Editorial Style Guide

The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) is the University’s standard reference for issues of capitalization, punctuation, abbreviation, and most questions of usage. Members of the University community who connect to the Internet through the University’s network can access the Chicago Manual through the University’s library system (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org). For questions of spelling, word division, and definition, refer to the most recent edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate dictionary.

For editorial issues that are specific to the University, the style guide is intended to serve as a current and accurate reference. If you have questions about specific entries, please contact University Communications.

The goal of all communication is to be clear. An important consideration in achieving that is to keep the viewpoint of your audience in mind. Jargon, discipline-specific acronyms, excessive capitalization, and academic conventions often are unclear to general audiences. Because University Communications most often works on publications and presentations geared to a general audience, that’s how we approach questions of style.

We want to be clear, direct, authentic, intelligent, confident, and at times, personal. We try to avoid sounding stilted, authoritarian, and institutional.

University Communications follows the Chicago Manual’s preference for the “sparing use of capitals.” Known as “down style,” the approach reflects a modern understanding of editorial style in which proper names and adjectives are capitalized, but generic terms are lowercased except when used as part of a formal proper name. The use of down style is also more likely to ensure consistency within and across communications materials.

Is it mandatory to follow the style guide? Well, yes and no. Style and usage rules exist to help communicate messages clearly for particular audiences. There will be times when—due to the design or purpose of a publication or to achieve a certain look or feel—it makes sense to deviate judiciously from the style guide. Decorative or formal presentations often need a particular treatment. Signs and banners often have space constraints that need to be factored in when composing materials for those formats. In such situations, keep in mind that consistency is essential to presenting a polished presentation.

Also keep in mind that all style guides are just that, guides. As the Chicago Manual notes, such references are intended to help direct writers in achieving their goals of communicating clearly, but are not intended to be so constricting that they close off all flexibility:

“We have come to understand that even in the case of somewhat arbitrary rules, writers and editors tend to look to this manual for the most efficient, logical, and defensible solution to a given editorial problem. On the other hand, none of our recommendations are meant to foreclose breaking or bending rules to fit a particular case, something we continue to do ourselves. Once again, we have looked to what has become a maxim (from the first edition of the manual in 1906): ‘Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.’ ”

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