Times

Write times with a space between the numbers and the letters, and with no periods between am and pm.

Decide for your piece whether you prefer colon, period or nothing for your times, and whether you prefer upper or lower case for am and pm, then try to be consistent.

For Example
9 am
Four in the morning (not 'four am')
9:30 am
9.30 am
0930 hrs (for 24 hr time)

Dates

Avoid contractions of dates: use 7 June 1995 instead of 7/6/95 (except in tables or illustrations where space is limited). To an Australian the contraction will mean 7 June; to an American the contraction will mean 6 July.

Dates go from something to something (from 18 June to 21 June) or between something and something (between 18 June and 21 June).

AD and BC dates

AD comes before the figures (AD 379), and BC comes after the figures (605 BC). When possible, the letters AD and BC should be set in small capitals. To create small caps in Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign, you type them in lower-case (eg. ad and bc) and then choose small caps as a formatting option (press Alt + O + F in Word, press SHIFT + CTRL + H in InDesign). For webpages, you need to create your own style of small caps or simply make them two points smaller than the rest of the text and type them in capitals.

Decades—See Apostrophes section.

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