BFSUAPA Style Guide

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This guide covers writing, editing and layout for BFSUAPA's website, WeChat official account and social media. Most BFSUAPA content is written in Chinese, so many examples below are Chinese text with an English explanation. When writing a notice, check the audience, time and how to take part first; when editing an interview, first decide what is a direct quotation; when proofreading, check punctuation, names and numbers. For brand assets and colours, see the Brand guidelines and the Colour system.

In this guide, "must" and "must not" are project requirements; "recommended" marks practices that can be adjusted to the situation. An author's explicit editing instructions decide the scope of a given edit; official names, fixed spellings and quotations must not be mechanically replaced by general layout rules. When facts conflict, check them and note the difference; never introduce an error for the sake of consistent formatting.

Writing: tell readers what happened and what to do next

Open with the topic and the outcome readers need to know. Each paragraph covers one complete point, in the order needed to understand or act. An event notice states the audience, time, place and how to take part first; a recap first says what actually happened, then develops it with people, scenes and concrete detail.

These examples illustrate wording; they do not mean any event has happened or been confirmed. Unverified times, numbers and outcomes must not be filled in as facts.

Write Chinese in standard simplified characters; avoid made-up abbreviations and jargon only insiders understand. Address students as 同学 or 你; notices can use 各位同学. Avoid overly familiar forms of address. Do not raise BFSUAPA up by belittling other groups or making unfounded comparisons, and do not use discriminatory language, false suspense or exaggerated promises.

FAQs: answer first, then give the conditions

Phrase each question the way readers would actually ask it. For example, "Can I take part less when my courses are busy?" is easier to find than "Notes on participation intensity". One question handles one thing: workload, recruitment rounds and eligibility for volunteering should each be explained separately.

The first sentence of the answer gives the conclusion, followed by the necessary conditions, the concrete steps and where to find more. State clearly what is certain; for things that depend on places or the current arrangements, say what they depend on rather than ending every answer with "see the notice for details".

For example, "Can I take part in school outreach without joining BFSUAPA?" can be answered first with: "Yes. I Speak for BFSU (我为北外代言) recruits from the whole university, and joining BFSUAPA is not required to sign up." Then explain where to watch and how to sign up. Do not open with BFSUAPA's history and the significance of the activity, leaving readers to find the answer at the end.

Long-standing FAQs should not carry the dates of one particular event. When the current round's rules really need explaining, state the year or recruitment round and review it afterwards. For time, fees or eligibility, keep qualifiers such as "usually" or "meets any one of the conditions" that affect the reader's judgement; do not turn them into guarantees to save words. For a maintained example, see the recruitment FAQ.

How-to instructions: let a first-timer follow them through

First say who the instructions are for, what they will have when finished and what to prepare beforehand. Write the body in the real order of operations; each step says what to do, where to do it and how to confirm it is done. Put the places where readers might get stuck next to the relevant step instead of piling all the cautions at the end.

Use numbered lists for steps, paragraphs for continuous background and reasons, and tables for comparing rules. Not every sentence needs its own heading. When you finish, walk through the instructions yourself: if they still need the author to fill something in by word of mouth, that part usually belongs in the text too.

Names: formal identities accurate, short forms in narrative

In everyday use, BFSUAPA refers to itself as 招协 or 北外招协, never just 协会 ("the association"). In formal signatures, certificates, lists and introductions that establish identity, use the full name 北京外国语大学招生宣传协会. Likewise, school, college, major, programme and personal names in identity fields must match the formal record they are based on.

When writing recaps, interviews and personal reflections for readers who know BFSU, unambiguous short forms such as 北外, 招协 and 北外招办 can be used directly. Do not mechanically expand 提前认识北外 into 提前认识北京外国语大学. Whether to spell out a short form on first use depends on whether readers need the explanation, not on how many times it appears.

When a name exists in several versions, find the source for that matter: admissions majors from that year's admissions documents, programmes from the academic affairs office or approval documents, organisations from the current organisational structure, events from the organiser's announcement. Send the different sources and their dates to the editor in charge for confirmation before updating the glossary. The glossary records confirmed results; it does not replace checking for new changes.

Editing quotations: keep the speaker's meaning and tone

Body text written by the editorial team can be restructured, reworded and reformatted. Interviews, submissions, reflections and quoted chat messages keep the author's nicknames, natural short forms, modal particles and personal expressions; technical clean-up must not change the meaning either.

For example, if 招办助理部 appears in an interview, point out that it may misstate who the department belongs to and suggest checking it against 招协助理部; do not change the quotation and still claim it is verbatim.

Records of significant edits state the original, the final wording, the reason and anything awaiting confirmation. The record follows the actual difference between the original and the final draft; withdrawn changes are not recorded as "changed".

Spaces: check by combination, not by blanket replacement

Below are the layout conventions BFSUAPA currently uses. They do not mean every Chinese publication must use the same spacing policy.

Identify fixed strings first, then deal with the spaces around them. Keep text of the same kind consistent, and do not split units, nicknames or model numbers apart to apply a rule.

Punctuation: first decide the language of the sentence

Chinese sentences use Chinese punctuation; complete English sentences use English punctuation inside them. A single English word inside a Chinese sentence does not switch the whole sentence to an English full stop. Characters in URLs, code and fixed names stay as they are.

The display width of curly quotes depends on the font; do not assume a character has a different width just because it was typed with a different input method. Ordinary text uses curly quotes; code, URLs, verbatim records and other protected strings keep their original characters.

Mixing Chinese and English

English phrases inside Chinese keep their original spelling and capitalisation and are joined with Chinese punctuation, for example 她学习 English、French 和 Spanish. A complete English quotation keeps its internal English punctuation, while the outer quotation marks and punctuation follow the Chinese sentence; avoid doubling the final mark to "complete" it.

Ordinary English titles written by the editors use sentence case, with only the first word and proper nouns capitalised, for example "Applying to BFSU: a guide". Fixed slogans, brands, events and titles of works keep their original form.

Spaces around dashes

In Chinese body text, the —— used for explanation, insertion or interruption has no spaces around it, even when an English quotation follows: 她说了一句——“Hello World!”.

When an in-house title uses a dash to separate two independent parts, use these forms: no spaces between Chinese and Chinese, as in 活动回顾——志愿者的故事; one half-width space on each side between a Chinese part and an English part, as in 活动回顾 —— Student voices; and a single em dash in pure English, as in BFSU — A student view. Fixed titles and quotations are not mechanically changed.

Do not stack marks with the same function, such as 活动介绍：——, and do not break a line by hand so that a dash sits alone at the end. Before changing a horizontal line, decide whether it is a range mark, a hyphen or a dash.

Do not use symbols in place of relationships

Express parallel items as a list or in natural language rather than building a list by hand with decorative dots; write out "or", "and" and "not applicable" instead of collapsing them all into /. Do not put ordinary words in quotation marks for emphasis, and do not stack exclamation marks to create emotion. None of this changes the symbols inside formal names, quotations, code or paths.

Numbers, dates and units

Idioms and approximate numbers stay in Chinese characters, such as 三四个 and 成千上万. When using 万 or 亿 for large numbers, check the precision; tables or text that use thousands separators keep them consistently. If a foreign currency needs converting, state the source and date of the exchange rate; do not add RMB amounts without a basis.

Multilingual text: keep direction and glyphs intact

Foreign proper names with an established Chinese translation can use the Chinese first, with the original added when needed to avoid ambiguity. Translations should read naturally in the target language and credit the translation source or translator; unchecked machine translation must not be treated as final.

Arabic, Hebrew and similar scripts are usually written right to left. Web pages should set lang and dir according to the content; to embed a short phrase of the opposite direction in a Chinese paragraph, isolate it with <bdi dir="rtl">…</bdi>. Do not reverse characters, numbers or brackets by hand. For details, see the W3C guidance on bidirectional text.

If a rich-text editor cannot set direction, put the foreign text in its own paragraph first and check the position of punctuation, numbers and neighbouring Chinese in the publishing preview. Inserting spaces does not isolate direction; if the order is wrong, switch to a method that supports the layout.

Use a font that covers the script, and check for missing glyphs, letter joining and line breaks. Do not break foreign words arbitrarily with word-break: break-all; any necessary hyphenation follows that language's rules. Keep numbers and their units on the same line where possible. Chinese and Japanese can be set vertically by design; for other scripts, confirm layout support first instead of simply rotating every character. Chinese is never set in italics.

Layout: headings help people find their place, paragraphs help them understand

A page has one main heading, sections use consecutive heading levels, and body text is not turned into a heading just to make it bigger. Each paragraph centres on one idea; split an overlong paragraph along the content's own structure rather than putting every sentence on its own line.

Use ordered lists for steps, unordered lists for parallel options and tables for comparing rules. Important conditions can be bolded sparingly; do not pile colour, underline and bold on the same emphasis. When a quotation is set as a block quote, do not add quotation marks around it as well.

Content of the same kind uses the same format. For example, the identity lines of three interviewees share one style, and every "Q" and every "A" in a Q&A is consistent; identity lines and body text, or questions and answers, do not have to look identical. Judge by what the content does, not by whether the text looks similar. After changing one place, check every similar place in the text so that one odd style is not copied to everyone else.

For website fonts, line heights and component values, see the Design system.

Links, images and sources

Link text names the resource or its purpose, such as "See the current sign-up notice", never "click here". Note when a resource requires signing in or downloading. Replace temporary preview links with the formal published link; remove tracking parameters only when you have confirmed it will not affect access or what the parameters mean.

Choose real images that relate to the text, and keep their source and licence information. Do not crop out content that documentary photos need for understanding just to fill a grid; covers use the article's real cover or an independent photo approved by the editor. Decorative fragments, duplicate QR codes and unrelated template images do not serve as illustrations.

Informative images get alternative text that describes their content, and captions add the people, scene, date or source; purely decorative images use empty alternative text to avoid repeated announcements. Important text inside images is turned into readable body text and checked for accuracy.

When hiding sensitive information, cover it completely with an opaque block and check the final exported file, so that no recoverable original layer or hidden text remains. Do not rely on blurring, pixelation or emoji alone. Review the exported result, not just the editing screen.

WeChat and social media: adjust using the platform preview

Platform features, title limits and image cropping change; when publishing, follow the current editor's prompts and the account's capabilities. Do not write one year's interface limits down as permanent rules.

WeChat titles put the topic and key conditions up front, without stacked exclamation marks or teasing ellipses; the summary adds what the content offers rather than repeating the title. A common landscape cover can be prepared at about 2.35:1, with a separate square crop, and the list view, share card and article body previewed separately.

Separate body text into natural paragraphs, without first-line indents. The old template's 14px type and 1.75 line spacing can be a starting point for checks; if the text looks small or cramped on a phone, adjust it in the shared template and check again. Scan QR codes with a real phone, and configure links in the way the platform currently supports; writing out an address does not mean readers can click it.

Xiaohongshu and other platforms keep the same names and factual sources, and titles, image text and topics should all say what the content is about. Keep calls to follow separate from the body so readers do not mistake promotion for event steps.

Check in this order before submitting

1. Facts: names, year, time and place, numbers, who it applies to and the original sources.
2. Content: does the opening state the topic; can readers find how to take part or the next step; is any condition repeated or missing?
3. Editing scope: are quotations, nicknames and fixed wordings preserved; are items awaiting confirmation still clearly marked?
4. Format: are spaces, punctuation, headings, identity lines, captions and similar components consistent?
5. Publishing preview: are type size, images, QR codes, links and foreign-language direction right on a phone?

When submitting for review, hand over the current file, its purpose, the version and anything awaiting confirmation. After publishing, keep the formal link; if you find an error, handle it as the person responsible for publishing arranges.

Further reading

This page sets BFSUAPA's project conventions; how far its layout conventions and external standards apply should be judged separately. For Chinese layout, see the W3C Requirements for Chinese Text Layout; for organising instructions, see Google's guide to writing procedures. For brand assets, see the Brand guidelines; for web values, see the Design system.

Back to all guidelines