1. No invented numbers
This manual does not publish statistics, study results, incidence figures or protection percentages that it cannot attribute to a named public source. It does not print a UV index figure attached to a specific place on a specific date, because those readings belong to a forecast on the day and quoting one here would be inventing weather. Where a question is usually answered with a number we cannot source, we explain the mechanism instead and say the figure is not something we can stand behind.
2. No brands, no products, no affiliate links
No brand name appears anywhere on this site. No product is recommended. There are no affiliate links, referral links or tracked outbound commercial links of any kind. Categories of equipment are described by what they have to do.
3. No ranking of anybody we have not assessed
We have not assessed any surf school, club, instructor or training provider. So there is no best of anything on this site. The register is alphabetical, labelled as paid, and explicitly not a safety endorsement.
4. Clinical questions go to clinicians
Skin cancer, moles, changing marks, diagnosis, treatment and anything that needs looking at are not written about here as advice. At that line the manual stops and points at the NHS, at a GP and at the British Association of Dermatologists. We write about exposure management, which is a behaviour and equipment subject, not a clinical one.
5. Fear is not an argument
Long term cumulative exposure is treated here as the reason to build a system that fits into a life spent outdoors. It is not used to frighten anybody, and it is not used to imply that people who surf are doing something wrong.
6. Working frameworks are labelled as ours
Where a table or a block presents a way of thinking that belongs to this manual rather than to a published source, it carries a note saying so. Those blocks contain no measurements.
7. Sources are institutions
We cite the Met Office, the World Health Organization, the NHS, NICE, the British Association of Dermatologists, Cancer Research UK, the RNLI, the MHRA, the UK Health Security Agency and the standards bodies. All external links are marked nofollow. Citing a body is not that body endorsing us.
8. Commercial and editorial do not meet
Nobody on the register, and no newsletter sponsor, sees anything before publication, influences a subject, gets a mention in an article, or gets material removed. If that ever changes, this page changes first.
9. Corrections are visible
Corrections are published on the page they correct, with a note. We do not quietly edit and pretend it was always that way.
A note on style
British English throughout. Plain sentences. No long dashes. Nothing written to sound like a lecture, because people who surf have heard the lecture and are still surfing, which tells you what the lecture is worth.