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- 1.
- 2. In General… Acronyms are abbreviations that are pronounced as a word, such as NASA, CAD, ASP. The general trend is away from using periods in abbreviations, unless confusion might result. Use abbreviations and acronyms sparingly unless your readership is familiar with them. Spell out the abbreviation or acronym on the first use (a few exceptions)
- 3. In General… Do not use abbreviations or acronyms for subsequent references if they follow at a great distance from the spelled out version. Do not use the ampersand (&) as a replacement for and. Avoid alphabet soup. Rewrite copy that's peppered with acronyms. Do not italicize acronyms or abbreviations even if they are the official title of a printed piece: e.g., CATECS (Center for Advanced Training in Engineering and Computer Science).
- 4. ACADEMIC DEGREES NO ABBREVIATIONS When spelling out degrees, use lowercase full words • bachelor of science • master of business administration • bachelor's degree • master's degree • doctorate
- 5. PLURALS Plurals of abbreviations and acronyms are formed by adding s alone. NO apostrophe S = they are not possessive, only pluralized version
- 6. STATE ABBREVIATIONS General Rule: The more specific the location gets, the more abbreviations that may occur • City, state…may need to abbreviate! • State names with five letters or less are never abbreviated • Hawaii and Alaska are never abbreviated • See style book for other state abbreviations
- 7. UNITED STATES Abbreviate the United States only when used as an adjective. EX: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is one government agency that is using software developed at CU-Boulder. Spell United States out whenever it is used as a noun. EX: The government of the United States is one of the nation's largest employers.
- 8. DATES General Rule: The more specific the date gets, the more abbreviations that may occur • Exact date…may need to abbreviate! • Months with five letters or less are never abbreviated (similar to states) • See style book for other date and month abbreviations
- 9. TITLES Military titles…LOOK IT UP! No need to use Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Miss (use Dr. only if needed in story) See style book for title rules and abbreviations
- 10. ADDRESSES General Rule: The more specific the address gets, the more abbreviations that may occur • Only thoroughfares that are abbreviated are Street, Avenue and Boulevard, BUT only when used with a numbered address • See style book for other address abbreviations
- 11.
- 12. DO Capitalize… Proper Nouns and Names: • George Washington • Community College of Denver Popular Names: • RTD Light Rail • the Bad Lands • the Front Range Derivatives: • American • English
- 13. DO Capitalize… Composition Titles Social Security U.S. Armed Forces • Army • Navy • Air Force • Marines
- 14. DO Capitalize… Political Parties and Philosophies Planets and Heavenly Bodies Religious References Holidays and Holy Days
- 15. Do NOT Capitalize… classes: • freshman, sophomore, junior, senior academic degrees: • doctorate, doctor's, master's, bachelor's, baccalaureate academic department (exceptions)
- 16. Do NOT Capitalize… seasons • spring, summer, fall, winter directions and regions government terms, departments, bodies, court/legal, federal
- 17. TITLES…General Rule If a title is so important it comes BEFORE a name, capitalize it. If not and it comes AFTER a person’s name, lower case it (and set off by commas because that means it can be left out of the sentence). See style book for other title rules and abbreviations
- 18. AP Style Review Numbers
- 19. In General… Spell out one to nine. Use numerals for 10 and above. EXCEPTIONS: • Addresses • Ages • Money • Time • Percentages • Betting Odds, Scores and Ratios • Measurements/Dimensions • Temperatures
- 20. In General… Use a combination of numerals and words with numbers in the millions and larger. Use a comma for numbers with more than three digits. Spell out numbers at the beginning of a sentence or rephrase the sentence to avoid beginning with a number. Hyphenate fractions when they are spelled out.
- 21. DATES The AP preference is for styling dates as: month, day, and year, without the ordinal letters and a comma only between the day and the year. • New parking permits go on sale Jan. 6, 2012. NOT New parking permits go on sale January 6th, 2012. NOT New parking permits go on sale 6 January 2012.
- 22. MONEY The $ sign goes BEFORE the amount: • The book cost $4. The word cents is spelled out: • Can you loan me 25 cents? Money in the millions and billions • Carry out the amount by two decimal points: $4.25 million • Spell out million, billion, etc.
- 23. ORDINAL NUMBERS Spell out ordinal numbers from first to ninth: • She placed fourth out of 525 competitors. Use numbers and ordinal placement letters for 10th and above: • The 21st century has been fodder for many imaginative novelists and entrepreneurial visionaries during the latter half of the 20th century.
- 24. TIME Use numerals a.m. and p.m. (lowercase letters, no spaces between periods) Use noon and midnight in place of 12 p.m. and 12 a.m., respectively, for clarity. No need to use :00 if the time is on the hour
- 25. YEARS & DECADES A year is the ONLY number that can begin a sentence No need for apostrophe in the plural form of a year (it doesn’t belong to anything…it’s referring to the 10-year span of a decade = multiple years) • the 1880s • the 80s
Editor's Notes
- #2 Abbreviations and acronyms should be restricted to situations where they enhance comprehension: i.e., when your copy refers repeatedly to a lengthy name or term that has a commonly accepted abbreviation. Be aware that familiarity with most abbreviations and acronyms is context sensitive and field dependent. If you use CAD in your copy, will it be immediately clear to all your readers whether you mean Council of Associate Deans or computer-aided design ? Does BFA refer to Boulder Faculty Assembly or bachelor of fine arts? Shorthand that's familiar to specialists in a given field (or to long-time university employees) may be totally unintelligible to nonspecialists, students, nonuniversity readers, and newer university employees.
- #3 Acronyms are abbreviations that are pronounced as a word, such as NASA, CAD, ASP, etc. The general trend is away from using periods in abbreviations, unless confusion might result. Thus, we get TLE rather than T.L.E. and ASP rather than A.S.P. Use abbreviations and acronyms sparingly unless your readership is familiar with them. Spell out the abbreviation or acronym on the first use, but no need to follow with the abbreviation in parentheses to prepare readers for your subsequent use of the abbreviation.
- #4 Do not use abbreviations or acronyms for subsequent references if they follow at a great distance from the spelled out version. (How far is too far? Ask yourself if the readers who are least familiar with your document's content would understand the abbreviation if they came upon it at a given point in the copy.) Do not use the ampersand (&) as a replacement for and. Use the ampersand only when it is part of an official name of a company, product, or other proper noun, or on covers at the discretion of a designer. Avoid alphabet soup. Rewrite copy that's peppered with acronyms. Do not italicize acronyms or abbreviations even if they are the official title of a printed piece: e.g., CATECS (Center for Advanced Training in Engineering and Computer Science).
- #12 In General Official names and proper nouns are capitalized. Common nouns and various shortened forms of official names are not capitalized. Use the full, official name the first time it appears in a document or section of a document. The Case for Lowercase --When too many words are capitalized, they lose their importance and no longer attract attention. --Readability studies have shown that copy is more easily read when it isn't peppered with initial caps or all caps. --Using lowercase letters in no way diminishes the stature or credibility of an individual's position or a department's reputation. After all, even the title "president of the United States" is lowercased in running text when it doesn't immediately precede the incumbent's name. --When writing promotional or marketing materials (such as brochures or print ads), emphasis can be achieved more effectively by the skillful use of white space, typeface, and typestyle than by excessive use of initial caps or all caps.
- #13 -A Note on Capitalization These style guidelines for using initial capitals for university related terms may differ from what you have been using. In general, this guide recommends a lowercase style, for several reasons: -Standard style guides, including the Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law and The Chicago Manual of Style, require lowercase letters in running text for such things as job descriptions and unofficial department names. Several CU publications, including Silver & Gold Record, also observe the preference for lowercasing such terms. The lowercase style is becoming the preferred style for external communications at other institutions as well, in part because the media observe that style; therefore, it is the style familiar to noncampus readers. -Because many primary, official CU publications and documents already use the lowercase style, and because it is the preferred style in the rest of the business and professional world, we recommend that all CU writers adopt this style. -Keeping everything except full, official names lowercase also simplifies decisions about when to capitalize shortened forms of official names.
- #14 Publication and Other Titles When writing for general readerships, set book, journal, brochure, pamphlet, long poems, TV series, operas, long musical compositions, artwork, and movie titles in italics; set chapter and article titles in roman and enclose them in quotation marks; set names of forms in roman. Capitalize the following in titles: the first word the last word the first word after a colon all nouns, verbs (including short verbs, such as is, are, be), pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, subordinating conjunctions ( if, because, as, that ) Do not capitalize the following in titles (unless they fall into one of the previously listed categories): articles ( a, an, the), unless they are part of a proper noun coordinating conjunctions ( and, but, or, for, nor) prepositions (on, between, yet, by, before, over, under, through, etc.) Letting Go: A Parents' Guide to Understanding the College Years, by Karen Levin Coburn and Madge Lawrence Treeger, has been a popular guide for parents since its publication in 1997. The library recently received three copies of Francis Whitley's latest book, Educating Minds through Active Learning. Students must return their Application for Admission by the published deadline to be considered for admission to the University of Colorado at Boulder. In special cases, where you know that an author officially uses lowercase letters (as in the case of poet e e cummings), use the preferred capitalization.
- #15 Geographical and Related Terms Geographical terms commonly accepted as proper names are capitalized. Other descriptive or identifying geographical terms that either do not apply to only one geographical entity or are not regarded as proper names for these entities are not capitalized. Cultural or climatic terms derived from geographical proper names are generally lowercased. the Flatirons, the Front Range, the South, southern, southwestern (direction), the Southwest (U.S.), the West, western Europe, the West Coast, the Middle East, the Midwest (U.S.), west, western, westerner
- #17 -A Note on Capitalization These style guidelines for using initial capitals for university related terms may differ from what you have been using. In general, this guide recommends a lowercase style, for several reasons: -Standard style guides, including the Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law and The Chicago Manual of Style, require lowercase letters in running text for such things as job descriptions and unofficial department names. Several CU publications, including Silver & Gold Record, also observe the preference for lowercasing such terms. The lowercase style is becoming the preferred style for external communications at other institutions as well, in part because the media observe that style; therefore, it is the style familiar to noncampus readers. -Because many primary, official CU publications and documents already use the lowercase style, and because it is the preferred style in the rest of the business and professional world, we recommend that all CU writers adopt this style. -Keeping everything except full, official names lowercase also simplifies decisions about when to capitalize shortened forms of official names.
- #18 Job and Position Titles Capitalize job titles only when they immediately precede the individual's name or when they are named positions or honorary titles (as in the last two examples). Long Titles When a person has a very long title, put the title after the name to avoid clumsy syntax and "capitalizationitis". Descriptive Job Titles Note that descriptive job titles, as opposed to formal, academic, or administrative titles, are not capitalized: Features photographer Inda Gnow and writer Helda Line presented the proposal to public affairs Director Noah Comment. Occupational Descriptions Do not capitalize occupational descriptions either before or after a name: When chef Ella Fragrant had lunch with writer Nola Wirred, they decided to create a CU-Boulder cookbook.
- #19 Abbreviations and acronyms should be restricted to situations where they enhance comprehension: i.e., when your copy refers repeatedly to a lengthy name or term that has a commonly accepted abbreviation. Be aware that familiarity with most abbreviations and acronyms is context sensitive and field dependent. If you use CAD in your copy, will it be immediately clear to all your readers whether you mean Council of Associate Deans or computer-aided design ? Does BFA refer to Boulder Faculty Assembly or bachelor of fine arts? Shorthand that's familiar to specialists in a given field (or to long-time university employees) may be totally unintelligible to nonspecialists, students, nonuniversity readers, and newer university employees.
- #20 Spell out one to nine. Use numerals for 10 and above. When she was a child she wanted to be a professor when she grew up. When she turned 21, she realized that she'd rather be a flight instructor. Use a combination of numerals and words with numbers in the millions and larger. The population increased by 2.3 million. Use a comma for numbers with more than three digits. Estimated in-state tuition for 1998-99 was $3,038. The book, which was published in 1999, has 1,229 pages. Spell out numbers at the beginning of a sentence or rephrase the sentence to avoid beginning with a number. Forty-nine students received the new degree at the May commencement. Hyphenate fractions when they are spelled out: Two-thirds of the class was late. A four-fifths majority voted in favor of the amendment.
- #21 Spell out one to nine. Use numerals for 10 and above. When she was a child she wanted to be a professor when she grew up. When she turned 21, she realized that she'd rather be a flight instructor. Use a combination of numerals and words with numbers in the millions and larger. The population increased by 2.3 million. Use a comma for numbers with more than three digits. Estimated in-state tuition for 1998-99 was $3,038. The book, which was published in 1999, has 1,229 pages. Spell out numbers at the beginning of a sentence or rephrase the sentence to avoid beginning with a number. Forty-nine students received the new degree at the May commencement. Hyphenate fractions when they are spelled out: Two-thirds of the class was late. A four-fifths majority voted in favor of the amendment.
- #25 Time Use numerals with a.m. and p.m. (small caps or lowercase letters) to indicate specific times. Use noon and midnight in place of 12:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m., respectively, for clarity. The lecture will begin at 2:30 p.m. I'll extend office hours this week until about five o'clock.
- #26 Years and Decades There are multiple formats for referring to decades. In running text, spelling out the decade (first example) or using the full numeric decade (second example) is preferable. Use the abbreviated numeric decade format in very informal copy or in lists where space is limited. Do not use an abbreviated format if there could be any confusion about the century. Do not use an 's in numeric decades (1880s or '80s, not 1880's or '80's). the eighties the 1880s the '80s Use the correct placement for A.D. and B.C. (small caps). Hannibal died in 183 BC King George IV died in AD 1830. Unless the century changes, inclusive years should be styled with only the last two digits of the second number (1899–1900, but 2001–02). Inclusive years on publication covers, however, can be styled with all four digits of the second number (2001–2002 versus 2001–02) at the designer's discretion.