Naming files in general

content

Use all lowercase, and dashes instead of spaces. A longer meaningful name is better than a short meaningless one.

Poor practice

This is my file name, it's long and has commas, spaces, 'Unusual' Characters @? and Random Capitals Everywhere.pdf

Apostrophes 'like this', or commas in a filename are very likely to break a link to a document.

Good practice

this-is-my-excellent-file-name.pdf
another-example-of-a-good-image-file-name.jpg

Abbreviations and acronyms

These are difficult to read and understand at first glance, and their full words will not be found in searches:

stf-comm-mmbrshp.doc
(not great)
staff-committee-membership.doc
(better)

Capitals are acceptable in existing file names, but try to stick to lowercase only. Files with different capitalisation are recognised as completely different files:

I-am-Different-to-the-Other-File.pdf
i-am-different-to-the-other-file.pdf

Dates

Don't put a date in a filename if it's intended to be replaced on a regular basis - because existing incoming links to the document from other places in the website will still be valid:

prospectus-2017-18.pdf
(refers only to the 2017-18 prospectus)
prospectus.pdf
(document is updated annually and incoming links still work)

Do put a date in a filename for specific time-related content (eg events or meetings). Alway use yyyymmdd as the date format at the beginning of the name.

20180517-minutes-annual-management-meeting.pdf