Columbia.edu Editorial Style Guide

abbreviations

See CMS 15 for a full treatment of the topic, but note that we take our cue from Webster's, which uses few periods. Both reference works, however, do not use periods for abbreviations set uppercase, in small caps, or initial caps. At a client's request, we will edit with AMA style, which does not add periods to any abbreviations.

• Some lowercase abbreviations are written with periods and some are not. Check Webster's if you aren't sure.
  • e.g.
  • etc.
  • a.m.
  • et al
  • km
  • mi
  • aka
• Abbreviations of agencies and organizations are written without periods, as are those of countries.
  • • FBI
    • UN
    • CIA
    • NHL
    • OPEC
    • SIPA
  • • UK
    • GB
    • Fr
    • Ger
    • US
    • USA
    • USSR
    • UK
  Use US and UK only as adjectives: US foreign policy, UK imports.
• No periods in professional titles or academic degrees.
  • MD
  • PhD
  • MA
  • MFA
  • BA
  • DrPH (Doctor of Public Health)
  • MPH (Master of Public Health)
  • TA
• The abbreviations for eras should be set in small caps without periods.
  • AD
  • BC
  • CE
  • BCE
• More controversially, the following initial-capped abbreviations are also written without periods. Be sure to clear their use with the client.
  • Mr
  • Mrs
  • Dr
  • Jr
  • Lt
  • LLP
  • Corp
  • Inc
  The same is true of titles, especially military and civil titles.
  • Maj Gen (major general)
  • Lt Col (lieutenant colonel)

academic degrees

See CMS 15.21 for a list of degrees. In general, lowercase the degree (including the field of study) in running text, but capitalize it when it is displayed on a résumé, business card, diploma, alumni directory, or anywhere it functions more like a title than a description. Note the treatment of academic degress in abbreviations.

• The names of degrees may be written out in full or abbreviated to bachelor's or master's but never bachelors or masters.
  • He got his bachelor's last year. (It's better to say bachelor's degree.)
  • Employees with a master's degree start at a higher salary.
  • He received an associate's degree in 1998.
  • He received his bachelor of arts degree last year.
  • Employees with a master of arts degree start at a higher salary.
  • The Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering offers a full range of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs. (Note the adjective is doctoral not doctorate.)
  Master and bachelor take 's only when used in place of master of or bachelor of.
  • master of fine art
  • master's in sculpture
• Bachelor's and master's never need to take the plural possessive. When writing of more than one degree, add the word degrees for clarity.
  At the end of her studies, she'll have master's degrees in five fields. (Not She'll have master's in five fields.)
• In these examples, the degree functions like a title.
  • John Smith, JD
  • John Smith, Doctor of Laws
  • John Smith, BS
  • John Smith, Bachelor of Science
  In the following unusual example, the degree is capped in running text because it functions as a title. Most of the time in running text, the degree would be abbreviated.
  The judgeship was awarded to John Smith, Doctor of Laws.
• We prefer to lowercase the name of a degree when it is written out, even if it is part of the exact proper name of a program.
  • He earned his master of business administration in 1994. (Not He earned his Master of Business Administration in 1994.)
  • The school offers a master of science program.
  • The School of Journalism offers a joint master's program in journalism and international affairs.
  However, problems can arise because the names of programs, which are capitalized, sometimes incorporate the names of degress, which are not.
  He had to choose between SIPA's Program in Economic Policy Management and the master of science program in international relations. (Even if the second program is deleted, the capping still appears inconsistent.)
  Bring be sure to point out this problem to the client and establish consistent guidelines for capitalizing programs, degrees, concentrations, and the like, and enter them in the project style sheet.

African American (n. and adj.)

No hyphen except in the proper names of organizations that spell the word otherwise.

See nationality.

alphabetical lists and indexes

Most of this discussion concerns the Columbia.edu Web site. The aim in creating lists and indexes is to organize titles by the most logical search term and break up clusters of names starting with recurring phrases such as Columbia University, office of, or center for. The following list shows how names can be inverted to make browsing easier. Note that some names, like the fourth item in the list, are not inverted.

For authoritative spelling of names of departments, schools, institutes, etc., check FACETS (Facts About Columbia Essential to Students).

alumni affiliation

We follow UDAR's style for formatting alumni affiliation: year + school. The information is not enclosed in parentheses; the year and school are not separated by a space, but a comma divides multiple degrees as in the second example. This formatting applies to both headers and running text. We keep a list of UDAR abbreviations on file.

ampersand

In general, don't use ampersands in headings or running text. Don't use them in Web-site navigation, either, unless lack of space makes them necessary. Convert them to and when they appear in the names of publishers in citations (see documentation below). Let them stand in the proper names of organizations, especially the names of corporations, architectural offices, and law firms. Always verify the exact spelling of these names on the organization's Web site or in another authoritative source. When the text is in a foreign language, it is often more prudent to let the ampersand stand.

black (n., adj.)

As a term of ethnicity, the word takes an initial lowercase letter. See also white.

capitalization

For decisions about whether or not to capitalize a term, see chapter 8 of CMS, which leans toward a down style. See heads below.

• Courts. The exact proper names of all courts are capitalized, but only the abbreviated form of the United States Supreme Court is set uppercase. The abbreviated forms of the names of all other courts are set lowercase. See CMS 8.69.
  • the United States (or US) Supreme Court; the Supreme Court; the Court
  • the Arizona Supreme Court; the supreme court; the court; the supreme courts of Arizona and New Mexico
  • the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; the court of appeals
• Titles and offices. In running text, a civil, military, religious, or professional title is generally capitalized only if it immediately precedes a personal name. It functions grammatically as part of the name, "usually replacing the titleholder's first name," (CMS 8.21) although it is not incorrect to follow a title with the full name as in the third and fourth examples below.
  • President Eisenhower
  • Senator Moynihan
  • President Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
  Note that titles preceding two or more names retain caps.
  • During the Second World War, the government was headed by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
  • The press excoriated Governors Cuomo and Richardson for losing their respective elections.
  Lowercase titles used as part of a phrase that stands in apposition to a proper name.
  US president Dwight D. Eisenhower
  (The phrase US president stands in apposition to the proper name Dwight D. Eisenhower.)
  • New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
  • Columbia University professor Edward Said
  Unfortunately, capitalizing the titles in appositional constructions is a mistake so widespread that many readers assume it's not a mistake at all. Perhaps it's best to avoid the problem by rewriting the appositive like this: Edward Said, a professor at Columbia University. Further, the appositive is technically not complete unless the proper name is spelled out in full, although examples like US president Bush frequently appear in print media. Note this exception to the above rule:
  UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (UN is considered part of the title.)
  Titles following a proper name are not capped, but see the note above about capitalizing academic degrees.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, president of the United States
  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan, US senator from New York
  Note that professor emeritus is capped as a title. Also, University Professor is a special designation for Columbia's elite academic superstars, and it should be capped before and after proper names.
  • Columbia professor emeritus Jacob Mincer
  • Professor Emeritus Jacob Mincer (emeritus for men)
  • Professor Emerita Carolyn Heilbrun (emerita for women)
  • University Professor Alan Brinkley; Alan Brinkley is University Professor and provost at Columbia University.
  The following example illustrates some of the above rules in action.
  Eight years earlier, in 1912, Butler became the party's vice-presidential candidate when incumbent vice president James S. Sherman died five days after the election. Butler's selection did not matter; the Republican ticket headed by President William H. Taft received eight electoral votes in the three-way race also contested by former president Theodore Roosevelt (Law 1880–82) and won by New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson.
• University faculty should be identified as Professor, not Dr, unless they are physicians or for some other reason prefer the latter title.
• Organizations and parties. According to CMS 8.71, "Names of national and international organizations, alliances, and political movements and parties are capitalized."
  • the Democratic Party
  • the party
  • Democrats
  • party politics
• Names of political groups and movements are not generally capped (CMS 8.72).
  • corporate conservatism
  • neocon
  • neoliberal
  • populism
  When used to designate political orientation the terms left and right are almost always lowercased. Although the meaning of right could potentially mean either political orientation or legal claim, we think that the former meaning should be clear from the context.
  • the left
  • the right
  • members of the right wing
  • left-wingers
  • on the left
  • to the right
  • Hindu right
  • the far left
  • the far right
  • the radical right
  • the cultural left
  • the religious right
  • Republican right
  • the political left
  But note these two exceptions.
  • New Left
  • New Right
• University. If the text is in the official voice of Columbia University, cap University. If it isn't, don't. In most of the copy for the Columbia home page, for example, the term would be capitalized.
  From its beginnings in a schoolhouse in lower Manhattan, the University has grown to encompass two principal campuses.
  But in a quotation from, for instance, a scientist explaining that some of the work he did in the 1980s was thanks to funding he received from Columbia, don't cap university.
• Names of academic institutions, departments, offices, schools, institutes, etc. (CMS 8.73). The official name of these entities should, of course, always be capitalized. (For a list of official names of schools, departments, etc. at Columbia, see FACETS.) Abbreviated forms of these names are usually set in a down style, but note the idiocyncracies in the examples below.
  • University Registrar; Office of the Registrar; the registrar; registrar's office
  • Columbia University; the university (except as above); Columbia and Princeton universities
  • Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; the School of Architecture; GSAPP; the architecture school
  • Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; the School of Arts and Sciences; Arts and Sciences; GSAS
  • Graduate School of Business; the School of Business; the business school
  • School of the Arts; the Arts
  • Columbia College; the college
  • The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science; the Fu Foundation; SEAS; the engineering school
  • Graduate School of Journalism; the School of Journalism; the journalism school
  • School of Law; law school
  • Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the College of Physicians and Surgeons; College of Physicians and Surgeons; Physicians and Surgeons; P&S
  • Columbia University Medical Center; CUMC; the Medical Center; the center
  • Low Memorial Library; Low Library; Low Library rotunda
  • Mailman School of Public Health; the School of Public Health; Mailman; the public-health school
  • Teachers College
  • the Department of English and Comparative Literature; the English department; the comparative literature department; the department
  • the Department of Astronomy; the astronomy department; the department
  • the Department of Computer Science; the computer-science department; the department
  • School of International and Public Affairs; SIPA
  • NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
• Lectures and lecture series. Lecture series are set in title case, but individual lectures are set in title case with quotation marks.
  Columbia's fall Distinguished Lecture Series begins with Jeffrey Sachs's lecture "Achieving Sustainable Development in the Twenty-first Century."
• Subjects, courses, programs, specializations, concentrations, majors, and minors. (CMS 8.91–93).
  According to CMS, "Academic subjects are not capitalized unless they form part of a department name or an official course name or are themselves proper nouns (e.g., English, Latin)."
  Before taking law, he studied political science and history.
  Don't capitalize majors or minors.
  • She majored in comparative literature with a minor in art history.
  • He majored in biomedical engineering.
  Set names of courses in title case.
  This term she is taking Principles of Economics, Art Humanities, Shakespeare I, and French.
• Programs, concentrations, and specializations can be set in title case or roman, depending on how they are used. Set them in title case if they are used as an official, exact proper name. Check with FACETS or the department for exact spellings. Lowercase them if they are used in a generic or general sense. These terms are not generally set in title case when used in combination with the name of a degree. See academic degrees. Always consult the client, who may prefer to uppercase these terms at all times.
  • SIPA's Program in Economic Policy Management; the program
  • Postbaccalaureate Premedical Pre-health Program; the program
  • the Program in Physical Therapy; the program
  • Honors Program
  • The political science department offers a master of arts program.
  • The mechanical engineering department offers a concentration in multimedia networking. (The client might prefer Concentration in Multimedia Networking.)
  • Students can now take a concentration in geophysics as part of their BS degree in physics.
  • concentration in telecommunications engineering; the concentration
  • Columbia is famous for its Core Curriculum. (Core Curriculum is capped because it refers to the six-course undergraduate program offered at Columbia College.)
• Capitalize the official names of awards, scholarships, grants, fellowships, prizes. Note the treatment of fellow and scholar in the following examples.
  • the Nobel Prize; Nobel Prize–winning chemist
  • National Book Award; National Book Award winner
  • Pulitzer Prize; the Pulitzer; the Pulitzer Prize for History
  • • She won a Senior Fulbright Research Scholarship.
    • She is a Senior Fulbright Research scholar.
    • She is a Fulbright scholar.
  • • The new graduate student is an IEEE fellow.
    • He won an IEEE Fellowship.
  • • He won a Guggenheim Fellowship.
    • She is a Guggenheim fellow.
  • • More junior faculty are now receiving Mellon Faculty Career Grants.
    • He got a Mellon grant.
• Cultural and artistic movements. Lowercase unless a proper name is part of the name of the movement (CMS 8.85) as in Beaux-Arts. However, many clients prefer to uppercase these terms so be sure to check with them.
  • • art deco
    • art-deco design
  • • Beaux-Arts
    • Beaux-Arts building
  • • Greek revival
    • Greek-revival architecture
  • • Romanesque revival
    • Romanesque-revival building
  • Gothic (but gothic fiction)
  • Renaissance (Cap to avoid confusion with renaissance used as generic term.)
  • • fauvism
    • impressionism
    • expressionism
  • • international style
    • international-style school
• Astronomical terms. For a full discussion see CMS 8.146ff, but the terms earth, sun, and moon are generally lowercased, especially when preceded by the or used in idioms.
  • • the four corners of the earth
    • salt of the earth
    • to move heaven and earth
  • He still believes the earth is flat.
  • The moon seemed to shed more light than the sun last weekend.
  Almost always uppercase earth, sun, and moon when they appear in the context of other astronomical terms, but note the last example above.
  • The astronauts returned successfully to Earth.
  • The atmosphere of Mars or Venus could not support the creatures of Earth.
  • It is about how to make the world and the Earth work and how to care for it. Dr Sachs will speak today on how to express our love for the larger sphere of the planet. (Mention of planet establishes astronomical context.)
• Diseases, syndromes, etc. Capitalize only the part of the name that is a proper noun.
  • Alzheimer's disease
  • Parkinson's disease
• God, gods, and godesses. Cap the names of deities in both monotheistic and polytheistic religions (CMS 8.98).
  • God
  • Allah
  • Yahweh
  • Krishna
  Alternative or descriptive names for God as supreme being are also capped (CMS 8.99) but not pronouns like his or him.
  • Adonai
  • the Almighty
  • the Holy Ghost
  • the Lord
  • Providence
  • the Supreme Being
  • the Trinity
  In appositive constructions god is not capped.
  • the god Yahweh
  • the god Krishna
  • the god called God
• Names of places. Since treatment of place-names is often idiosyncratic and illogical, refer often to CMS 8, especially the long list at 8.50. The examples below occur frequently in our documents.
  • • Western Europe
    • Central Europe
    • Eastern Europe (Makes a political and socioeconomic distinction.)
  • • western Europe
    • central Europe
    • eastern Europe (Refers to geographical region.)
  • • Asia
    • East Asia
    • Southeast Asia
  • the North, northern; Northern, a Northerner (in American Civil War contexts)
  • the South, southern; Southern, a Southerner (in American Civil War contexts); the Deep South
  • northern California; Southern California (capped because according to CMS 8.50 it's as much a cultural entity as a geographical region)
  Set the names of neighborhoods and districts in New York City in title case. (See CMS 8.51 for more on capping popular names of places.)
  • • SoHo
    • NoHo
    • Tribeca
    • Upper East Side
    • Lower East Side
    • Upper West Side
  • • Lower Manhattan
    • Upper Manhattan
    • northern Manhattan
  • • Garment District
    • Theatre District
    • Financial District
    • Flower District
• Constitutions and amendments.
  • the Fifteenth Amendment; the amendment
  • the First and Sixth Amendments
  • First Amendment rights
  • the Constitution of the United States; the United States (or US) Constitution; the Constitution (in reference to the US Constitution)
  • Brazilian Constitution; the constitution of Brazil; the constitution
  • Illinois Constitution; the constitution
• Compounds in titles. For a full discussion see CMS 8.168, but note these common examples.
  • • How-to Resources
    • E-mail Information
    • Log-on
    • Start-Up Portfolio
  • Achieving Sustainable Development in the Twenty-first Century
• Title case. See Garner 108 for a full discussion. Lowercase conjunctions (and, for, so, yet, but), articles (the, a, an), and prepositions of four letters or fewer (of, with, in, to, from). Initial cap the longer prepositions (because, beyond, underneath, after) and the ones of two syllables or more (over, into, onto, upon). This, that, these, and those are capitalized in titles, whether they function as pronouns or adjectives.
  • Journey Into the Night
  • "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
  • The Weasel Under the Cocktail Cabinet
  • Crisis and the Arts: The History of Dada (The is capped here because it follows a colon.)
  • Steal This Book
  • After This: A Novel
  In examples five and six, this functions as an adjective and a pronoun, respectively, and is capitalized in both cases.
• Titles of art or museum exhibitions.
  • the exhibition The Lion for Real
  • Last week we went to the Met and saw China: Dawn of a Golden Age.
• Street names in ranges.
  from Forty-sixth to Fifty-seventh streets (No cap on "streets" when used in range.)
• Government bodies. See CMS 8.67 for full discussion.
  • • the United States Senate
    • the US Senate
    • the Senate
    • senatorial
    • the Senate committee
  • • the United States Congress
    • the US Congress
    • Congress
    • the Ninety-seventh Congress
    • congressional
  • • the House of Representatives
    • the House
    • the House committee
  • Rangel was elected to the Ninety-second Congress on November 3, 1970, and has been reelected to each succeeding Congress.
• Buildings. Cap the word building but not the word the.
  • the Empire State Building
  • the Woolworth Building
  • the Decker Building
  • John Lennon lived in the Dakota, across from Central Park.
• City and state.
  • the city of New York
  • New York City
  • the state of New York
  • New York State

captions

See CMS 12.31ff for a full discussion. Captions range in length from a single word or phrase to a couple of sentences, and they generally appear beneath an image, table, or the like. Captions are endstopped with a period unless they consist only of a proper name or a proper name and a date, as in the second example. Dates are not enclosed in parentheses. See CMS 12.36 on how to identify parts of an illustration, but note the last example below for a type not covered in CMS.

c. (circa)

We prefer c. to circa. It is followed by one space.

chair

Where possible, convert chairman and chairwoman to chair.

colons

• Uppercase the initial letter of the first word of an independent clause that follows a colon.
  He saw the writing on the wall: The government would have to extradite the terrorist.
• Lowercase the initial letter of the first word that follows a colon if the word does not begin an independent clause.
  His mind was focused on one thing: home.
• One space after a colon, not two.
• Do not put colons after a stand-alone heading.

See also vertical lists.

commas

For a full discussion of commas, see CMS 6 and Garner's entry on punctuation. The entries below touch on some of the problems of comma usage and illustrate our preference for "open" rather than "close" punctuation; that is, we prefer to use commas sparingly unless the client specifies otherwise.

• Commas are not necessary after an introductory adverbial phrase or clause that is short, usually three or fewer words.
  After lunch we returned to the university.
• Coordinate clauses. Independent clauses linked with coordinating conjunctions (and, so, or, for, but, yet) should be preceded by a comma unless they are closely linked—Buy this computer now and you won't regret it—or the subject is the same for both clauses—For an hour the film successfully balanced light comedy with frank sexuality but veered into tedious melodrama in the last thirty minutes. (Film is the subject of both verbs, balanced and veered.)
• Embedded subordinate clauses or phrases. The following examples illustrate the differences between open and close punctuation of subordinate clauses embedded in compound-complex sentences.
  The forward was traded shortly before the deadline, and, although he lacked leadership skills, his new team made him their captain.
  In this closely punctuated sentence, one comma appears before the conjunction and and two others bracket the dependent clause.
  The forward was traded shortly before the deadline, and although he lacked leadership skills his new team made him their captain.
  In open punctuation, the dependent clause is not set off with commas.
  Wrong: The forward was traded shortly before the deadline, and although he lacked leadership skills, his new team made him their captain.
  Don't mix close and open punctuation.
• Serial comma. Put a comma before the last item in a list of three or more items.
  She will be in the office on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
  But if all the elements in a series are joined by by conjunctions, no commas are needed.
  I don't know if I spoke to Brooks or Adams or Shapiro.
• Etc., and so forth. According to CMS 6.22, when etc., and so forth, and the like, and similar phrases are the final item in a series, they are followed by a comma.
• Inc, Ltd, and the like do not need to be set off by commas.
  GENETIX Pharmaceuticals Inc has positioned itself as a leader in the stable transfer of therapeutic genes.
• Parenthetical elements. Commas set off parenthetical words or phrases, appositives, and nonrestrictive clauses.
  • The chair of the department, Ann Gardner, publishes frequently.
  • He thought, however, that the president should resign.
  Transcripts full of parenthetical words and phrases like however, indeed, therefore, you know, and the like, might read more easily if the commas are omitted.
  The student, who was wearing a beret, was late for class.
• Place commas inside both double and single quotation marks.
  "Q&A with Jeffrey Sachs: 'A World of Good,'" Charlotte Observer
• Dependent clauses. A dependent clause that precedes the main clause should be followed by a comma: Although the weather was hot, the tourists wore jackets. However, "a dependent clause that follows a main clause should not be preceded by a comma if it is restrictive, that is, essential to the meaning of the main clause. If it is merely supplementary or parenthetical, it shold be preceded by a comma." (CMS 6.36) It's not always easy to tell the difference; when in doubt add a comma to indicate a pause.
  • We would have been stuck in traffic for hours if the police hadn't arrived. (restrictive)
  • He was suprised when he found out that his mother was from Italy. (restrictive)
  • Paul's father won the election, although I couldn't understand why he ran in the first place. (nonrestrictive)

See also dates; places.

communist, Communist (n. and adj.)

When they refer to a philosophy or a proponent of that philosophy, the terms communism and communist take an initial lowercase letter. When they refer explicitly to a Communist Party or to a member of that party, the terms are capitalized. In some instances, the usage of the term overlaps both definitions—a person identified as an advocate of the philosophy may also be a member of the party, for example—and you have to use your judgment.

compound modifiers

There are two schools of thought about hyphenating compound adjectives and both provide acceptable guidelines as long as they are consistently applied. Like the Wall Street Journal, DKV sides with the school of hyphenation against the anti-hyphenists, who prefer to add hyphens only if open compounds are ambiguous or misleading. There are arguments for and against both practices. The former is less common and locutions like high-school student might look odd to the average reader, but editors in this camp are never in doubt as to whether to use a hyphen. The anti-hyphenists would spell most of the examples below without hyphens—big bang theory, community history project, human rights tradition—on the assumption that they are "permanent compounds," combinations of two or three words so common that we read them as a single syntactic unit without any loss of understanding. Hyphenating electrical engineering section would look peculiar to the engineers who view the engineering department's home page. However, it's not always easy to guess what a reader will find confusing, and to maintain consistency anti-hyphenist editors must keep track of the compounds they consider permanent in a project style sheet. Note that DKV is always happy to accommodate anti-hyphenist clients. Editors should review the complicated rules governing the spelling of compound modifiers explained in CMS 7.90. Below are some of the most important points in that discussion.

• If the compound modifer is composed of two nouns: hyphenate.
  community-history project
  But note that not every sequence of nouns is a compound adjective modifying a noun.
  airport departure lounge (Airport in this phrase modifies lounge, not departure.)
• If the compound modifier is an adjective plus a noun: hyphenate if the adjective doesn't modify the main or substantive noun in the phrase. (But see below re permanent compounds.)
  • revolving-door management
  • big-bang theory
  • human-rights tradition
  • civil-rights movement
• If the adjective does modify the main noun (or modifies it in addition to modifying the adjectival noun): leave open.
  local sports news
• If the compound modifier is an adverb ending in ly plus an adjective: leave open.
  • happily married couple
  • wholly owned subsidiary
• If the compound is an adverb (one not ending in ly) plus an adjective: generally, leave open, but hyphenate if you think it would be ambiguous otherwise. It is liable to be ambiguous when the adverb is a word that can also serve as an adjective.
  • much loved friend
  • less-appreciated art
• Some examples of tricky compound adjectives:
  • a 400-by-400-kilometer area
  • a black-and-white photograph
  • long-term annuity
  • well-paid working-class jobs
  • post- and prewar economy
  • post-9/11
  • in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century artistic circles
  • 11th-annual company picnic (Hyphenate ordinals used in compound adjectives.)
  • • Buddhist art critic (i.e., a critic who is Buddhist)
    • Buddhist-art critic (a critic who studies Buddhist art)
  • • full-time job
    • part-time job
  • He works full time.
• Do not hyphenate then when it is used as an adjective meaning "that existed or was so at the time."
  • the then president Bill Clinton
  • the then mayor of San Francisco
• Compound modifiers in predicative position (after the nound they modify) do not require hyphens.
  • • a black-and-white photograph
    • Here are the pictures that are black and white.
  • • the well-liked teacher
    • The teacher was well liked.
  • • the much-loved woman
    • The woman was much loved.
  • • an open-ended question
    • His questions were all open ended.

compose / comprise / consist / constitute / make up

Comprise is the tricky word in this group of related terms (see Garner's entry). It means "to contain, to consist of." The whole comprises or consists of the parts while the parts compose, constitute, or make up the whole. The following examples illustrate the use of these verbs in the active voice.

computer programs

Set names of computer programs in title case.

computer terms

CMS 7.76ff presents several options for formatting computer terms. In reviewing these options, it seemed to us that capital letters (7.77) could be ambiguous, italics used for too many purposes, and quotation marks too cluttered, so that left us with bolding for the titles of tabs, menus, menu items, commands, keys, and the like. Bold font is a good choice because although it can seem somewhat overemphatic at times it almost never appears in our projects, so its semantic associations are up for grabs. We're hoping that bolding will come to connote computer terms in the minds of our users. Note that sections, subsections, and other parts of Web sites or computer documents are set with quotation marks, by anology with chapters and other parts of a book. However, when sections, etc., are hotlinked, which is most of the time, they appear without quotation marks, as in the last example below.

contact information

DKV's preferred format for addresses and contact information is illustrated by the following example.

This format can be amended and abbreviated to suit different contexts and include different kinds of information, such as home and office telephone numbers.

credit lines

The content of the credit depends on an asset's copyright status, which should be investigated by a professional rights researcher. In the case of materials in the public domain or obtained free of charge or published under the terms of fair use, credits should identify the type of asset (photograph, table, drawing, etc.) and include the phrase courtesy of followed by the name of the source, as in Photograph courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund. For materials created by the author, we usually just identify the asset type and give the author's name--Photograph by Don J. Melnick--unlike CMS, which uses author not the name. For materials requiring formal permission, the credit should begin with the phrase reproduced by permission of followed by the author, title, publication details, and copyright date (CMS 12.47). This information is generally followed by the copyright symbol, the copyright date, and the name of the copyright holder as in the following examples.

dash

See em dash and en dash.

date format

• Enclose years with commas.
  I was in Cleveland on October 27, 1997, and August 17, 2001.
• Dates in notes and bibliographies follow this order: month, day, month, year.
  Lee C. Bollinger, "Columbia University in the Twenty-first Century," Columbia College Today, July 29, 2003, pp. 17–35.

See also commas; places; capitalization.

date ranges

Date ranges can be indicated with either an en dash or the grammatical structure from . . . to, but do not mix formats as in the third example.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: DSM-IV

Often referred to in running text as DSM-IV.

direct and indirect discourse

• In indirect discourse, direct speech is paraphrased and does not take quotation marks.
  Justice Robert Jackson said that the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact.
• In direct discourse, a speaker's exact words are transcribed and enclosed in quotation marks.
  Justice Robert Jackson said, "The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact."
  We rely on a somewhat loose definition of direct discourse when treating hypothetical statements rendered as direct speech, as in the following examples from the transcript of the conference "Constitutions, Democracy, and the Rule of Law."
  • We would just be sticking our heads in the sand if we went around saying, "We must not compromise any civil liberties."
  • If you say, "Well, I think we ought to tone this down a little bit," you're at risk of being accused of being soft on terrorism.
  • The general tendency has been to say, "Let us compromise, let us balance, let us seek pragmatic solutions, let us gain access to the halls of power by recognizing the authority of the government."
  • Subsequent rulings in the late fifties and early sixties said, "Well, you just can't do that. It's against freedom of association.
  In the first two examples a public voice, represented by generalized third- and second-person pronouns, makes hypothetical statements, and in the last two cases, the abstractions' tendency and rulings "speak" in a colloquial voice. These locutions distract the reader, and the editor should transpose them to indirect discourse, an option not available to the transcript editor, who must represent the speaker's words as accurately as possible.
• Enclose "thought, imagined dialogue, and other interior discourse" in quotation marks (CMS 11.47).
  I thought, "Why couldn't this be a twenty-first-century morphology, a real pedestrian street?"

ellipses

We set ellipsis points with spaces. Three ellipsis points (#.#.#.#) indicate the omission of a word phrase, line, paragraph, or more, from a quoted passage. To avoid awkward line breaks, make the spaces between ellipsis points "hard" (nonbreaking) by holding down the "Ctrl" and "Shift" keys and then pressing the spacebar. We follow the "rigorous" method described in CMS 11.62ff, which incorporates the guidelines for the three- and four-point methods but differs from them in its treatment of the beginning and ending of quotations.

• When starting a quotation in the middle of a sentence, do not use ellipsis points. Uppercase the first letter of the first word in the quotation and put it in brackets. However, add ellipsis points if the first word of a quotation is a proper noun.
• If the last part of the last sentence in a quotation has been omitted, add four dots with spaces before and after each one, including the first. The first three dots function as an ellipsis and the last one functions as a period.
• Retain punctuation on either side of an ellipsis if it clarifies meaning.

A comparison of the two passages below, taken from Emerson as quoted in CMS 11.57, illustrates the application of these and other rules governing the use of ellipsis points.

• In block quotations of prose when an entire paragraph, a number of paragraphs, or an extremely long passage of running text is omitted, we indicate the omission with [ . . . ] centered on the page, with one line above and below. The need for this device arose during the course of our work at Columbia, and as far as we know it is our own invention.

  [ . . . ]

  [The] next morning several parties of the enemy appeared upon the plains in our front. On receiving this intelligence, General Washington rode quickly to the outposts, for the purpose of preparing against an attack, if the enemy should advance with that design.

  [ . . . ]

  . . . Colonel Knowlton, who had distinguished himself so gallantly at the battle of bunker-Hill, was mortally wounded immediately after. . . .

em dash

During the age of the typewriter, em dashes were represented by a double hyphen, but these days in Microsoft Word you can select them from the Symbol dialogue box on the Insert menu or add them to Web files with the code —. We prefer to close them up, that is, to insert them without spaces before or after.

The em dash sets off a significant break in the structure and logic of a sentence. This break—often referred to as a "parenthetical element" even though it is not set off in parenthesis—can perform at least three grammatical functions, which are explained in CMS 6.87ff. For the purposes of our work the most important of these is the way the em dash qualifies, amplifies, or explains something in the main clause of a sentence, as shown in the examples below. The function of the em dash overlaps with that of the colon, parentheses, and comma, and while the em dash is often interchangeable with these punctuation marks, the break it signals is usually more abrupt, more in the character of an interruption than an aside. The parenthetical element can occur either in the middle of a sentence (set off with two em dashes) or at the end (set off with one). When a parenthetical element occurs in the middle of a sentence, it temporarily suspends the grammar and sense of the main clause, which returns after the second em dash. If the parenthetical element is removed, the main clause should still make sense on its own. Never use more than two em dashes in a single sentence; if two or more elements need to be set off in a sentence, use parentheses.

embedded questions

Most of the time, embedded questions can be dealt with according to CMS 6.55: "A direct question included within another sentence is usually preceded by a comma." Although "it need not begin with a capital letter" unless "the question is relatively long or has internal punctuation," we usually initial-cap the first word of a question, especially when the question is embedded in the middle of sentence as in the second example. An indirect question takes no comma.

• Direct questions.
  • Suddenly he asked himself, Where am I going?
  • The question before us is, Do constitutions constrain?
  • To respond to Adam's question, Do institutions matter? we can put a price on how much they matter.
  • One question was, How do constitutions constrain? which brings into play the physiology of constraint.
  • The manager must ask himself not What are the consequences of this action? but What would happen if everyone did this?
  • At the beginning of this series, we asked two rather large questions: What is our place in the universe? and Is it unique?
• Indirect questions.
  • Suddenly he asked himself where he was going.
  • He wondered why he was still seeing double.

en dash

• The en dash indicates a range, usually of time, distance, or number.
  • August–November 1997
  • pages 72–98
  • the Chicago–Philadelphia route
  • 1,472–2,097
  • 1947–48
  • 55 B.C.–A.D. 72
  • Monday–Friday
  • 6 p.m.–8 p.m.
  But use a hyphen to separate numbers not in sequence, as in an account number or the score of a ball game.
  • Her checking-account number is 8579-85-7589-9.
  • The Indians beat the Red Sox 4-0.
  • The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor.
• Use an en dash to join prefixes to compound terms when one or both terms is a compound.
  • post–Civil War period
  • pre–World War II period
  • post–World War II
  • historian–political scientist Mel Harder
  • New York–based company
  • high-inflation–full-employment condition
• –

few / less

In general, use less with mass nouns and few or fewer with plural nouns that are countable.

figures

In running text, the term figure is written out and set roman, as in the first example. Abbreviate it if it appears in parentheses, as in the second example. When it appears beneath a figure or illustration, cap it.

Flash

Short for Macromedia Flash

fractions

Spell out all fractions unless the client has requested a scientific style such as AMA. Simple fractions are traditionally hyphenated in noun, adjective, and adverb forms, except when the second element is already hyphenated (CMS 7.90).

hyperlinks

When hyperlinks appear in running text, set them roman unless all or part of their phrasing exactly matches those of navigation headings or titles of external Web sites. Punctuation is never included within a hyperlink at the beginning or the end.

initial the in periodical titles

According to CMS 8.180ff, don't include the initial the as part of the italicized titles of newspapers or periodicals (including scholarly journals) in either running text or citation entries.

This rule does not apply to titles of works in other formats, such as books, television and radio programs, or visual art.

insure / ensure

According to Webster's, in current usage both words have come to mean "to make certain," but restrict the use of insure "to financial contexts involving indemnification; it should refer to what insurance companies do." (Garner 60) Use ensure in all other cases.

italics

• Titles. Italicize the titles of books, periodicals, films, and TV or radio series.
  • War and Peace
  • the New Yorker (the is roman in titles of periodicals and newspapers)
  • The Godfather
  • NYPD Blue
  Use quotation marks for chapters (chapter titles, not chapter numbers), articles, short stories, and episodes or segments of TV or radio series (but italicize titles of TV and radio series—see section 3, Documentation).
• Legal cases. CMS 8.88 prefers to italicize the v. in the names of legal cases, as in the first example, but some clients may prefer the older practise of setting it roman, as in the second.
• Miranda v. Arizona
• Miranda v. Arizona
The names of cases are often shortened in running text.
the Miranda case (or simply Miranda)
• Statues, paintings, etc. "Titles of paintings, drawings, statues, and other works of art are italicized . . . whether the titles are original, added by someone other than the artist, or translated" according to CMS 8.206. Anonymous works of antiquity are set roman. Proper titles are set in title case but descriptive titles are set in sentence case. NB: the titles of photographs are enclosed in quotation marks.
  • Alma Mater
  • the Venus de Milo
  • Van Gogh's Starry Night
  • Hogarth's series of drawings The Rake's Progress
  • "North Dome" is one of Ansel Adams's photographs of Kings River Canyon.
• Emphasis. Use italics sparingly to indicate emphasis; otherwise, the reader will become numb to their effects.
• Vehicles and vessels.
  • the space shuttle Columbia
  • the Titanic
  • the Orient Express
  • USS Eisenhower (Don't italicize USS..)
  • HMS Pinafore (Don't italicize HMS when you're talking about the ship. If you're talking about the light opera, then it's part of the title, HMS
  We don't italicize names of vehicles that are brand names: Ford Corvaire, Corvette, Nissan Pathfinder, Boeing 747.
• Foreign words and translations. Use italics for foreign words and phrases unless they have been "naturalized" into English and listed in Webster's (CMS 7.51). The following words and phrases do not require italics:
  • in vitro
  • a priori
  • Eros
  • in vivo
  • weltanschauung
  • pro bono
  • arborvitae
  • pieds-à-terre

  Also, in running text italicize the first occurrence of foreign words and phrases not found in Webster's (CMS 7.55), but set them roman thereafter.

  Foreign proper names are not italicized.

  • The Nationalist Party (Guomindang) took over China in 1912.
  • In 1925, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) seized control of the party.
  In running text, enclose translations of foreign words and phrases in parentheses. See CMS 11.87 for more details.
  • The word used was not une poêle (frying pan) but un poêle (stove).
  • Rimbaud portrayed the Paris Commune of 1871 in his poem L'orgie parisienne ou Paris se repeuple (The Parisian Orgy, or Paris Repopulates).
  • Just as the Ling long woman had multiple identities, the magazine called her a variety of both Chinese and English names: xin nuxing and xin nuzi (new woman); xiandai nuzi (contemporary woman); and modeng nuxing (modern woman, modern girl, girl of this age, girl of today).
• Key terms. Highlight the first occurrence of key terms in a discussion and set in roman thereafter (CMS 7.57).
  • Throughout this paper, I will use voice as a metaphor to describe the amalgamation of register, tone, and attitude of written prose.
  • We wanted to challenge several widely held views about executive compensation, what we call the rotten-apples view, the paying-for-performance view, the transient-lapses view, and independence-is-enough view. (This is an extreme example, but without the italics it would be hard to distinguish all three views.)
• Words and phrases used as words. We prefer italics to quotation marks when indicating words and phrases used as words (CMS 7.62) except in contexts when confusion might result or speech is implied, as in the fifth example below. The use of italics frequently applies to words and phrases that follow expressions such as term, referred to as, is called (cf so-called below), and known as; however, the meaning and use of the words and phrases set up by these expressions are often clear without italics, so use italics sparingly, when the word or phrase is probably going be unfamiliar or confusing to the reader. In the first three examples below, the meaning of the terms are perfectly clear without italics; but without italics, the fourth and fifth examples, the reader would likely confuse the reader. Technical terms and the like are italicized at first use and set roman after that, as in the eighth example.
  • These kind of benefits, often referred to as major medical, come with a hefty deductible.
  • Vermicomposting produces a rich, black soil that scientists call humus.
  • The term genetic epidemiology first emerged somewhere between 1954 and 1970.
  • It seemed that every other word out of his mouth was "spirit."
  • The frequency for the big A gene is 80%, for the little a gene is 20%. (Without the italics, the "little a would be overlooked.
  • You look at what's called H observed, that means how many heterozygotes you will actually observe in a population. (Without the italics, the reader almost certainly misread H observed.
  The same principle applies to phrases as phrases.
  • He checked a dictionary for the meaning of the phrase local sports news.
  • There was much talk about "of the people, by the people, for the people."
• Definitions. In most cases, we italicize the defined word and enclose the definition in quotation marks.
  • Sempiternal is an adjective that means "of never-ending duration."
  • Our word silly can be traced back to an Old High German word meaning "happy."
  • The word priest comes from the Latin word presbyter, meaning "elder." (Note that the etymological root is also italicized.)
  See Words Into Type 219 for situations where you might want to use different combinations of italics and quotation marks.
• Letters as letters (CMS 7.63).
  • the letter q
  • a word with two e's and three s's
  But
  • Mind your p's and q's.
  • dot the i's and cross the t's

Jr., Sr., II, III, IV, etc.

When used in names, there is no comma before any of these suffixes.

less / few

In general, use less with mass nouns and few or fewer with plural nouns that are countable.

money

Write out the words dollars, cents, pounds, etc. in all isolated references to money, but use the appropriate symbol in passages thick with numbers or in constructions that would otherwise be awkward. See CMS 9.23–24, but note differences in our style.

multiplication sign (x)

We use the lowercase x to indicate the multiplication sign, not the symbol found on the "Insert" menu in Word. For the most part, usage is straightforward, with spaces before and after.

nationality

• As both nouns and adjectives, compound nationalities of which the second component is American are open, not hyphenated.
  • African American
  • Native American
• If one of the components of a compound term indicating nationality, race, etc., is an adjectival prefix, that term takes a hyphen:
  Indo-European
• Initial lowercase letters for black and white.

nicknames and epithets

• "A characterizing word or phrase used as part of, or instead of, a person's name is capitalized." CMS 8.36
  • The Great Communicator served two terms in office.
  • Babe Ruth hit over 700 home runs.
  • In a case of life imitating art, the Terminator became governor of California.
• "When used in addition to name, an epithet is enclused in quotation marks and placed either within or after the name." CMS 8.36
  • George Herman "Babe" Ruth hit over 700 home runs.
  • Jenny Lind, "the Swedish Nightengale," gave her last concert in 1870.
  • Known as "Big Red" and "Detroit Red," Malcolm entered the underground economy of the ghetto.

none

According to Words Into Type (353), none "may be construed as either singular or plural, according to the thought to be conveyed: 'no amount' (when the following noun is singular), or 'no individuals' (when the following noun is plural)."

Nobel Prizes

Use the following format when referring to Nobel Prizes.

nonprofits

While we prefer the term nonprofit, not-for-profit is acceptable. Nonprofits are sometimes referred to as 501(c)(3) organizations.

numbers and numerals

A long discussion of numbers can be found in chapter 9 of CMS, but it offers no hard and fast rules for their usage. "Among the factors governing the choice between spelling out numbers and using numerals are whether the number is large or small, whether it is an approximation or an exact quantity, what kind of entity it enumerates, and what kind of text it appears in" (9.2). We follow a humanities, not scientific, style—but take our cue from the APS and uses numerals where CMS suggests spelling out numbers. The rules below are only guidelines. The context in which numbers appear can require any of them to be bent.

• Spell out one through ten and multiples of ten less than one hundred. Use numerals for 11 through 99 that are not multiples of ten.
  • one, two, three, . . . ten
  • ten, twenty, thirty, . . . ninety
  • 11, 12, 21, 35, 99
• Spell out denominations of a hundred less than 1,000, but use numerals for all other numbers in the hundreds.
  • one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, . . . nine hundred
  • 101, 110, 150, 267, 568, 786, 999
• Use numerals to express numbers in the thousands.
  1,000, 1,243, 2,000, 2,500, 5,687, 10,000, 40,000, 67,000, 100,000, 400,000, 989,999
• Million and billion use a numeral followed by the word million or billion.
  1 million, 1.4 million, 2 million, 9 million, 16.9 billion, 45 billion, 989 million, 567 billion
  Use a million not 1 million in examples like the following.
  The population of the city is about a million.
• If the text is thick with numbers, though, you may express all of them, even round numbers, as numerals, especially in cases where several numbers in one category appear. In the example below, the category is patents.
  In the year 2001, 166,000 patents for new inventions were taken out in the United States. This is a pretty good indicator of science and technology reaching a commercializable base. Now, the US Patent Office gives patents for American as well as foreign inventors. Of those 166,000 patents, 87,000 were taken out by US resident inventors, and the balance, about 70,000 by foreign inventors. Of those foreign inventors, the 70,000, Germany had 11,000, Japan about 30,000, South Korea about 3,500, Israel 1,000, all of tropical sub-Saharan Africa with its 500,000,000 people had 10 registered patents for the year. And that was up from the previous year, which is a good sign. It was 2 the previous year.
• Use numerals for ages.
  • Mary Smith is 12 years old.
  • She is 12.
  • A 7-year-old is likely to experience complex grief.
  • John Doe is a 40-year-old teacher.
  • A man of 40 runs increased risk of horrible diseases.
  But spell out decades.
  She is in her twenties.
• Use numerals for measurements.
  • Jones received 59 percent of the vote.
  • The beams were 8 feet high.
  • The infant weighs 8 pounds, 7 ounces.
  • 500 base pairs
  • 6 to 8 nucleotides
  • A typical human brain is about 6 and half inches long and 4 inches tall.
  But spell out numerals ten and under in distances.
  • It was nine miles to the nearest town.
  • The nearest town was 14 miles away.
• When a number begins a sentence, it is spelled out. Whether standing alone or as part of a larger number, compound nouns in which numbers from twenty-one through ninety-nine are spelled out should be hyphenated. All other numbers or parts of numbers are open.
  • Twelve pairs of socks are in the drawer.
  • Twenty-three pairs of socks are in the drawer.
  • Two hundred pairs of socks are in the drawers.
  • Two hundred twenty-three pairs of socks are in the drawers.
  • Five hundred forty-seven old men received benefits.
• Centuries. Spell out centuries as in the following noun and adjectival constructions.
  nouns
  • early seventeenth century
  • late eighteenth century
  • mid-nineteenth century
  adjectives
  • early-seventeenth-century ceramics
  • late-eighteenth-century painting
  • mid-nineteenth-century warfare
  Use numerals for expression like the 1900s (not 1900's).
• Decades. Write them out—the twenties, the fifties—except in expressions like the 1980s, the 1920s. Avoid numerical abbreviations such as the '60s, but if there is no alternative use the following format.
  • in the 1950s and '60s
  • • mid-sixties
    • late sixties
    • early sixties
  "Note that the first two decades of any century cannot be treated in the same way as the other decades." (CMS 9.37) Avoid referring to the second decade of a century as the teens, but if a speaker in a transcript does so, follow this model: the nineteen-teens.
• If a paragraph contains numbers both below and above 10, and all the numbers enumerate the same kind of entity, the numbers below 10, which would usually be spelled out, are represented by numerals.
  After he bought 4 gallons of water, someone walked in and bought 12 more, so that at the end of the day the store had fewer than 100 in stock.
• Use arabic numerals for numbered chapters, parts of books, etc. "regardless of how they appear in the original." (CMS 8.190)
  Medieval history is covered in chapters 4 and 5.
• Inclusive numbers. See CMS 9.64 for the three-digit rule and illustrative table. Treatment of inclusive years is fairly straightforward, and, while the following examples cover most problems we have encountered, see CMS 9.66–68 for more details.
  • the war of 1914–18
  • fiscal year 1997–98
  • the winter of 2000–2001
  • in 1503–4
• Ordinals. Follow the same basic guidelines that govern the use of cardinal numbers. Spell out numbers ten and below, and use numerals from then on except for street names and centuries. Do not superscript th, st, nd, etc.
  • first, second, third . . . tenth, 11th, 15th, 250th
  • He was the 11th president of Columbia University.
  • between Forty-second Street and Seventy-first Street
  • the twenty-first century
  If a passage contains ordinals below and above ten, and they enumerate the same kind of entity, the numbers below ten are represented by numerals.
  The 9th president shook hands with the 11th president while the 14th sipped whiskey on the dias.
  Use numerals for congressional and senate districts.
  • 30th Congressional District
  • 21st Senate District
  • 4th Congressional District
  • 1st Senate District
• Ratios. Use numerals and hyphens.
  • a 6-to-1 ratio
  • a ratio of 6-to-1

only (adv.)

Only should be placed immediately before the word or words it modifies. Note how the meaning of the following examples change depending on the placement of only.

Other (n.)

Initial cap when it means "one considered by members of a dominant group as alien, exotic, threatening, or inferior (as because of different racial, sexual, or cultural characteristics)."

Orthodox Christian

In special cases, the o would be lowercase. Capitalize the word Orthodox when it refers to the Orthodox Church or someone or something associated with it. Do not capitalize orthodox when it describes more generally someone who observes, or something that conforms to, established Christian doctrine. See the discussion under communism.

Orthodox Judaism

In special cases, the o would be lowercase. See the discussion under communism and Orthodox Christian.

over (adv.)

Over usually indicates location or position and is often synonymous with above.

places

• When a city, town, or other jurisdiction is followed by a state, province, country, or some larger entity, a comma follows not only the smaller jurisdiction but also the larger entity.
  He traveled from Geneva, Switzerland, to Mill Valley, California, and then home again.
• Below a certain threshold of population size or fame, a city, town, etc., in the United States or Canada should be identified by state or province, which is spelled out in the first instance, but may be suppressed in subsequent instances. For example, in the first instance of Westport, Ontario, mention the province. In subsequent references, it is enough to write simply Westport, without the province, provided that there is little danger that the reader will confuse it with Westport, Connecticut, or with some other place. Write Erie, Pennsylvania, but Pittsburgh without the state name.
• The same principle applies to cities, towns, etc., outside the United States and Canada. For example, in the first instance of Astana, Kazakhstan, identify the country. In subsequent references, it is enough to write simply Astana. Write Bristol, England, but London without the country name.
• Remember that some place-names refer to more than one place. Where you think the possibility for ambiguity is significant, indicate the state or country, but weigh the need for clarity against the need not to clutter the page with needless direction. For example, in most contexts, Philadelphia can be written without Pennsylvania.

See also commas; dates; states.

political movements

Names of political movements are not generally capped.

populism

See political movements and capitalization.

possessives

We follow Garner's guidelines on possessives.

• Singular possessives. Form them by adding 's to most singular nouns, even those ending in s and x.
  • the witness's testimony
  • the bass's stripes
  • Mr. Jones's car
  • Vioxx's dangerous side effects

  There are two important exceptions to this rule:

  1. Biblical and classical names ending in -s take only an apostrophe.

  • Jesus' suffering
  • Moses' discovery
  • Euripides' tragedies
  2. Words formed from a plural.
  General Motors' size makes it an unlikely takeover target. (Not General Motors's)
• Plural possessives. Form most of them by using the ordinary plural form and adding an apostrophe to the final s.
  • Smiths'
  • Joneses'
  • bosses'
  • octopuses'
• The possessive of plurals that don't end in s is formed by adding 's.
  • children's
  • women's
  • men's

p.m., a.m.

In print, these are set in small caps, but browsers don't support small caps so set lowercase for online documents.

prefixes

Generally, close up words beginning with a prefix, but hyphenate if the word to which the prefix is attached is long (four or more syllables) or if the lack of hyphenation would lead to confusion or a string of letters (such as two Is) that are hard to read. Consult Webster's and chapter 6 of CMS, which have already made many of the judgment calls for us.

prepositions

• In titles and heads, lowercase the initial letter of prepositions of either one syllable or four or fewer letters—e.g., for, or, to, from, on, off, with.
  Gone with the Wind
• In titles and heads, capitalize prepositions of either two or more syllables or five or more letters—e.g., beyond, over, toward.
  • Truth Beyond Telling
  • The Roof Over the Heads of the God's Children

punctuation

For systematic discussions of punctuation, see CMS 6 and Garner's entry on the topic, and for our punctuation preferences see various entries in this guide on commas, quotation marks, dashes, and the like.

quotations

• When lecturers quote from a text, they should provide editors with a copy of their text so that we can accurately reproduce it in the transcript. Even if from lecturer to transcriber to editor no words get garbled (and sometimes they do), we don't know what the punctuation in the original source is unless we see it.
• Long quotations, usually around eight lines or more, should be indented one-half inch and set off as block quotations.
• Treatment of embedded quotations. When a quotation is tightly enmeshed in the grammar of a sentence, lowercase the first letter. Judging by the examples in CMS (11.16) and Words Into Type (144), "tightly enmeshed" often means that the quotation is the object of a preposition or part of a noun clause (usually introduced by that or whether), while initial-capped quotations are treated as direct discourse.
  • The Alabama Supreme Court allowed the prosecution, declaring that "the wife is not to be considered as the husband's slave."
  • Later, the judge in the case observed to similar effect, "Property does not include human beings."
  In the first example, since the run-in quotation is part of a noun clause, the first word is not initial capped; but the second example treats the quotation as direct discourse with the reporting term observed, so Property requires a capital p.
  Whether "to be or not to be" was a consideration, Sir Thomas put away his sword.
  Again, the quotation is part of a noun clause, here starting with whether.
  The boy scouts apparently wanted to "play computer games all day" and hardly left their cabins.
  In this case, the quotation is the object of the preposition to.

quotation marks

See Garner's discussion of quotation marks in his section on punctuation as well as the discussion strewn throughout CMS (see CMS 120 to find out where), which pays particular attention to placement. For further use of quotation marks, see commas, Web Terminology and Documentation, and titles.

• Titles. Use quotation marks to enclose titles of chapters (but not chapter numbers), sections, subsections, and other units of text, as well as the titles of articles, short poems, short stories, conferences, symposia, and episodes or segments of TV or radio series (but italicize the series themselves). By analogy with book chapters, use quotation marks for the titles of text divisions on Web sites, but not for menu items, tabs, and the like.
  • The syllabus included Joyce's famous short story "Araby."
  • Frank O'Hara's poem "Music" starts by mentioning the equestrian statue at the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue.
  • He read the article "Travels in Cyberspace" in last week's Times.
  • Those were just a few of the speakers' opinions at a session of "The Impact of Genes and Genomes on Medicine and Society," a Health Sciences–sponsored symposium.
  • Changes should be limited to the "Financial Summary and Budget" section.
  • On the SIPA Web site, see the "Fellowships" section, under the Awards tab
  Don't use the preposition on before titles, as in the following examples.
  • He read the article on "Travels in Cyberspace" in last week's Times.
  • Those were just a few of the speakers' opinions at a session of "The Impact of Genes and Genomes on Medicine and Society," a Health Sciences–sponsored symposium.
  In each case it would be correct to treat the title as a topic, although the meaning of the sentence changes.
  • He read the article on travels in cyberspace in last week's Times.
  • Those were just a few of the speakers' opinions at a session on the impact of genes and genomes on medicine and society.
• Placement. CMS discussions the topic in detail, so we will limit ourselves to commenting on the tricky business of punctuating quotations within quotations. In the following example, the question marks falls inside the embedded quotation because it is an integral part of what's being quoted.
  "I have never had one of my clients in my presence ask, 'What is your position on this?'"
  But in the next example, the question mark falls between the single and double quotation marks because it punctuates the whole sentence, not the embedded clause, which is not a question anyway.
  "So why would you say, 'Well, I need to support somebody who's going to go to this side or that side'?"
• "Scare quotes." "Quotation marks are often used to alert readers that a term is used in a nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense" (CMS 7.58), but when used for this purpose they should be used sparingly or else their impact will be diminish.
  • "Child protection" often fails to protect.
  • The Institute for Personal Growth presented its seminar on "escaping the shame spiral." (These quotation marks indicate the writer's scepticism about escaping the so-called shame spiral.)
• Do not use quotation marks following the expression so-called as the expression itself indicates irony or doubt.
  These are people with genetically normal LDL receptor genes, people who have so-called polygenic hypercholesterolemia.
• In all our documents, we replace "smart" (i.e., curly) quotation marks with straight quotation marks.
• Maxims, slogans, mottoes, and the like. Use quotation marks if they are necessary to set the expression off from the rest of the sentence in which it's embedded. They aren't always necessary for brief, well-known slogans, so use your judgment. Use commas as you would with appositives (6.43) and quotations (6.54).
  • The most controversial issue in the definition of terrorism is captured by the slogan "One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter."
  • Their T-shirts bore the rallying cry Go Tribe
  • The family motto, "All for one and none for all," was stitched on several pillows.
  • The flag bore the motto Don't Tread on Me. (CMS 8.120 allows the use of title case for short mottoes like this, essentially treating them as signs.)

solidus

The meaning of this much-overused punctuation mark has become muddled. As noted in CMS 6.112–13, it can mean and, or, or and/or, and in compounds it often has the same function as a hyphen. When possible, replace the solidus with and, or, or a hyphen, but if replacement is not an option, consider the following discussion. As illustrated below, the solidus can be either open or closed, depending on its use.

• Leave the solidus open in most cases, especially when it connects compounds.
  • AP / Corbis
  • World War I / World War II
  • Tibetan Studies Society / Students for a Free Tibet
  • ID Center / Columbia Card
  • HIV/STD/infectious-disease cohort
• The solidus is closed in certain set phrases, such as and/or and either/or, and when it does the job of a hyphen or joins two terms into one entity. The decision to close up sometimes relies on an editor's judgment.
  • HIV/AIDS
  • The Ukrainian/American Ocular Study
  Sometimes the slash has the value of a hyphen in terms that function as a compound adjectives as in the last two examples. Adding a space in these cases might confuse the reader by implying that what it is joining are not the adjective Ukrainian and American but the nouns Ukrainian and American Ocular Study.

states

In running text, spell out names of states in full. If other contexts require abbreviation of a state, use the dictionary abbreviation, not the postal code, unless the state is part of an address. (See section 2, Bibliography and Note Entries.)

(See also commas; places; CMS 14.17.)

that / which

• Use that to introduce restrictive clauses, which to introduce nonrestrictive clauses. Here are the examples from Strunk and White:
  • The lawn mower that is broken is in the garage. (Identifies which one; there may be more than one.)
  • The lawn mower, which is broken, is in the garage. (Adds a fact about the only mower in question.)
• Whether that is used as a pronoun, as above, or as a conjunction, as in the sentence "I think that you should read it," the sentence often, though not always, works as well without it.
  I think you should read it.
  Before deleting that, though, be on the lookout for the possibility that you might momentarily mislead the reader.
  • I heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is on the orchestra's schedule for this fall.
  • I heard that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is on the orchestra's schedule for this fall.

Ukraine

Do not use the word the before this place-name. It was once common to do so, and that locution still exists, but the trend is toward Ukraine without the article.

United Nations

Spell out the name of this international organization when using it as a noun but abbreviate it to UN when it functions as an adjective.

United States (n.)

Spell out the name of the country when using it as a noun, but use the abbreviation US when it's used as an adjective.

upon

Often archaic and pretentious. Use on in most cases.

username (n.)

This terms has not yet made its way into Webster's, but it has become so common that we use it.

user ID (n.)

This term is usually replaced by username.

v.

V. as an abbreviation for versus is used mainly in titles of court cases. Set the v. in roman and the other words in the court case in italic.

See section 2, cases or court decisions.

versus

Spell out in running text and in heads, but use v., set in roman, in titles of court cases. See v. above.

vertical lists

DKV modifies and augments the guidelines for vertical lists at CMS 6.124ff. Vertical lists can be written with an introductory clause or in paragraph style, but in both cases, every element in the list should be syntactically parallel. Most of the time, the elements in the list are phrases of one kind or another, which do not require terminal punctuation, but if the elements are independent clauses, initial cap the first word and endstop with a period. Ideally, bullet points in lists written in paragraph style should not be initial capped, but if the project includes a mixture of lists written in paragraph style and intro-clause style, intitial cap all list entries. Also, consider client preferences. Most introductory clauses use some form of the word follow, as in To delete files from the cache, start with the following steps:. More skillfully written clauses set up the list without using following, as in the first example.

• Sometimes a vertical list is written in paragraph style; that is, the list follows from a sentence fragment, not a complete clause. A colon should not be used after the introductory fragment, even if it includes an expression such as namely, for instance, for example, or that is. Also, a colon should not be used to introduce a list that is the complement or object of an element in the introductory statement. The following lists provide examples of these guidelines:
  • The information helps us conclude that
    • the courses contained an adequate amount of information
    • the speed for each course was adequate
    • navigation bars are important
  • These conclusions led us to
    • revise our original cost estimates
    • put our plans on hold
    • fire the entire planning team