WORDS

Amnesty’s house style,
advice on using words

Amnesty’s operational policy on house style provides detailed guidance on use of language, including spelling, capitalization and punctuation; and conventions on referencing (or citations) and the naming of places (such as countries), people and entities (such as organizations) and international legal instruments.

  • Download Amnesty International House Style. Start with Chapter 2 “Essentials” for the most common issues.
  • Use hyperlinks to find further advice on different topics in later chapters.
  • Use the online dictionary to help make sure that your spelling is aligned with house style.

Amnesty house style should be adhered to in all outputs issued by Amnesty International’s International Secretariat. National entities of Amnesty International may have their own house style in English to reflect, in particular, national preferences for spelling and punctuation conventions. However, this operational policy provides advice on references and naming conventions and use of terminology that will be beneficial for them, too.

For any further queries connected with Amnesty’s use of English language, please contact the Research Standards and Practices Unit ([email protected]), which is responsible for setting editorial standards.

Further material on writing and editing will be published here in due course.