The Atlantic Institute conventions
Atlantic Fellow
Atlantic Fellow is used externally, not Current Fellow, global Atlantic Fellow, Global Fellow, or Senior Fellow.
Global Atlantic Fellow is a term only used internally. On the second reference, we can use Fellow. Note the uppercase F for Fellow(s). The Atlantic Institute started using the term “Global Atlantic Fellows” instead of “Senior Fellows” for internal reference to Fellows who have completed their program. This name change followed consultations with the program executive directors, the programs’ communications teams, and the then Global Atlantic Senior Fellows Advisory Forum. “Global Atlantic Fellows” was felt to be a more inclusive term.
On the first reference to a Fellow or Fellows in a specific program:
● Atlantic Fellow(s) for Equity in Brain Health
● Atlantic Fellow(s) for Health Equity in South Africa
● Atlantic Fellow(s) for Health Equity in Southeast Asia
● Atlantic Fellow(s) for Health Equity Global (note the name change)
● Atlantic Fellow(s) for Racial Equity
● Atlantic Fellow(s) for Social and Economic Equity
● Atlantic Fellow(s) for Social Equity
Atlantic Fellowship
Atlantic Fellowship on the first reference and fellowship thereafter.
Atlantic Institute
Atlantic Institute on the first reference and the Institute thereafter.
The Atlantic Philanthropies
The is capitalized even if in the middle of a sentence. Refer to Atlantic thereafter.
Communities
The Atlantic community
Refers to Atlantic Fellows, program staff and the Institute team
Global Atlantic Fellows program community
Refers to Fellows and staff from all the programs (and not the Institute)
Global Atlantic Fellows community
The global network of Atlantic Fellows (and not the program community)
Program names
Note program is lowercase.
o Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health program
o Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity in South Africa program
o Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity in Southeast Asia program
o Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity Global program
o Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity program
o Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity program
o Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity program
Shortening program names or using alternatives
We need to strengthen the Atlantic Fellows brand where we can. For example, for the first mention, refer to the Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity in South Africa program, but a shorter reference thereafter could be the program for health equity, South Africa. When referring to the Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity in Southeast Asia program, avoid using The Equity Initiative, and instead shorten the term to the program for health equity, Southeast Asia.
Staff/program staff
Staff or program staff are lowercase. Only proper nouns are capitalized
● Atlantic Fellows program staff (general reference)
● Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity staff (for a specific program)
● Atlantic Institute staff
● All program staff (for staff across the programs)
Rhodes
Trust
Capitalize Rhodes Trust, Rhodes Scholarships, Rhodes Scholars and Rhodes Fellowship.
Titles
Titles are lowercase except when they appear before the name of the postholder, or below a signature.
● Executive Director Lysa John
● Lysa John, executive director
● The executive director spoke at…
● Lysa John
Executive Director
● Nicolette Naylor, chair of the Atlantic Institute Governing Board
● Atlantic Institute Governing Board Chair Nicolette Naylor
● She is a member of the Governing Board
● [On the second reference] the board members voted…
● Warden of Rhodes Trust Sir Rick Trainor
● Sir Rick Trainor, warden and CEO of Rhodes Trust
● The warden of Rhodes Trust attended the meeting…
Boards
For members or trustees, use lowercase in most body copy, but uppercase if immediately preceding the name of a trustee.
● First reference: Governing Board of the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity program [or other program name, as applicable]
● Second reference: the Governing Board
● title examples: She is a Governing Board member. Sally Davis, a member of the Governing Board, attended the event. Governing Board Member Sally Davis attended the event ...
● First reference: the Board of Trustees of the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity program [or other program name, as applicable]
● Second reference: the Board of Trustees
● title examples: She is a trustee. Trustee Sally Davis made a motion. Sally Davis, trustee, made a motion.
The Associated Press style
Numbers
Abbreviate the following months: Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec. and full spelling for March, April, May, June, and July when used with the day of the month and always put the date after the month. Don’t use ‘th’ etc with dates –just the number and month. Use days with dates only when you have to avoid confusion.
❌Jan. 4th
❌4th. Jan
✅Jan. 4
When referring to the month without a number, do not abbreviate it, and do not separate the year with commas.
✅January 2025
When referring to the month, day and year, abbreviate and use commas.
✅He flew to Cape Town on Jan. 23, 2025, to start his new job.
Spanning dates
To refer to a financial year, use the following formats
✅2025-26
✅July 2025-June 2026
✅in the 2025-25 financial year
How to write numbers
In general, spell out one to nine and use figures for 10 and above. Note that percent is a single word in U.S. usage. However, you should use the % sign when paired with a number, with no space. E.g., pay rose by 3.1%. Use figures with million or billion and leave a space. E.g., $7 billion
Times
Use either the 12- or 24-hour clock not both in the same text. The 12-hour clock uses a full stop between the hours and minutes; the 24-hour clock uses a colon and omits a.m./p.m. Note that U.S. usage is to use full stops a.m. and p.m. with a space after the number. When advertising events on the Hub, generally we use UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) rather than GMT because we are a global organization. Some of our events will have specific time zones.
✅at 9.20 a.m.
❌ at 9:20am
✅The webinar starts at 11:30 and ends at 13:00
✅ 9-11 a.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Use noon or midnight instead of 12, 12 noon, or 12 midnight. If using “from” with a start date/time, always use “to” to indicate the end date/ time rather than a dash; alternatively, just use a dash without “from.”
✅The convening runs from July 12 to July 15.
✅The convening runs July 12-15.
❌The convening runs from July 12-15.
Abbreviations
In the U.S. English, full stops after abbreviations are used more.
● Ave. or Blvd. or St.
● e.g., (always followed by a comma)
● etc.
● i.e., (always followed by a comma)
● U.K. and U.S. (most two-letter abbreviations have full stops, though EU and ID are exceptions; U.N. (no space). Use periods in this abbreviation for consistency with U.S. within the text. In the headlines, it's UN
● WHO (no full stops)
● Dr.
● Sen. (Senator)
● Rev. (Reverend)
● B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (although on first reference, avoid abbreviating and instead use a phrase such as “has a doctorate in…”) Use Ph.D. as an abbreviation after a full name. E.g., “Elizabeth Kiss, Ph.D., spoke…”
● Note MBA is without full stops
● J.D. (also known as Doctor of Law or Juris Doctor)
● Never abbreviate Professor.
✅Professor Brian Lawlor
❌Prof. Brian Lawlor
Bulleted lists
Put a space between the bullet and the first word of each item in the list. Capitalize the first word following the bullet. Use a full stop, not a semicolon, at the end of each section, whether it is a full sentence or a phrase.
Dashes
Use em dashes, placing a space before and after it. They are sometimes called long dashes. Do not use en dashes, also known as short dashes. Do not use hyphens instead of em dashes only for dates or hyphenated words.
✅Fellows have many qualities — compassion, courage, innovative thinking — that enable them to be effective in addressing root causes.
Quotation marks around titles
Apply the guidelines below for the titles of books, movies, plays, poems, albums, songs, operas, radio and television programs, lectures, speeches, works of art, features, the name of a podcast and the episode title.
Capitalize the first word of the title, and all words within the title except articles (a/ an/the), prepositions (to/on/for etc.) and conjunctions (but/and/etc.).
✅“Long Walk to Freedom”
✅“Triangle of Sadness”
Put quotation marks around the names of all such works except the Bible, the Quran and other holy books and books that are primarily catalogs of reference material. In addition to catalogs, this category includes almanacs, directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, gazetteers, handbooks and similar publications.
Quotation marks around speech
In U.S. English, use double quotes except for when you’re writing a quotation within a quotation when it is a single quotation mark.
✅She said, "I quote from his letter, 'I agree with Kipling that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male," but the phenomenon is not an unchangeable law of nature,' a remark he did not explain."
❌ “The phenomenon is not an unchangeable law of nature, a remark he did not explain”.
Use three marks together if two quoted elements end at the same time: She said, "He told me, 'I love you.'"
Always use single quotation marks in headlines and not double.
Placement with other punctuation:
In U.S. English, full stops and commas always go inside quotation marks. For example, note where the quotation marks are for book titles here: “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” “Gone With the Wind,” and “Of Mice and Men.”
The dash, the semicolon, the colon, the question mark and the exclamation point go within the quotation marks when they apply to the quoted matter only. They go outside when they apply to the whole sentence.
Commas and semi-colons:
The general rule is to keep sentences short and use commas. But semi-colons are used to introduce a subclause that follows logically from the text before it.
❌We were in trouble this time: we’d never been in trouble before.
✅We were in trouble this time: the ball went through the window. Use a semicolon to link two related parts of a sentence, neither of which depends logically on the other and when each could stand alone as a grammatically complete sentence.
✅The best job is the one you enjoy; the worst job is the one you hate. Use semicolons in place of commas in a complicated list or sentence if it will improve clarity, particularly for list items that already include commas.
✅Attending were Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, Rich Wallace and Dorah Marema; Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity, Ariadne Gorring and Damien Miller; and Atlantic Fellows from two of the other programs.
Always place semicolons outside quotation marks.
Use a comma after an introductory adverb, adverbial phrase or subordinate clause; or use a pair of commas surrounding it if it is in the middle of a sentence. This applies to words like “however” or “therefore.”
✅However, it was too late for that.
✅It was, however, too late for that.
Use a comma between items in a list. Note that we do not use a comma between the penultimate item in a list unless it deliberately joins two items together or to prevent ambiguity.
✅I ate fish and chips, bread and jam, and ice cream.
❌ I bought eggs, milk, fruit, and bread.
❌He took French, Spanish, and Maths exams.
Headlines
Associated Press uses sentence case for headlines and indicates that the same applies to headers and subheaders.
Sentence case is when a heading is written like a sentence, with a capital initial on the first word, followed by lowercase initials for the rest of the heading unless there are proper nouns, like this: “Hello world.” Though sentence case is considered more informal, it is typical for newspapers to align with this style and this is the style we use at the Atlantic Institute.
Rules for sentence case
Always capitalize the first word of the title, regardless of its part of speech; in many cases, this will be the only capitalized word in the title. If the title features proper nouns, including names of people, places, and specific entities, these should also be capitalized. Capitalize the first word after a colon.
✅Nadya’s adventures living in Dublin, Ireland
❌Nadya’s Adventures Living in Dublin, Ireland
✅Literature review brief: Advancing equity
Māori macrons and accents
Use them in Atlantic Institute publications.
Nicknames
We currently put double quotation marks around someone’s nickname as well as their formal name, a style commonly seen in the “Global Community Book.”
✅Pianporn “Pai” Deetes
❌Pianporn (Pai) Deetes
Foreign words
The Associated Press Style Guide does not use italics at all. Sparingly, however, we use italics for foreign words that are not established in English. We don’t use italics for book titles but quotation marks instead (see above). If alternative spellings for countries are provided by Fellows such as Aotearoa, the Māori-language name for New Zealand, we would use it and also offer the commonplace name after the local name, using a slash between the two words.
✅Aotearoa/New Zealand
Racial, ethnic and cultural identifications
We capitalize Black (adj.), Indigenous, People of Color, Deaf and Hard of Hearing. We lowercase white.
Pronouns
AP uses they/them/their as a way of accurately describing and representing a person who uses gender-neutral pronouns for themself.They/them/their take plural verbs even when used as a singular pronoun.
The University of Oxford
The formal name, the University of Oxford, is the preferred term rather than Oxford University. We have an association but are not part of the university, however, on a second reference, we will capitalize the University except when used as an adjective: university-wide, university level.
The Atlantic Institute's tone and overall style
The tone and length of communications will vary according to format and purpose. An Institute-published printed report by a Fellow is likely to have longer, more complex paragraphs than a display piece on the Institute’s purpose or web content, both of which need to be easily scanned by the eye.
The target audiences influence the tone
For social media content, the Hub and emails, we might want to use second-person construction. For example, If you are in South Africa, meet us Alternatively, we might refer to our Fellows and our community. For our publications and web, third-party construction is used more, as it is for a general audience. For example, The Fellows are from 80 countries and they are part of a diverse community.
Plurals
The Atlantic Institute is based in Oxford, and the team is dedicated to supporting Atlantic Fellows. More informally, we may use the term we, which requires a plural. For example, We, as the Institute team, foster the ability of Atlantic Fellows to collaborate on shared interests.
The spelling of words where there are alternatives to choose from
● health care or healthcare? AP recently opted to change this to one word but we will stick to two words as this form is featured already in our publications.
● Learning/ lessons/ learnings: AP does not use learnings, however, we use it in our existing literature and will carry on doing so.
● well-being is hyphenated.
● Wellness is not in common usage in the AP Stylebook or the associated dictionary, and the term should be avoided generally. But we use it when it is a term offered by Fellows when describing their work.
● COVID-19 is capitalized.
● Global South. We have chosen to capitalize both words.
● Changemakers. We have chosen to write it without a hyphen.
● Viet Nam. Spell as two separate words (Atlantic Philanthropies preference).
Headlines and subheadings
AP headlines for news stories are limited to 60 characters. There should be at least three paragraphs of content below each subhead. For web content, the general practice is for titles of five words or less. For subheads, two or three words are optimal.
i Our social med a writing style ○
The tone can vary by channel but should protect the Institute's name, the logo and confidential information and seek consent for photos used from photographer and from subjects within photos.
○ Be respectful.
○ Be factual.
○ Respect copyright, fair use and intellectual property rules.
○ If you have any doubt about the content, don’t post it.
