May to July 2024

Dashes: new heading ‘Follow exceptions to the general rule’. Includes new text and examples for en dashes to ensure consistency with the recent update to Dates and time.

Treaty citations need the correct title and series information

A treaty is an international agreement that is binding under international law. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade explains the different types of treaties and how they are made in the Treaty making process.

Sometimes a Commonwealth Act of parliament is required to give effect to a treaty – for example, the Antarctic Treaty Act 1960.

Style for case names is title case, not always italics

A case is a matter to be settled at law. It is also an instance or the process of making a claim in a court of law. Legal authorities are published sources of legal reasoning, doctrine and rulings made by courts and similar bodies.

The people or organisations named in the case are known as ‘parties’. Capitalise the names of the parties but use a lower case ‘v’ between the party names. There is no full stop after ‘v’.

Case names have this basic form: Party v Party.

Delegated legislation comes in many forms

Delegated legislation is made under the authority of an Act, not by the Act directly. For example, parliament may delegate this authority to a minister, statutory bodies or office holders.

Regulations are the most common type of delegated legislation. There are many others, including:

Schedules are components of legislation 

Schedules are components (not units) of bills, Acts and some instruments. They appear at the end of legislation. Schedules are either amending or non-amending.

Amending schedules are more common. There are drafting rules about their use and the order in which each schedule appears.

Most amending schedules list amendments to other Acts, bills and instruments that will take effect when the legislation commences. Some contain other provisions such as savings and transitional arrangements.

Style for Act titles is title case, not always italics

Use title case (maximal capitalisation) for the titles of Acts. Use italics for the first mention of these titles.

Use roman type for the titles of Acts in reference lists and other long lists. Blocks of italics are difficult to read.

The year the legislation is first enacted forms part of the title. Don’t use a comma before the year.

Style for bill titles is roman type, title case

A bill is a draft Act introduced into parliament. A bill becomes an Act when the Governor-General gives assent to the bill after the Senate and House of Representatives agree on its content.

Write the titles of bills in roman type, not italics.

Bills have a:

• short title (its name), which includes the year
• long title (a description).

In general, use the short title. Use title case (maximal capitalisation). There is no comma between the title and year.

Write plain language sentences

Standard English sentences are built on subject–verb–object order. This structure forms the basis of plain language writing.

Keep sentences to an average of 15 words and no more than 25 words, especially for digital content. Too many words, phrases and clauses affect people’s ability to scan sentences.

Words are grouped by function

Each word has a function in a sentence, clause or phrase. You can group words into different types depending on the way they function.

Functions include:

Use the correct symbols for en dash and minus sign

En dashes are half the width of the font height. Use them as a type of punctuation.

Don’t use an en dash instead of a minus sign. Screen readers will read dashes as dashes, not as the minus sign.

In Unicode, the en dash is U+2013.

To make sure screen readers read the minus sign, use the mathematical symbol for minus. In Unicode, this is U+2212.

Don’t confuse the dash or the minus symbol for a hyphen.