIA, LGBTQ2SIA, 2SLGBTQIA, or LGBTQ+ (don’t omit the T for trans or the Q for queer)
Neurodiverse or neurodivergent — but don’t refer to individuals as neurodiverse or neurodivergent; it’s a community term. See this Psychology Today article, and this language guide. Always be guided by the preferred terminology of the individual if you’re writing about a specific person.
People who menstruate, people in menopause, pregnant people (because trans men and nonbinary people can also experience these states)

The Guardian has an excellent house style guide for respectful terminology. Where this guide disagrees with theirs, please use these guidelines; otherwise, please use theirs.

Dates and times

Dates should be formatted as follows:
- Wednesday, 1 July, 2026
- 1 July 2026
- July 2026
- 2026
…unless you’re writing a science fiction or fantasy story about a different culture where they use a different system
If you’re writing about the distant past, please use BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).
Times should be formatted as follows:
- In a paragraph, write “at eight o’clock in the morning” or “at quarter to eight”
- In a footnote or an announcement, write the time as 8:45 am / 8:30 pm

Numbers

In a paragraph, write the number between one and ten as words, but any number higher than that in numerals, unless it is a vague approximation, e.g. “there were dozens of people at the spaceport”
In a footnote or an announcement, write the number as a numeral

If you have any questions, please let us know!