Messaging

For all GBG Group communications, we use British English. US English should be used when regionalising product marketing and product materials for the local audience.

Keep your writing simple and clear.

Our tone of voice is how our brand personality is experienced and understood by our audience. Get familiar with these and get the tone right when you write on behalf of GBG

Read your text aloud. Does it sound like something a real person would say?

Whether we write about ourselves in the first person, using we, our and us, or in the third person, as GBG and GB Group plc, depends on the channel and the audience. Find out more about GBG social media channels, GBG website, GBG blogs and press releases about GBG.

We don’t say how great we are or use hyperbole or fluffy adjectives to describe ourselves. We demonstrate our value through proof points and our thought-led views.

Always ensure we are accurate and able to back up any statements we make, e.g., if we say we are the “first to market” or claim to be able to perform “100% data extraction accuracy”, can we stand by that? Consult our GBG Factbook.

Avoid phrases that have lost their impact and originality through overuse, e.g.,

Use lower case as much as possible. There is a tendency for people to capitalise words unnecessarily just because they are ‘important’. Resist this. See capital letters

Use chairman, not chair in titles, and in a personal address to the reader, e.g.,

Use chair, not chairman when describing roles, responsibilities and procedures

We have customers, not clients.

eCommerce not e-commerce or Ecommerce

ePayments not e-payments or Epayments

Although fraud is an important word for us at GBG, it is a common noun and should only be capitalised when,

Location, Identity and Fraud, have increased revenues this year.

location, identity and fraud, have increased revenues this year.

GBG delivers location intelligence, identity verification and fraud and compliance solutions.

GBG delivers Location intelligence, Identity verification and Fraud and compliance solutions.

Andy Chrascina, General Manager, IDF EMEA

Although identity is an important word for us at GBG, it is a common noun and should only be capitalised when,

Location, Identity and Fraud, have increased revenues this year.

location, identity and fraud, have increased revenues this year.

GBG delivers location intelligence, identity verification and fraud and compliance solutions.

GBG delivers Location intelligence, Identity verification and Fraud and compliance solutions.

Andy Chrascina, General Manager, IDF EMEA

Although location is an important word for us at GBG, it is a common noun and should only be capitalised when,

Location, Identity and Fraud, have increased revenues this year.

location, identity and fraud, have increased revenues this year.

GBG delivers location intelligence, identity verification and fraud and compliance solutions.

GBG delivers Location intelligence, Identity verification and Fraud and compliance solutions.

David Green, Managing Director, Location Intelligence Services

We have team members, not employees, staff or workers.

Always write the term in full at first mention, with its abbreviation in brackets, e.g., In 2021, GBG signed the Tech Talent Charter (TTC) in support of… The TTC aims to…

To make the plural of an abbreviation, simply add s, e.g., URLs.

When abbreviating words, use a full stop only when the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last letter of the full word, e.g., max. (maximum), but not in titles, e.g., Mr, Ms, Mrs, Dr etc.

When abbreviating a phrase, use a full stop for each abbreviated word, e.g., p.a. (per annum)

Abbreviations of countries and major organizations do not require full stops in British English, e.g., the UK, the USA, the UN, UNESCO, WHO, OPEC, etc.

Academic qualifications are abbreviated without full stops, e.g., BSc, MSc, MA, MBA, PhD etc. If you include an abbreviated explanation in brackets, use a full stop applying the rule above, e.g., John Smith MSc (Eng.), as Eng. is short for Engineering.

Many spellings differ between American English and British English (With US English frequently using 'Z's instead of 'S' and removing the letter 'U' from words like flavour).

The following words are examples of where we should use the British spelling of words:

analyse, anonymise, authorise, capitalise, categorise, centralise, characterise, computerise, customise, digitalise, emphasise, finalise, incentivise, industrialise, maximise, minimise, modernise, monetise, optimise, organise, personalise, pressurise, rationalise, realise, recognise, specialise (specialist, speciality), standardise, synchronise, tokenise, utilise, visualise

colour, flavour, humour, labour, neighbour

Some nouns that end with ‘ence’ in British English are spelt ‘ense’ in American English: defence, licence, offence, pretence.

American spellings should not be used for job titles, e.g., ‘US Defence Secretary Robert Jones’, rather than ‘Defense Secretary’). However, they are retained for the official names of organisations, buildings etc, e.g., US Department of Defense, Lincoln Center, World Trade Center, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

US English should be used when regionalising product marketing and product materials for the local audience. For example, in a newsletter going to a US audience or on a banner displayed at a US event.

A business is a single noun. Always.

GBG uses sentence-style capitalisation. That means everything is lowercase except the first word and proper nouns, which include the names of products, and services.

Proper nouns are one of a kind—unique people, places, and things. Capitalise proper nouns wherever they occur. Proper nouns include:

Use upper case letters for people’s titles when written in conjunction with a name, but lower case when on their own, e.g.,

When referring to the GBG Group, always spell Group with a capital G, e.g.,

Other business terms can be capitalised or lowercase.

When board of directors is used with the official name of the entity it serves, capitalise it, e.g.,

When board is used without the full legal name of the entity it serves, don’t capitalise it, e.g.,

Other business terms follow a similar guideline: Capitalise them only when they’re used as a proper noun (a specific person, place or thing), e.g.,

If there's more than one of a thing, it's a common noun, e.g., there are lots of chief operating officers, so chief operating officer is a common noun. There's only one Dev Dhiman, Chief Executive Officer, so that's a proper noun.

Don't capitalise common nouns unless they begin a sentence.

Most technology concepts, product categories, devices, and features are common nouns, not proper nouns. Examples of common nouns include:

cloud computing, internet, smartphone, e-commerce, email, and open source.

We generally don’t use a comma before the final ‘and’ in straightforward lists, e.g.,

These sentences do not need one, but sometimes it can help the reader, e.g.,

If a series contains more than three items or the items are long, consider a bulleted list to improve readability.

In GBG Group communications, we write 50p, £5, £60, £3m, £500m, £6bn, £20bn, £15tn.

The names of all currencies are written out in full at first reference - except for the pound sterling, the euro and the US dollar, which are always £, € and $. If we do spell out euro, the plural is euros. Otherwise, abbreviations to be used after the first reference are SFr (Swiss francs), HK$ (Hong Kong dollars), A$ (Australian dollars).

Put the month before the date, without suffix (e.g., April 12). There is no added comma for the year (e.g., April 12 2022), but there should be one if the day of the week is included (e.g., Saturday, April 12).

Avoid the 12/04/2022 formulation, as this will be understood in the US as December 4. And one exception to the general rule: in a US context, spell out the Fourth of July.

Use two digits when representing a span of years within the same century: 2019–22, and four digits: 1992–2002 when spanning more than one century.

In financial reporting, values of comparative years are expressed as (2020: £0m), e.g.,

Group operating activities before tax payments generated £32.5 million of cash and cash equivalents (2020: £44.2m)

We use the 24-hour clock (with a colon) in all circumstances, labelled GMT, BST, EST or PST as appropriate. (e.g., 14:25 (GMT)).

We write about ourselves in the first person, using we, our and us. We never refer to ourselves in the third person as ‘GBG’.

Be simple and clear. If you can use fewer characters to convey the same message, do it.

If we reference individual GBG team members, tag them (with their permission) and use their job title or refer to them as an expert in the topic most relevant to the post. Contact the Group Communications team if you are unsure of the external job titles to use for our spokespeople.

Posts on our team members and culture should always include a #LifeatGBG hashtag.

When GBG team members share GBG content from their own profile, it can be shared in their own professional voice as ambassadors of the brand.

We write about ourselves in the first person, using we, our and us. We never refer to ourselves in the third person as ‘GBG’.

We write about GBG in blogs sharing product or business news or an expert industry view, such as how customers benefit from a new solution, or why the finance industry benefits from adopting alternative data types, e.g,

We attribute GBG blogs to individual subject matter experts where appropriate to show we are a team of experts. If you are unsure which subject matter experts to profile externally, contact the Group Communications team.

We write about ourselves in the first person, using we, our and us in blogs focused on life at GBG, company culture, team activities and personal stories, e.g.,

We write about GBG.

All writing for external media should be clear and to the point – this is what the news is, this is why you should care and here’s what to do next.

All press releases about GBG, whether written by the GBG team or by partners and customers, should be approved by the Group Communications team.

Visit our press area for more information and press resources.

Hyphens are required for compound adjectives, e.g., location-based services, user-friendly system, high-risk investment, real-time charging, end-user benefits, low-cost country, value-added service.

But they are not used when part of the adjective is an adverb ending in -ly, e.g., easily adopted service, recently launched product.

Phrasal verbs are constructions such as log in, turn on, and take over. Some need hyphens when they are used as nouns.

Those ending in -in, -to, -off, -on or -up use a hyphen (log-in, turn-off, turn-on).

Nouns ending in -out do not, e.g., turnout, dropout, bailout. Nouns where the second part is four or more letters are one word, e.g., takeover, clampdown,

A limited list of words and phrases which do and don’t need hyphens. If in doubt, check the Cambridge English Dictionary.

market-leading
day-to-day
full-time
short-term, long term (as an adjective it takes a hyphen but no need for one for the noun.)

If the items in a bullet point list are complete sentences in themselves, then each should start with a capital letter, and in general end with no punctuation, e.g.,

There is more than one way to verify an identity.

If the items are not complete sentences, they should start with a lowercase letter, and again omit punctuation at the end, e.g.,

If you want to verify an identity, you can

Single-word lists of nouns should also start with a lowercase letter, e.g.,

Identity verification can confirm several attributes:

The exception on punctuation for all bulleted lists is that we do include a question mark after each item if that is what logic would suggest, e.g.,

There are three questions you need to ask yourself:

Use a numbered list for sequential items (like a procedure), with a point after the number, e.g.,

We use words for single-figure numbers, digits for anything above nine. i.e., eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 - except with abbreviated units of measurement, e.g., 3kg, and with percentages, e.g., 4%.

If there are more than three digits, we use a comma to separate, i.e., 1,000 or 128,039.

Don’t start a sentence or headline with digits, e.g., Seventeen percent increase year-on-year, except with listicles, where using a digit may better suit the tone of the article.

Millions and billions are spelled out, e.g., five million people, 10 billion transactions, except where they are used with currencies or in headlines, e.g., £5m, £20bn, GBG Instinct saves customer £500m in one year. And remember that billion is widely accepted as meaning one thousand million (not one million million).

But all numbers are expressed as digits if the accompanying units are abbreviated, e.g., 50p, £5, £60, £3m, £500m, £6bn, £20bn, £15tn.

Use an en-dash (–) to indicate number ranges or page ranges 17–22, 20,000–27,000, or pages 23–37.

Our usual style is to use digits - even with numbers we would normally write out as words (e.g., 8%), but a percentage should be expressed in words if it comes at the beginning of a sentence, e.g., Ten per cent of the budget will be spent on marketing.

Quotation marks are either single or double. They begin with a superscripted inverted single or double comma (‘ or “) and end with a superscripted single or double comma (’ or ”).

Use double quotation marks for direct quotations, e.g.,

Dev Dhiman, Chief Executive Officer at GBG, said: “The combination of our two businesses is a complementary and powerful one.”

End quotes come after the comma or full stop at the end of the quote, e.g.,

Commenting on the acquisition, Dev said: “It is a business that we have worked with and admired for many years.”

If you continue a quote in a consecutive paragraph, do not close the marks at the end of the sentence, but do re-open them at the start of the next paragraph, e.g.,

"We have seen big shifts in attitudes from consumers and companies on identity, and the report’s findings reflect those shifts.

“As we work with our customers, we understand the growing importance of identity verification not only to comply with regulation but to prevent identity fraud.”

Use single quotation marks to emphasize a word or words in a sentence, e.g.,

We refer to these solutions as ‘fraud and compliance’ in our industry.

Use initial caps for the titles of books, documents, courses, events etc (though not for small words such as ‘in’, ‘the’, ‘and’, or ‘of’ in the middle of titles).

Do not use quotation marks or italics, e.g., A Tale of Two Cities, Note 20, The State of the Telecommunications Industry, IFRS 19 - Title or Digital Communications Diploma.

We should use upper case for job titles when used next to a person’s name or when a full job title is used, e.g., Richard Longdon, Chairman of the Board.

However, we should use lower-case when only using partial titles, or when describing somebody’s role, e.g., Chris, a director at GBG, said.