Luton Borough Council

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Quicklinks

Semi-colons

The semi-colon acts as a weak full stop or a strong comma, to separate two very closely related sentences:

We have studied this problem for several days; there are no easy answers.
I drive an old car; Steve drives a new one.

Speech marks

See inverted commas.

Subject verb agreement

Nouns denoting a single group of people, for example:

council
government
team
public, use a singular verb, for example: the team is organising…; the public needs information.

If you prefer the plural form of a group noun, write ‘members of’ or personalise in some other way, for example: members of the team are organising; members of the public need information.

Download a copy of our style guide