English (United Kingdom) typography rules · en-GB
English (United Kingdom)
English (United Kingdom) sets primary quotation marks as ‘…’ and secondary quotation marks as “…”. A break in a sentence is written with an en dash (U+2013) with a space on each side; number and date ranges take an en dash (U+2013) with no surrounding spaces. Numbers bind to units such as % kg g with U+00A0.
Run polytypo with English (United Kingdom) rules
Edit the text and polytypo typesets it with the en-GB locale, in your browser. The code under the form is the call that produces the result.
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English (United Kingdom) typography at a glance #
| Tag | en-GB |
|---|---|
| Name | English (United Kingdom) |
| Primary quotes | ‘ U+2018 left single quotation mark … ’ U+2019 right single quotation mark |
| Secondary quotes | “ U+201C left double quotation mark … ” U+201D right double quotation mark |
| Parenthetical dash | spaced en dash |
| Range dash | unspaced en dash |
| Rules with citations | quotes, dashes, ellipsis, nbsp, hyphen |
| Conformance cases | 165 |
Which locale tags resolve to English (United Kingdom)? #
The locale option is resolved exactly, then by declared alias, then by dropping the region once; anything else throws POLYTYPO_UNKNOWN_LOCALE.
| Tag | How it resolves |
|---|---|
en-GB | registered locale |
Which quotation marks does English (United Kingdom) use? #
| Primary | ‘ U+2018 left single quotation mark … ’ U+2019 right single quotation mark — no space inside the marks |
|---|---|
| Secondary | “ U+201C left double quotation mark … ” U+201D right double quotation mark — no space inside the marks |
Elision clitics
Word fragments that stand against an apostrophe at the edge of an inline span; a narrow mark next to one is not paired as a quotation.
| Before the apostrophe | none |
|---|---|
| After the apostrophe | s |
quotes
How are apostrophes set in English (United Kingdom)? #
apostrophe
Which dashes does English (United Kingdom) use for breaks and ranges? #
Parenthetical break (dash.parenthetical) | an en dash (U+2013) with a space on each side |
|---|---|
Between numbers and dates (dash.range) | an en dash (U+2013) with no surrounding spaces |
The dashes rule reads the parenthetical convention. The ranges rule reads the range convention and is off by default.
dashes
ranges
The ranges rule is off by default; these cases enable it with rules: { ranges: true }.
options: rules: {"ranges": true}
options: rules: {"ranges": true}
options: rules: {"ranges": true}
How is the ellipsis set in English (United Kingdom)? #
An ellipsis keeps its full form after ! and ?; this locale does not abbreviate it there.
ellipsis
How are hyphens handled in English (United Kingdom)? #
The hyphen lists are empty for this locale, so the hyphen rule changes nothing.
Where does English (United Kingdom) use no-break spaces? #
Characters that take U+00A0 before them (nbsp.beforePunctuation) | none |
|---|---|
Characters that take U+202F before them (nbsp.narrowBeforePunctuation) | none |
Short words after which the space becomes U+00A0, so the word is not left at the end of a line (nbsp.afterShortWords) | none |
Multi-token abbreviations whose internal spaces become U+00A0 (nbsp.abbreviations) | none |
Units and signs bound to the preceding number with U+00A0 (nbsp.beforeUnits) | % kg g mg km m cm mm mi ft lb oz L mL h min s ms °C °F kB MB GB TB kW kWh |
Abbreviations bound to the following number with U+00A0 (nbsp.beforeNumber) | none |
Abbreviations bound to the following word with U+00A0 (nbsp.beforeWord) | none |
Symbols bound to the following number with U+00A0 (nbsp.afterSymbols) | none |
Initials (nbsp.initialBinding) | none — disabled: initials are never bound to the name that follows |
spaces
nbsp
options: rules: {"ranges": true}
How are symbols set in English (United Kingdom)? #
symbols
How does English (United Kingdom) text behave in text, HTML and Markdown modes? #
Each input is the locale's sample sentence followed by a code run, say("a -- b ..."). text mode sets the whole string as prose, code run included. In html and markdown mode the code run comes back byte for byte; only the prose is set.
How does English (United Kingdom) differ from English (United States)? #
en-GB and en-US are separate locales. Fields whose values differ:
| Field | en-GB | en-US |
|---|---|---|
quotes.primary.open | ‘ | “ |
quotes.primary.close | ’ | ” |
quotes.secondary.open | “ | ‘ |
quotes.secondary.close | ” | ’ |
quotes.elisionIdioms (entries only in one) | — | rock · n · roll |
dash.parenthetical | en-spaced | em-tight |
nbsp.initialBinding | none | chain |
The same input through both:
Which sources define English (United Kingdom) typography? #
9 citations in spec/locales/en-GB.json, grouped by the rule each one supports. A citation names the authority; the note records what the source does and does not settle.
ellipsis
- University of Oxford Style Guide, section “Ellipsis” www.ox.ac.uk
`abbreviatedAfterTerminal` is false. The Oxford guide describes the ellipsis as a single mark used for omitted text, a pause or a trailing off, and notes “an exclamation mark or a question mark can and should follow the ellipsis if required” — i.e. no merged two-dot form after terminal punctuation. That form is Russian-only.
dashes
- University of Oxford Style Guide, section “Dashes and hyphens” www.ox.ac.uk
Verbatim, m-dash (—): “Do not use; use an n-dash instead.” n-dash (–): “Use in a pair in place of round brackets or commas, surrounded by spaces” (example: “It was – as far as I could tell – the only example of its kind.”), and “Use to link concepts or ranges of numbers, with no spaces either side” (example: “The salary for the post is £25,000–£30,000.”). Corroborated by CMOS Shop Talk, 23 January 2024: “In British style, spaced en dashes – like this – are more common.”
hyphen
- No English authority prescribes non-breaking hyphens for particular word forms; lists deliberately empty
`prefixes`, `suffixes` and `compounds` are empty. The field exists for languages with a closed, normative set of hyphenated morphological forms (Russian кое-, -таки, из-под). The Oxford guide’s hyphen section describes when to hyphenate (adjectival phrases before a noun, verb participles) and never restricts breaking at the resulting hyphen. An English list here would be an invented sample.
quotes
- University of Oxford Style Guide, section “Quotation marks” www.ox.ac.uk
Verbatim: “Use single quotation marks for direct speech or a quote, and double quotation marks for direct speech or a quote within that.” Example given: ‘I have never been to Norway,’ he said, ‘but I have heard it described as “the Wales of the North”.’ This settles the ❓ in PLAN.md §7 in favour of single-first. The convention is genuinely divided in British practice — several national newspapers and trade publishers set double-first — but the cited Oxford authority (and New Hart’s Rules behind it) is unambiguous, and citation, not head-count, is the tie-breaker per ARCHITECTURE.md §8.
- The Chicago Manual of Style, 7.16 “Possessive form of most nouns” (section number and title confirmed against the publisher's own chapter-7 table of contents; cited as 7.16–19 and 7.22 by the CMOS Q&A on the 18th-edition site). Verbatim, as reproduced by CMOS Shop Talk, “Section 7.16 in the Spotlight”, 12 May 2015: “The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s.” Reconfirmed for the current edition by CMOS Shop Talk, 31 August 2021: “Chicago adds an apostrophe and an s to form the possessive of a singular noun, including singular nouns ending in s” (see CMOS 7.16) cmosshoptalk.com
Supports quotes.elisionClitics.after = ["s"], identical to en-US. LABELLED GAP: en-GB rests on an American authority because no British one was reachable. New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide (ed. Anne Waddingham, OUP) is print and paywalled; ox.ac.uk's style guide returned HTTP 403, OUP's own free companion site for New Hart's Rules returned an empty body, and Oxford Reference is paywalled. Every British statement of the rule found was a third-party paraphrase and therefore not citable. The gap is narrow rather than papered over: the single point on which US and UK possessive practice actually diverges is whether a second s follows a sibilant (Dickens's, Chicago's preference per 7.16–19, versus Dickens', the alternative practice per 7.22), and that divergence cannot reach this entry, because the veto matches the maximal LETTER run to the RIGHT of the mark — Burns's fires on s, Burns' has no letter there and fires nothing. So the two locales take the identical entry not by assumption but because the two practices coincide wherever this field is consulted. Replace with New Hart's Rules if the book is obtained. Note also that en-GB's primary close is U+2019, so this is the locale where a wrong entry could collide with genuine quotation — a one-element list is the minimum that closes issue #53.
nbsp
- BIPM, The International System of Units (SI), 9th ed. (2019), concise summary, “The language of science: using the SI to express the values of quantities” www.bipm.org
Verbatim: “A single space is always left between the number and the unit.” Used here because the University of Oxford Style Guide sets measurements closed up (“The average height of a woman in the UK is 1.61m.”, “worth 10% of the available marks”) and is therefore silent on binding a space it does not itself write. The nbsp rule never inserts a space — it only makes an author-typed space non-breaking — so the two positions do not conflict.
- University of Oxford Style Guide, “Specific abbreviations — people’s initials” www.ox.ac.uk
`initialBinding` is "none" (spec 0.6.0: the field used to be the boolean bindInitials, false). Oxford says only “Use a space to separate each initial” (examples: J R R Tolkien, C S Lewis — note, without full stops). No British authority consulted prescribes a non-breaking space there, so the true value is set rather than inferred from the American rule. Deliberate divergence from en-US, where Chicago states the nonbreaking space explicitly.
- No normative source found for English short-word binding; lists deliberately empty
`afterShortWords`, `beforePunctuation`, `narrowBeforePunctuation`, `abbreviations` and `afterSymbols` are empty by design. Oxford instructs “close up spaces and don’t use full stops in abbreviations (eg 6pm)”, so there are no multi-token abbreviations with internal spaces to bind.
- University of Oxford Style Guide, “Abbreviations, contractions and acronyms” www.ox.ac.uk
`beforeNumber` and `beforeWord` are empty. Oxford says “Don’t use full stops after any abbreviations, contractions or acronyms”, so the British forms this field would hold (p., no., fig., ch., Mr., Dr.) are not even written with a full stop in this style, and nothing in the guide requires a non-breaking space after them. Per PLAN.md §7 the Mr./Dr. + name binding is an optional rule defaulting off; with no per-entry toggle in the schema, and no normative source requiring it, the honest value is an empty list.