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Welcome to this Style Guide wiki! While the focus is on preparation of Meeting minutes, it can also serve as a reference for all other documents published by Teresa Ville.

Minutes are important to ensure everybody is kept apprised of developments, in addition to being important record-keeping. As the minutes are displayed on the notice-boards and may also go online, writing good minutes becomes even more important.

Basic principles:

1. Accuracy: This should be pretty obvious so I shall not elaborate.
2. Comprehensiveness: It is perfectly fine to write short minutes. Ensure that all decisions and follow-up points are minuted in short and to-the-point sentences. The discussion and rationale behind them are much less critical. Oftentimes, decisions are based on a number of different reasons which may even be mutually conflicting. If any Council Member or Committee feel it is important to lay out the reasoning behind any recommendation or decision, they are free to present them as a paper, have it approved at a meeting and then be included as an appendix.
3. Consistency and Grammar: These are important for the simple reasons of readability and clarity. If you are inconsistent, or use incorrect Grammar, there is a danger that the reader may misunderstand what you are writing. Furthermore, consistency has the added advantage of making it more readable.

Consistency and clarity in writing style

• Date format: Make it easy to read, e.g. 24 Nov 2012 with the optional (Fri) behind. Don’t spell out the months and days, use 3-letter acronyms: Jan, Feb, Mar, … Mon, Tue, Wed, etc.
• Monetary format: $#,###, e.g. $1,234. “/-” suffix for monetary sums is outdated, and we can assume $ refers to SGD, unless otherwise stated.
• We cannot have Sub-Committees because there are no Committees to be subordinated to. The MC is a Council, so subordinate bodies are Committees.
• Blk 1003, etc, not Block 1003.
• Get to the point: use short and sharp sentences. Where possible, use active voice instead of passive, to avoid getting tripped over convoluted sentences.
• Spelling: Ideally, I would prefer English as opposed to American English. As such, please use utilise instead of utilize, etc.
• Do be sensitive to SP privacy and avoid naming SP specifically.

Addressing Individual/Companies

Don’t get too hung up about formal terminologies such as M/s for companies, etc. They may be necessary for legal documents but our minutes are our records, not a legal document. Still, I do want addressing terms to be consistent, that is why I proposed the following:

• Individuals: Full name on cover page, but subsequently, it should be just Dr Tan or Chairman, no full names, unless we encounter common surnames.
• Companies: Company names should abbreviated to two words, such as Newman & Goh, Kone PL (short for Pte Ltd), Severus Security, etc. What is a good two-word name for IGM and Richfield ? “M/s” prefixes are very stuffy and should be reserved for legal documents.

The key consideration here is that we are clearly identify whom we are referring to. If there is more than one Mr Tan, then add either a first name (Mr Alex Tan) or add initials after (e.g. Mr Teh TY). In some cases, some may prefer to be addressed by their first name, so Mdm Preeti. Do remember to be consistent in using the same naming convention throughout.

For company names, avoid all-caps if the acronym can be pronounced like a word, hence Eelat PL instead of EELAT. This is to reduce “shouting” in the text.