Punctuation

No full stops in initials or abbreviations.

Minimal commas, but use commas before the "and" and "or" in lists:

The bishops of Durham, Canterbury, Bath and Wells, and York were invited.

Use commas on both sides of parenthetical clauses or phrases, and with commenting clauses.

Know the difference between defining clauses (no comma) and commenting clauses (commas needed):

Medical staff who often work overtime are likely to suffer from stress.

Medical staff, who often work overtime, are likely to suffer from stress.

Use commas before "and," "or," "but" in two-sentence sentences (when the coordinate conjunction joins two main clauses):

Half received drug treatment, but their symptoms did not resolve more quickly.

We would make an omelette, or you could go and get a takeaway.

Note that when a comma is used, both main clauses must have a subject:

The patients stopped smoking, and they felt better for it.

The patients stopped smoking and felt better for it.

Minimal hyphenation - use hyphens only for words with non-, -like, -type, and for adjectival phrases that include a preposition (one-off event, run-in trial). Not using hyphens will help you to avoid noun clusters (see below).

Quotation marks - please use double, not single, inverted commas for reported speech. Full stops and commas go inside quotation marks:

She said, "We will."

No exclamation marks, except in quotes from other sources.

Reference numbers go after commas and full stops, before semicolons and colons.

Minimal capitalisation. Use capitals only for names and proper nouns. Don't capitalise names of studies.