Bachelor's degree

Use lowercase and an apostrophe when speaking generally, and a capital when naming a specific qualification. For example:

A student earns their bachelor’s degree
A student holds a Bachelor of Arts from Bath

Use 'bachelor’s' (singular) or 'bachelor’s degrees' (plural), not 'bachelors’', 'Bachelors'' or 'Bachelor's'.

Biannual and biennial

It's very easy to confuse these words and they're not plain English so you should avoid using them. It's better to say 'twice a year' instead of 'biannual' and 'every two years' instead of 'biennial'.

Bold

See our formatting guide for how to format text in the publishing platform.

Use bold text sparingly, otherwise your content can become hard to read. Full sentences or paragraphs in bold affect the readability of your content and make it harder for people to consume information on a web page.

Use bold text to:

give people a code or password that they need to complete a task
tell people which parts of a form they need to complete
help people find specific words or phrases on another web page

Don't use bold text to create headings or highlight links. See our formatting guide for how to create headings and links.

Don't use bold text to emphasise or highlight certain information. Users might want something on your page that you haven’t set as bold, so you might make it more difficult for them to find the content they need.

To emphasise words or phrases, you should:

front-load sentences by putting the important information at the start
use headings and subheadings
use bullet lists with the most important information first

Bulleted lists

Use bullet points when listing information that isn't in a specific order. To explain instructions that need to be performed in sequence, use a numbered list.

Do not create a bullet point with more than one sentence. Stick to one idea per bullet point.

There are two types of bulleted list, each with different styling. Neither uses full stops.

Using a bulleted list immediately after a heading

Start each bullet point with an upper-case letter, for example:

Priorities for the University in 2014

Build a research network

Extend our education network

Project the University internationally

Using a bulleted list after an introductory sentence

Start each bullet point with a lower-case letter (unless it starts with a proper noun, such as 'Wessex House', 'Richard Hobbs' or 'A level'), for example:

Priorities for the University in 2014

Following consultation, the University has defined our priorities for 2014 as:

building a research network

extending our education network

projecting the University internationally

Editorial style guide: B

Editorial guidance for terms beginning with 'B'. Use the style guide to help make your content clear, accessible, and consistent with the rest of the website.