Intended use

The purpose of this guide is to standardize the appearance of text, and the use of capitals and acronyms, in all documents intended for outside audiences, except for IEC International Standards and associated publications, official documents published by the IEC CA Systems, SMB and CAB documents. It shall also be consistently used for websites’ contents.

 

This guide is based on UK spelling, and uses the Oxford English Dictionary and Economist Style Guide as references. However, there are special IEC preferences listed in this guide which take precedence, for example the -ize ending on verbs.

 

The content of this guide will be updated regularly. Should you have additional input that may be relevant, please contact the Communications Department at communication@iec.ch.

 

In this new edition, the use of capital letters and acronyms has been re-assessed. In line with the Oxford English Dictionary, we have opted to limit the use of capital letters to IEC proprietary names.