half-life
Note the hyphen. Plural: half-lives.
spelling
ise
Use -ise endings, not -ize.
Follow British English for spelling.
Exception: CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Note the "z". Use "the Organization" for CERN, otherwise "organisation".
kilogram
not "kilogramme"
licence or license?
With a "c" when it's a noun; with an "s" when it's a verb.
I always carry my driving licence with me for identification.
The government has agreed to license the sale of firearms.
nearby
One word, whether adjective or adverb: the pub nearby; the nearby pub
online
no hyphen, not "on-line"
petabyte
Lower case. Not "Petabyte" or, worse, "PetaByte"
A unit of information equal to one thousand million million (1015) or, strictly, 250 bytes.
Almost overnight, companies are transitioning from storing gigabytes of data to managing terabytes, and even petabytes, of information.
radiofrequency cavity
no hyphen
Spell out on first mention, then abbreviate to RF cavity
spelling
CERN follows British English rules for spelling, set out in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Check this style guide first for exceptions and points of grammar, then consult the OED.
For guidelines on writing in French – for CERN websites and print documents alike – refer to the TMC group's "Guide de Typographie".
Synchrocyclotron
Capital "S" when referring to CERN's first particle accelerator. Otherwise, lower case.
A synchrocyclotron is a type of cyclotron in which the frequency of the driving radiofrequency-electric-field is varied to compensate for relativistic effects as particle velocity approaches the speed of light. This is in contrast to the classical cyclotron, where this frequency is constant.
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