Names

A few guidelines to help you right the names of people and places in our brand style.

Bias

• No reference should be made to a person’s age, colour, religion or gender unless it’s directly relevant

Clients

• We always use the word ‘client’ rather than ‘customer’
• A ‘client’ refers to someone who’s had debt advice and is either still able to sign up for a solution, or is on a solution
• If a client’s on a solution, we can use the qualifier ‘current client’. We don’t describe our clients as ’existing clients’, as ‘existing’ implies ‘barely surviving'
• When talking about the people who use a company, we call them ‘customers’ rather than ‘clients’

Colleagues

• Fellow employees are referred to as colleagues (not ‘staff’).
• Occasionally, in some external communications with formal audiences, we may refer to staff where “colleagues” might jar, such as “there are 1500 staff employed by the charity”, but we prefer the term colleagues

Decorations

• A person is appointed an OBE not awarded one

Courts

• When we’re describing a generic county or magistrates’ court, it’s lower case. It becomes capital case when we’re referring to a specific one, for example ‘Ipswich County Court’. This is also true of Northampton County Court, which is the main processing centre for County Court judgements (CCJs)
• ‘High Court’ is always capital case
• Note the apostrophe in magistrates’ court (as it’s a court of multiple magistrates)

Dependants

• When we’re talking about parents and carers, we refer to their dependants (not dependents)
• Dependent is used as an adjective, such as ‘dependent on’

Titles

• Use Miss, Mrs or Ms depending on what the person prefers
• When in doubt, use Ms
• All peers below the rank of duke are called Lord ‘name’
• This includes marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons

General elections

• When referring to a general election, always use lower case, unless it’s at the beginning of a sentence or a headline

Government

• Government is used in lowercase (government) if it’s not at the start of a sentence or headline

Parliament

• Parliament is always upper case unless it’s referring to a generic parliament

Irish Republic

• Never use Eire when referring to the Irish Republic

Organisations

• Explain the function of any organisation you're talking about
• If the abbreviated form of an organisation is well known, such as the CIA, use the abbreviation. If it’s not well known, introduce it in full then use the abbreviated format

The United Kingdom

• In client communications, we generally refer to the United Kingdom or the UK rather than Britain or Great Britain unless it refers to statistics that use that particular name
• Great Britain does not include Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom does include Northern Ireland