Accessible
We use 'accessible' to describe products, services and places that offer disabled people the same access as everyone else. For example, we say 'accessible toilet' instead of a 'disabled toilet' and 'accessible parking space' instead of 'disabled parking space'.
Days
Use capital letters for public holidays, such as Christmas Day, Boxing Day or Easter Sunday. When referring to an awareness day, always write it as the organising body does, even if it contradicts our language. For example, we do not say 'persons with disabilities', but it's OK to say International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Exclamation marks
Limit the use of exclamation marks to orders and urgent statements and requests. Do not use before or after a full stop.
Extra Costs
Extra Costs is the title of a campaign by Scope. It shows that disabled households with at least 1 disabled adult or child face extra costs of £975 a month on average. Use lower case when talking about 'extra costs for disabled people'.
Gendered nouns
Where possible, use gender-neutral terms, rather than those ending in 'man'. For example, use 'chair' instead of 'chairman'. Examples include:
- actor, not actress
- child, not son or daughter
- partner, not wife or husband
Helpline
No need for a capital letter. "Scope's helpline answered nearly 28,000 telephone and email enquiries in 2023."
Is / are
Collective nouns (such as the words below) are always singular:
- Scope is... (but say 'we are' to encourage people to feel a part of what we want to achieve)
- the campaigns department is...
- the local group is...
Jobs
Use upper case when referring to a specific role or named person. For example, the Retail Director, Jo Bloggs.
It's lower case if you are writing about a retail director or a marketing executive rather than the named role.
Online community
Our online community (no capital letters) is a safe and welcoming space for disabled people and their families. There they can ask questions and discuss the things that matter to them.
Punctuation
Avoid unnecessary punctuation. For example, do not use semi-colons or commas after each item in a bulleted list. Others to avoid are:
- parentheses, also known as brackets ()
- ellipses…
- slashes /
Quotations
Always use double quotation marks for direct speech.
For example: "This is direct speech."
Race
Do you need to say what race a person is? If you do, be specific and accurate. Ask the person how they describe themselves.
Most of our colleagues prefer 'Black' or ‘Black, Asian or minority ethnic’. Please do not shorten this to 'BAME'.
But only use ‘Black, Asian and minority ethnic’ to describe a group of people, not an individual.
Scope
Capital S, but never SCOPE. In blogs and articles, it's warmer to use 'we', 'us' or 'our'.
Sexuality and gender
We talk about how people are, not about 'preference'.
We say 'pronoun', not 'preferred pronoun'.
We say 'sexual orientation' or 'sexual identity', not 'sexual preference'.
We use the acronym LGBTQ+ which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and other identities.