Style guide
Style guide
Embedded Files
Consistent writing style is a critical part of maintaining ACLED’s brand. The purpose of this style guide is to ensure that all of ACLED’s public communications are written uniformly and to certain standards. As ACLED continues to expand its areas of coverage as well as the type of content on offer, it will become even more important to ensure all analysis and written communications are polished, professional, and in conformity with organizational style. To that end, please ensure that your writing adheres to the following basic style guidelines.
Consider George Orwell's six rules for effective writing:
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.
Language, style, and names
Language, style, and names
Avoid sweeping statements; unnecessary historical allusions; colloquialisms (e.g. ‘the devil was in the details’); stylistic neologisms such as “going forward” and “anytime soon”; emotive or colorful language, like “angry” demonstrators or “brutal” torture.
Don’t use the word “terrorist” to designate actors or groups, unless you are quoting others who use the word, such as cases where government entities designate certain actors as “terrorists” or “terrorist groups.” ACLED does not describe groups or individuals as “terrorist(s),” because terrorism is a tactic, not an organizational principle.
Use American English. American spelling - e.g., labor instead of labour; defense instead of defence; center instead of centre; organize instead of organise.
Use British English only when referring to proper names, e.g. Pakistan’s Ministry of Labour.
Use the Oxford comma. This is the “comma used after the penultimate item in a list of three or more items, before ‘and’ or ‘or’.” It is used to clarify that multiple listed entities are separate, e.g. Demonstrations were held in the northern states, Texas, and California. (if Texas and California were northern states, you could say “…in the northern states, Texas and California.”
Use the em dash instead of a long dash, en dash, or hyphen, e.g. The rebel group — which is a particularly violent actor — launched multiple attacks last week.
Always use “data” as a plural word, e.g. ACLED data are… instead of ACLED data is…
When in doubt, you can replace the word “data” with the word “girls” or “boys” and this will tell you which verb conjugation to use.
“Dataset” is one word, and it is singular.
When describing the data, you can say things like the data show X or the data indicate Y; when describing analysis of the data, you can say things like the analysis finds X or the analysis concludes Y.
ACLED data instead of ACLED’s data.
“Real-time data” (with a hyphen) when referring to ACLED’s weekly data collection.
The hyphen is only needed when qualifying words like “data,” e.g. ACLED collects real-time data and ACLED collects data in real time are both correct.
Use “historical data” when referring to data from past coverage periods.
The default tense for referencing ACLED data should be the present, e.g. More than 600 events are violence against civilians or ACLED records [or has recorded] over 200 events instead of More than 600 events were violence against civilians or ACLED recorded over 200 events
Likewise, when referring to actor responsibility, do so in the present tense, e.g. Boko Haram is responsible for over 60 reported fatalities from violence targeting civilians instead of Boko Haram was responsible for over 60 reported fatalities from violence targeting civilians
Exceptions can be made for references to delimited historical time periods that do not extend to the present, e.g. During the first six months of 2012, 100 battles took place across the country, according to ACLED data.
In ACLED, the use of the term "fatalities" always refers to reported fatalities. In most cases, especially when fatality figures are high and/or contested, you should round fatalities to approximate numbers and use the qualifier “reported.” Also note that this term differs from casualties, which includes both deaths and injuries. For more, see the FAQs: ACLED Fatality Methodology.
“Refugee” refers to a displaced person who has crossed international boundaries to escape war, etc., and “internally displaced person” refers to a displaced person who has remained within national boundaries.
Do not refer to people as “illegal;” only actions can be illegal.
When multiple spellings are available, please refer to the standard Associated Press (AP) spelling, e.g. airstrike instead of air strike.
Abbreviations and acronyms
Abbreviations and acronyms
Use the acronym ACLED when referring to the organization.
Write most names in full along with their abbreviation or acronym at first mention, e.g. Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Thereafter only use the acronym or abbreviation. If the name is only mentioned once, you do not need to include the acronym.
Exceptions are acronyms and abbreviations that are more commonly recognized than the full form, e.g. NATO, IMF, and GDP. Acronyms that can be pronounced as words, e.g. NATO and ISIS (but the IS) do not take the definite article.
Do not use full stops in acronyms, e.g., US instead of U.S.
Quotations
Quotations
Use double quotation marks in direct quotations. Always include a citation.
Use single quotation marks for quotes within quotes.
Use single quotes to imply something metaphorical in the first instance and not thereafter: “Obama spoke of the ‘red line’ at the start of his administration but references to the red line then decreased.”
Use indent quotation formatting when a quote exceeds 45 words. Do not use quotation marks for indented quotations.
Use full stops inside quotations, e.g. The report indicated that “five protesters were attacked.” instead of The report indicated that “five protesters were attacked”.
Single apostrophe to indicate you are referring to a phrase or a term of art, e.g. This report maps a subset of the most active right-wing militia groups, including ‘mainstream militias,’...
Capitalizations
Capitalizations
Generally, capitalize formal titles when they appear before a person’s name, but lowercase titles if they are informal, appear without a person’s name, follow a person’s name, or are set off before a name by commas. Also, lowercase adjectives that designate the status of a title. If a title is long, place it after the person’s name, or set it off with commas before the person’s name. Examples: President Bush; President-elect Obama; Sen. Harry Reid; Evan Bayh, a senator from Indiana; the senior senator from Indiana, Dick Lugar; former President George H.W. Bush; Paul Schneider, deputy secretary of homeland security.
Capitalization when referencing formal titles
Capitalize formal titles when they appear before a person’s name, e.g. President Ilham Aliyev instead of president Ilham Aliyev; Senator Harry Reid instead of senator Harry Reid; Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu instead of Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu.
Do not capitalize the position if they are not formal titles, do not refer directly to a public figure’s name, follow a person’s name, or are set off before a name by commas, e.g. Ali Ndume, a senator from Borno; US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Japan's finance minister; Paul Schneider, deputy secretary of homeland security.
Always include a public figure’s full name and title when first introducing them in the text.
Titles like “vice president” are not hyphenated, e.g. Yemi Osinbajo, the vice president of Nigeria.
Capitalization when referencing the formal name of a government institution, e.g. the Ministry of Justice of Iraq or the United States Department of State.
Do not capitalize when referencing generic names or terms for government institutions, e.g. legislature or parliament (but United States Congress, Plurinational Legislative Assembly of Bolivia) or the military (but Ethiopian National Defense Force, the Tatmadaw).
Only capitalize ‘war’ if it is commonly considered part of the proper name: ‘the Second World War’ (not WWII), ‘the Gulf War’. Use lowercase for the terms like ‘global war on terror.’ ‘Cold War’ is uppercase for the US–Soviet confrontation, lowercase when used generically.
Use AP title capitalization for the titles of articles and visuals (see the online “Capitalize My Title” tool for assistance).
Capitalization when referencing group identities like Black, Native American, or Indigenous.
In line with the AP conventions, do not capitalize white.
“LGBTQ+” is an umbrella term to refer to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities.
Italics
Italics
Do not italicize common Latin phrases, such as status quo, ad hoc, or vice versa.
Italicize foreign words and follow in the first instance with the English translation in brackets, thereafter just use the foreign word in italics. Limit the use of foreign words within reason to ensure readability. Do not italicize actors, formal names, or proper nouns, e.g. Mara Salvatrucha, Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Italicize the names of tanks, missiles, ships, military exercises, and operations, e.g. Operation Desert Storm.
Do not italicize foreign place names, political parties, organizations, institutions, or currencies.
Geographical terms
Geographical terms
United Kingdom, United Nations, United States, and European Union: spell out in first usage, and use acronyms thereafter. Use ‘the United Kingdom’ rather than ‘Great Britain.’ The possessive of United States is United States’, not US’.
Use initial capitals for specific geographical areas or regions (Mexico, North America, Europe) and for broader political or geographical units (the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the West).
Use lowercase for east, west, south, and north unless they form part of a proper name: North Korea and South Africa, but northeast India. Use northeast etc. rather than north-east or north east, except in certain proper names.
Follow the spelling used in the data for regions and countries, e.g. Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Iraq, Myanmar, Turkey, and eSwatini.
Only capitalize ‘province’ if it is part of the official title (rare). Only include province (or valley, river, desert, etc.) when clarification is needed, e.g. to avoid confusion with a city or another location of the same name.
For disputed land masses/bodies of water etc., include both names divided by a forward slash (e.g. Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands).
Transliterations
Transliterations
If quoting names in non-Latin script (e.g. Arabic, Mandarin, Japanese), add a parenthetical or a footnote to explain the translation.
Translations must be provided for all non-English terms and phrases that appear in the main body of the article unless their meanings are widely known in English or they are cognate words whose meaning can be discerned with reasonable ease by English-speaking readers. If an English term exists for a word, use it.
The transliteration of Arabic names follows a simplified version of IJMES rules. As such, vowels include a, i, and u (Muhammad, not Mohammed; Salih, not Saleh) and there are two semi-vowels, w and y (shaykh, not sheikh). There are a few exceptions to these rules:
Do not use diacritics, e.g. al-Dali, not al-Ḍali
Do not transliterate hamzah and ayn, e.g. Quran, not Qurʾān; kataib, not katāʾib; ulama, not ʿulamāʾ
Do not write the ta marbuta, e.g. thawra, not thawrah
When available, follow widely accepted or local spelling norms, e.g. al-Qaeda, not Al Qaeda; Abubakar Shekau, not Abu Bakr Shikau.
For surnames with the al- prefix: only use the prefix when the name is given in full, otherwise drop it, e.g., al-Qaeda, not Al Qaeda; Bashar al-Assad, President Assad, the Assad family. The exception to that is when ‘Al’ means ‘house of’ (this is most common with royal families). In this instance, ‘Al’ is capitalized, there is no hyphen and it is not dropped, e.g. the Al Saud family.
Location names with accepted English spellings should be spelled in accordance with English norms, for example, Baalbek, Damascus, Kyiv, Moscow, Mumbai, Riyadh, Warsaw. See the IJMES Word List for preferences among common spellings of Arabic names, e.g. Hudayda, not Hudaydah, Hodeida, or Hodeidah; Taizz, not Taiz or Ta’iz).
Arabic or other non-English names of prominent political or cultural figures follow accepted English spellings for names of prominent figures and groups, unless local language norms prevail, e.g. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Faten Hamama, Ali Khamenei, Benazir Bhutto, Houthi, al-Qaeda, Mohammed Shekau. To ensure consistency, an updated list of transliterations for commonly used non-English names is available at this link.
Give the surname first for Japanese names, e.g. Abe Shinzo, not Shinzo Abe.
Hyphenate Korean names, with the second part of the given name in lowercase (Kim Jong-il: Family name = Kim, given name = Jong-il, Secretary-General Ban.)
Use the Pinyin system for romanizing Chinese words, except for people and places outside mainland China, i.e. Chiang Kai-shek, not Jiang Jieshi, etc.
Taiwanese names are usually hyphenated.
Dates
Dates
When mentioning an event, please state relevant dates.
Use day-month-year format for dates, and write them out in full, e.g. 21 October 2018 instead of October 21st, 2018, or 21 Oct. Do not use commas.
Use the 1990s, not the 1990’s, the 90s, or the nineties.
Hyphenate terms like ‘the mid-1990s,’ but ‘late 2011’ is not hyphenated.
Spell out in full ‘the nineteenth century’, ‘the twentieth century’, etc.
Indicate periods of time as follows: 1980–82, 1989–92, 1991–95.
Figures
Figures
Write the numbers one to nine in full, thereafter figures are used except when referring to millions or billions, i.e. two million. Always spell out numbers in full when the number begins a sentence, e.g. “Forty-five battles were recorded in 10 countries across the region last week, with five in Yemen alone.” instead of “45 battles were recorded in ten countries across the region last week, with 5 in Yemen alone.”
If you are describing a person’s age, remember when to hyphenate, e.g. “John is 86 years old. He is younger than his 90-year-old brother.”
The same rule applies to ordinal numbers unless they refer to political or geographic units: second base, 9th in a row, 3rd District Court, 9th ward.
Use commas for numbers of more than four digits, e.g. 1,001 events instead of 1001 events.
Million and billion are spelled out the first time they are used, thereafter they are abbreviated to ‘m’ and ‘bn’. Use ‘trn’ as an abbreviation for trillion.
One billion = 1,000 million; one trillion = 1,000 billion.
Use the % symbol, rather than writing out ‘percent’. Do not insert a space between a percentage and its value. Do not use decimals in percentages, e.g. 85% instead of 85.43 %.
Avoid using very large percentages, as they may be difficult to grasp. E.g. events quadrupled instead of 300% increase in events.
Prefer using a “times” increase rather than “fold.” For very large and fairly abstract increases (e.g. 30 times increase), indicate a preference for stating the actual number, or not using a numerical indicator
Do not use zeroes in single-digit dates, e.g. 5 May 2019 instead of 05 May 2019.
Hyphenate fractions: two-thirds, one-tenth, one-quarter.
Measurements
Measurements
Use the metric system – meters, kilometers, grams, kilograms, tonnes – not the imperial system – inches, miles, ounces, pounds, tons. Check the use of tons/tonnes and convert figures to metric if necessary.
Insert a hard (non-breaking) space between a unit and its value, e.g. 30 kg, not 30kg.
Currencies/economic information
Currencies/economic information
Give the name of a currency in full the first time and include the shortened version or the symbol in brackets. Use the shortened version thereafter. When citing currency figures, there is no space between the currency sign and the number, e.g. “Nigeria received 600 million US dollars in military support in 2021, and another US$800m in 2022.”
For economic information, use US dollars unless specifically referring to a local currency. When using a local currency, please also provide a US dollar figure equivalent in brackets, e.g. ‘6m RMB (US$960,000).’
Sourcing
Sourcing
Utilize a broad range of primary and secondary sources to support your argument and reference them appropriately in footnotes. Particularly, all factual statements, non-ACLED data, and controversial points should be backed up with evidence and referencing. Plagiarism is a serious breach of an organization’s integrity, which can undermine the reputation of you as a researcher and of the institution as a whole. As such, plagiarism will not be tolerated.
Use primary and official sources (e.g. use information from the US DoD website or other government reports and cite an official defense white paper rather than another analyst’s interpretation of that paper; unless you are transmitting their opinion explicitly for the purpose of your argument).
Avoid quoting from the same source repetitively within the same paragraph and avoid long quotations (more than three or four lines). When quoting a full paragraph (e.g. from a white paper), you can use a separate block of the quoted text – however, this is not recommended. Direct quotes should always be noted with double quotation marks.
Use footnotes for all of the following (including but not limited to): statistics such as economic development, election results, refugees, and incidents involving fatalities; analysis derived from other sources; official documents such as legislation and security reports, etc.
Add footnotes after punctuation, e.g. The government denied any involvement in the violence.1 instead of The government denied any involvement in the violence1.
Use full footnote citations when referencing non-ACLED material. Citations should include the following:
Full name of the author or organization,
‘Title,’
Publication,
Date (DD Month YEAR)
Remember to add single quotation marks around the title of the piece
Hyperlink the entire citation.
For sources with more than one author, use “and” instead of “&” to separate authors. If there are more than three authors, list one author’s name and “et al.”
For sources that do not have an author listed, this part of the reference can be omitted, and the publication name should be moved to the front of the citation.
If the title is in a non-Latin script, translate the title for the citation
If you have more than one citation at the same point in the text, they should be separated by a semicolon.
United Nations Security Council, ‘Letter dated 25 June 2021 from the Panel of Experts on the Central African Republic extended pursuant to resolution 2536 (2020) addressed to the President of the Security Council,’ 25 June 2021; United Nations Info, ‘RCA : des experts inquiets de l’utilisation par le gouvernement de « formateurs russes » et de contacts étroits avec les Casques bleus,’ 31 March 2021
When referencing books or journal articles, if there is no exact publication date, use “Month YEAR” or just “YEAR.” Always include a hyperlink and page number, when available.
When referencing ACLED material, hyperlink directly and reference in the text -
“As demonstrated in ACLED’s recent report on political violence during the Ukrainian elections…” or as an italicized parenthetical providing more information, like "The Proud Boys engage in more violent activity than the Oath Keepers (for more on the Oath Keepers, see this Actor Profile).”
When citing reports from reputable social media accounts,* please include the social media platform and the account handle, followed by the date.
X @MilitiaWatch, 5 February 2022
NOTE: Any in-text reference to X should use "X, formerly known as Twitter" in the first reference, and subsequently use “X” or “the X platform.”
*September 2024 update for social media citations:
Previous guidance did not require the name of the social media platform to be included in the citation in all cases. It was omitted if the post is coming from an official source, and not treated as a social media post e.g., Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Justice, ‘A statement regarding the withdrawal of the filed lawsuit,’ 30 March 2023
However, this poses a risk for readers in places where certain social media are blocked or monitored. For example, it would be illegal to use a VPN to go to X in Brazil now, and someone may already be on their VPN and not realize what they're clicking. TikTok could have similar ramifications in other places
Therefore, we now require citations of social media to always be treated as a social media post and include the name of the platform and the handle/user. The example above should look like this:
Other examples:
Only include a title for posts on social media platforms that have titles for posts, like YouTube.
Titles
Titles
Titles and section headings should always be written in sentence case, i.e. The RSF sets its eyes on North Darfur in Sudan. Exception: The first word after a colon is always uppercase in titles
Titles should be short. Aim for 60, but do not exceed 100 characters
Prefer a sentence format for most titles. Reserve the ‘Title: Subtitle’ format for pieces with content that weighs multiple angles on an issue
A good title includes an active verb and substantial keywords (i.e. location, actor name), and specifically indicates a unique takeaway
Avoid tautologies (i.e., Clashes continue in a conflict) long words, unfamiliar acronyms/abbreviations, jargon, or slang
A title does not have to represent the full breadth of the analysis or topics discussed in a piece or section
Titles should say the thing that is different, new, or trending
Label certain pieces. ACLED Insights and Briefs are labeled at the end of the title, separated by a vertical bar (e.g. Is radical group violence on the rise in the EU? | ACLED Brief) and Q&As at the beginning separated by a colon (e.g. Q&A: The worsening trend of violence in Papua New Guinea). The label for Factsheets should be part of the title (e.g. Factsheet on US strikes and counter-strikes in the Middle East)
Guidelines for recurring outputs (special projects and observatories):
The project name should not appear in the title of a report, e.g. One year of war in Sudan - April 2024 instead of Sudan Situation Update: April 2024 | One Year of War in Sudan
Each iteration of a recurring output should have a unique title related to the content, followed by the relevant time information
Visuals
Visuals
Always reference the visuals in the text before introducing the visual itself. Do not include a visual without in-text or parenthetical reference. Additionally, make sure the visual comes immediately after the reference, e.g. at the end of the paragraph that includes the in-text or parenthetical mention of the visual.
Please refer to the visual as “see map below” etc. rather than “see Figure 1,” which would require you then to label all of your visuals with figure numbers.
For more information on visuals, refer to the Visual Style Guide.
For anything not covered here, please defer to the AP Stylebook. If in doubt, contact the Communications Team (communications@acleddata.com).
Further readings:
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