• Official English names of species are capitalized (as was already the practice among ornithologists)
• Patronyms (names of people) are used in the possessive form, e.g., "Ross's Gull"
• Names used do not include diacriticals or inflection marks
• Compromises are made between British and American spellings
• Users are encouraged to spell and use pronunciation marks according to their preference
• Geographical names may be the noun or adjective form, but must be consistent for the location, e.g., Canada (as in "Canada Goose" and "Canada Warbler"), not Canadian, but African (as in "African Piculet" or "African Wood Owl"), not Africa
• Compound words adhere to a set of rules designed to be consistent in their balancing of readability and the relationships of the words
• Hyphens are minimized, but for compound group names, hyphens are used only to connect two names that are themselves bird species or families, e.g., "Eagle-Owl", "Wren-Babbler", or when the combined name would be difficult to read, e.g., "Silky-flycatcher"