The growing internationalisation of higher education requires universities from Catalan-speaking territories to adopt new policies and practices if they are to respond to the changing global academic environment and not fall behind in terms of improved academic quality, international understanding and commercial advantage. In order to reach out to new markets and to ensure that students are attracted to our educational system, documents of many kinds – including agreements, syllabuses, advertising material and websites – now need to be produced in English, the current international lingua franca.

This situation places considerable demands on those responsible for writing, translating and publishing university documents. How can we ensure that the wide variety of documents produced give a uniform corporate image of the universities in accord with the quality of the services provided?

The Interuniversity Style Guide for Writing Institutional Texts in English intends to respond to this demand for quality. It is designed for use by the administrative, teaching and research staff and language professionals who are responsible for writing institutional texts in English. Although one section focuses on how to write clearly, the word style in the title refers not to literary style but to those linguistic conventions concerning spelling, punctuation, typographical display and other editorial issues that are essential for consistent, clear and precise language and layout. Consistency in these areas leads to clarity and cohesion which, in turn, makes documents more straightforward for readers. As transmitters of knowledge, universities have to be rigorous in their use of language so that they can fulfil the scientific purpose of describing reality and making the complexity of this reality more readily understandable.

Loosely modelled on existing style manuals (the English Style Guide of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation, The Chicago Manual of Style, The Oxford Manual of Style, etc.), this guide is organised into sections dealing with spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, abbreviations and symbols, numbers, gender, singular and plural, translation, writing in English, tools for digital text production and model documents. It also contains three appendices: common abbreviations, unusual plural forms and Latin terms with English equivalents. Throughout the text we use two simple conventions to indicate examples of incorrect language: sentences are preceded by an asterisk while short phrases are crossed out.

Stylistically inappropriate sentences, on the other hand, are introduced by the words Therefore, not and followed by the word but and a new, more appropriate sentence.

Do not use a colon to substitute a comma. Therefore, not

but

We trust that the guidance and recommendations provided within these pages will be of help to anyone who has the task of preparing English-language texts and that this guide will become part of daily working life for many.