P
payroll
Lower case and one word.
PAYE
Upper case. No need to explain the acronym.
Upper case. No need to explain the acronym.
pension provider
Lower case – no need to capitalise.
Pension Wise
This government service is always upper case.
per annum
Say ‘each year’ instead.
per cent
Not percent. In most cases, use % instead.
personal pension
Lower case, unless part of a product name, like Active Money Personal Pension.
persons
Say people instead.
Phoenix Group
Always capitalised.
PIN
Not PIN number (the n in PIN stands for number).
postcode
Not post code, post-code, postal code or ZIP code.
product names
All Standard Life products should be capitalised, for example the Active Money Personal Pension or Self Invested Personal Pension.
But if we talk more generally about our personal pensions, there’s no need for this to be capitalised.
Q
R
S
self-assessment
Lower case and hyphenated.
self-employed
Lower case and hyphenated.
Self Invested Personal Pension
Our Self Invested Personal Pension should always be capitalised. If you’re going to refer to it more than once on a single page or screen, write it out in full followed by (SIPP) in brackets.
Once you’ve introduced the acronym in brackets, you can then use SIPP moving forward.
Note that SIPP is pronounced ‘sip’ rather than ‘S.I.P.P’ so we would put an ‘a’ before SIPP rather than an ‘an’.
semicolons
Try to avoid using semicolons. Use commas or en-dashes instead – or simply split long sentences into separate shorter sentences.
sentence case
Use sentence case for all headings, subheadings, labels and buttons.
With sentence case, you should only capitalise:
- The first word of the title, label or CTA
- Proper nouns and product names
single-tier pension
This should be lower case. So you could write about the ‘single-tier State Pension’ or ‘single-tier pension’.
solutions
Try to avoid using this overused term. Be more specific and explain what the ‘solution’ is.
sorry
Don’t over-apologise and constantly say sorry in every error message – unless the error is clearly our fault.
Stakeholder Pension Plan
Always capitalised. Unlike other products, the Stakeholder Pension Plan isn’t abbreviated to SPP.
Standard Life
In most cases, we should use the first person – ‘we’ – to refer to ourselves. But if we ever talk about Standard Life in the third person as a corporate entity, we should refer to it in the singular:
- Standard Life is
- Standard Life has
- Standard Life was
standing order
Unlike a Direct Debit, a standing order shouldn’t be capitalised.
startup and start up
A startup (noun) would start up (verb).
State Pension
Upper case.
stocks and shares
No need to capitalise and never stocks & shares with an ampersand.
straightforward
One word, lower case and no hyphen.