You are here: Digital & Print Media / Writing & editing / Grammar and style advice / Degrees, postnominals and other qualifications

Degrees, postnominals and other qualifications

Written presentation of academic qualifications

Academic awards may be cited either in full or in shortened form, but not a mixture of both forms. Titles and types of degrees should only be capitalised when referring to a specific course or awarded degree. For example:

  • She had already graduated with a Bachelor of Arts but decided to return to university to study for a master's degree.

Master's or masters?
Note that bachelor's and master's retain the apostrophe even when referring to more than one degree. It can sometimes be smoother to refer to 'master's degree programs'.

Listing academic qualifications and other postnominals

Punctuation

Full stops are not used in abbreviations of degrees, diplomas and other qualifications (for example BA not B.A.).

There is no comma between the degree holder's name and the initial postnominal. If the person has more than one postnominal, for example due to royal or national honours, each is separated from the next by a comma.

Back to Top

Ordering qualifications

Qualifications should be listed in this order:

  • national and royal honours (AO, AM, AC, KCMG etc)
  • degrees before diplomas, in conferring order
  • fellowships then memberships (professional institutions and learned bodies, by election or for scholarship)
  • parliamentary designations (always last) – either MP (for members of the federal House of Representatives) or MP, MLC or MLA for members of state parliament (according to the preference of the person concerned).

In a list of people, such as Fellows of Senate, only royal and national-honour postnominals appear on the same line as the person's name. Degrees, fellowships, memberships and parliamentary designations appear on the line below.

Each category of postnominal is separated from the next by a comma. The awarding institution is italicised. See the entry on referring to other universities for information on how to abbreviate the names of universities other than the University of Sydney.

Note that master's degrees supersede bachelor's degrees if they are written in the same form and from the same institution. So if a person has both a BA (or BSc) and a MA (or MSc) from the same institution, only the master's degree will be listed. However, if the person has degrees of the same type but from different institutions, they should all be listed, for example BA UTAS MA UQ.

Back to Top

Degrees 'with honours'

Note that the designation 'hons' (ie with honours) should not be included before or after degrees (for example, write BA, not BA hons, but honorary degrees should be shown as such (for example Hon. PhD).

Back to Top

Abbreviations of University of Sydney degrees and diplomas

For the full names of University of Sydney courses and their correct abbreviations, see Sydney degrees and qualifications.

Back to Top

Summary

Following these principles, the entry below …

Professor John Jones AM, BA PhD UNSW MA Macquarie GradDip(Primary) Sydney, FACE

… indicates that Professor Jones is a Member of the Order of Australia, received a BA and PhD from the University of New South Wales, a MA from Macquarie University, a Graduate Diploma in Primary Education from the University of Sydney, and is a Fellow of the Australian College of Education.

Note that commas appear only between his national honour and his degrees and between his degrees and his fellowship. There are no full stops.

Back to Top