Home Style rules and conventions Style rules and conventions Reference this section for definitive rules and examples of Australian Government style. General conventions, editing and proofreading Editing and proofreading Italics Punctuation and capitalisation Spelling Names and terms Australian place names Government terms Commercial terms Dates and time Medical terms Nationalities, peoples and places outside Australia Natural phenomena Organisation names Personal names Plants and animals Ships, aircraft and other vehicles Topographic terms Numbers and measurements Choosing numerals or words Currency Fractions and decimals Mathematical relationships Measurement and units Ordinal numbers Percentages Telephone numbers Punctuation marks Apostrophes Brackets and parentheses Colons Commas Dashes Ellipses Exclamation marks Forward slashes Full stops Hyphens Question marks Quotation marks Semicolons Referencing and attribution Author–date Documentary–note Legal material Shortened forms used in referencing Titles, honours, forms of address Academics and professionals Australian Defence Force Awards and honours Diplomats Judiciary Members of Australian parliaments and councils Royalty, vice-royalty and nobility