AAE House Style Guide

This provides details of the readership and audience at AAE to help you frame what you are writing or saying, and house terminolgy and language to ensure clarity and some consistency.

Audience & Readers

The audience and readership (the AAE community) is from many countries and regions of the world. They are all from associations, societies, federations and other work-related membership organisations.

Authors and speakers should:

• Not assume that situations that ocurred in one country are known by the audience / readers
• When refering to an organization (eg.HMRC or government department) that is particular to one country, use a term that is universal, or explain briefly what you are referring to
• Take account of legal obligations and custom being different in most countries
• Avoid humour that is particular to a specific country / people
• Avoid anything that makes the article / presentation un-necessarily "dated" as the recording / article will be used years ahead

Copy text

• Bullets should start with capital letters and not include a full stop or words referring to the next bullet (eg. and/or) at the end
• Don't use ordinal numbers for dates, eg. "10th March" as the international format (eg. "10 March") suits everyone

Vocabulary

• Use "Sector" not "Industry"
• Association is not a sector/industry: Avoid refering to "associations" or "nfp" as a sector or industry these terms are used for the specific field of an association, so use phrases like "in associations" or "in the associations world" or "in membership organisations"
• Avoid using "NFP" or "Not-for-Profit" as this is misleading as well as imprecise

Spelling, Grammar & Punctuation

AAE adopts english (UK) spelling, grammar and punctuation recommended by the Oxford English Dictionary

• "Organize" not "organise"
• Hyphenate two words that together as one modify a noun (acting as a compound modifier)