Conjunctions
Conjunctions join whole sentences or parts of a sentence together. They can show people how ideas are linked, or how ideas contrast.
Verbs
Verbs express when something happened, or that something is continuing or finished. Verbs help people make sense of other parts of a sentence or clause.
Verbs describe an action, a state, an event or a change
Verbs are words that describe:
Adverbs
Adverbs modify meaning when they’re added to a sentence. Use them occasionally to show people how, when, where, or the extent to which something happens.
Adverbs add more information about other types of words
Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. They often, but not always, end in ‘-ly’.
Adjectives
Adjectives describe, compare and define nouns and words that act as nouns. Use adjectives to help people understand meaning.
Adjectives describe nouns
Adjectives describe nouns, noun phrases and noun clauses.
Adjectives usually go immediately before the noun. They can go elsewhere in a sentence – for example, as a predicate.
Nouns
Nouns are the words that name people, places, organisations and things. Style and grammar support how people interpret nouns in content.
Proper nouns are the names of people and specific things
Any name for a specific person, organisation, place or thing is a ‘proper noun’.
Proper nouns always start with capital letters, except for some commercial terms.
Common misspellings and word confusion
When words sound similar or the same, people can confuse their spelling. If you’re not sure about the spelling of a word, check a dictionary.
Check for words that are easily confused or misspelt
The spelling of some words is variable. Sometimes it’s difficult to know which spelling or word to use because:
- Australian, American and British English have different ways of spelling a word
- a word might sound similar to another, so people can mishear it and write the wrong word.
Follow one dictionary for consistency and use it to check variable spellings.
Parts of sentences
A sentence is a group of words that makes sense on its own. Structure the parts of a sentence so meaning is easy to understand.
A full sentence is grammatically complete
Sentences can be statements, questions, exclamations or commands. A full sentence expresses a complete idea.
Sentences contain at least a subject and a verb.
A basic sentence can have more components, for example:
Punctuation and capitalisation
Punctuation and capitalisation have rules for correct use. Use minimal punctuation and capitalisation to make content more readable.
Use minimal punctuation to make meaning clear
Minimal punctuation doesn’t mean removing all punctuation marks from a sentence. It means removing unnecessary punctuation.
Only use punctuation that makes the sentence grammatically correct and the meaning clear.
Too much punctuation makes text crowded and difficult to read. If a sentence has a lot of punctuation marks, it might be a sign that the sentence is too long or complex. Try to rewrite into shorter, clearer sentences.
To use minimal punctuation:
Ellipses
Ellipses show users that ideas or words are missing from a sentence or a quote. Don’t use ellipses to change the intent of the original source.
Show missing words or ideas with ellipses
The ellipsis (plural ‘ellipses’) is a character of exactly 3 dots.
Use the ellipsis:
Quotation marks
Quotation marks draw attention to words and reference certain kinds of titles. Write most direct speech in single quote marks. For long quotes, use block quotations without quotation marks.
Quote direct speech in single quote marks
Single quotation marks are also known as ‘quote marks’, ‘quotes’, ‘speech marks’ or ‘inverted commas’.
Use them to:
- show direct speech and the quoted work of other writers
- enclose the title of certain works
- draw attention to a word you’re defining.
Double quotation marks aren’t Australian Government style. Use them only for quotations within quotations.
Short quotations of direct speech are enclosed in single quotation marks.