Associated Press Style and Department Style

The Associated Press Stylebook

The following pages summarize the most commonly used rules in The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. Section and subsection numbers have been added. These selected rules have been reprinted with the permission of The Associated Press. Most newspapers in the United States—both dailies and weeklies—follow the rules it recommends. Complete copies of The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law can be ordered from most bookstores.

SECTION 1: ABBREVIATIONS

1.1 DEGREES. Generally avoid abbreviations for academic degrees. Use instead a phrase such as: Edward Huston, who has a doctorate in history, gave the lecture. Use an apostrophe in bachelor’s degree, a master’s, doctor’s degree. Use abbreviations such as B.A., M.A., LL.D. and Ph.D. only when identifying many individuals by degree on first reference would make the preferred form cumbersome.

1.2 DO NOT ABBREVIATE. Assistant, association, attorney, building, district, government, president, professor, superintendent or the days of the week, or use the ampersand (&) in place of and in news stories.

1.3 INITIALS. A few organizations and government agencies are so widely known that they may be identified by their initials on first reference: CIA, FBI, NASA, YMCA (no periods). For other organizations, use their full names on first reference. On second reference, use abbreviations or acronyms only if they would be clear or familiar to most readers. Use “Florida State University” on first reference and FSU on all subsequent references.

1.4 JUNIOR/SENIOR. Abbreviate and capitalize junior and senior after an individual’s name: John Jones Jr. (no comma).

1.5 STATES. SPELL OUT: The names of the 50 U.S. states should be spelled out when used in the body of a story, whether standing alone or in conjunction with a city, town, village or military base.

PUNCTUATION: Place one comma between the city and the state name, and another comma after the state name, unless ending a sentence: He was traveling from Nashville, Tennessee, to Austin, Texas, en route to his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

MISCELLANEOUS: Use New York state when necessary to distinguish the state from New York City.Use state of Washington or Washington state when necessary to distinguish the state from the District of Columbia. (Washington State is the name of a university in the state of Washington.)

1.6 TITLES. Abbreviate the following titles when used before a full name outside direct quotations: Dr., Gov., Lt. Gov., Rep., the Rev., Sen. and certain military titles such as Pfc., Cpl., Sgt., 1st Lt., Capt., Maj., Lt. Col., Col., Gen., Cmdr. and Adm. Spell out all except Dr. when used before a name in direct quotations. Always spell out a professor’s full title and capitalize when used before a full name: Professor; Associate Professor; Assistant Professor. Always check the faculty directory for a professor’s correct title. Do not use “Dr.” when referring to a professor, unless it is in a direct quotation. Doctoral candidates are not yet a “doctor,” so use something like this: “Jane Smith, who is a doctoral student in the Creative Writing Program…”

SECTION 2: ADDRESSES

2.1 ADDRESSES. Always use figures for an address number: 9 Morningside Circle.

2.2 DIRECTIONS. Abbreviate compass points used to indicate directional ends of a street or quadrants of a city in a numbered address: 562 W. 43rd St., 600 K St. N.W. Do not abbreviate if the address number is omitted: East 42nd Street.

2.3 STREETS. Spell out and capitalize First through Ninth when used as street names; use figures with two letters for 10th and above: 7 Fifth Ave., 100 21st St. Use the abbreviations Ave., Blvd. and St. only with a numbered address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Spell out and capitalize Avenue, Boulevard and Street when part of a formal street name without a number: Pennsylvania Avenue. All similar words (alley, drive, road, terrace, etc.) are always spelled out.

SECTION 3: CAPITALIZATION

In general, avoid unnecessary capitals. Use a capital letter only if it is required by one of the principles listed here.

3.1 ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS. When mentioning an academic department, use lowercase except for words that are proper nouns or adjectives: the English department, the history department, etc, When giving the official name of the department, use capital letters: the Department of English; the College of Arts and Sciences.

3.2 AWARDS/EVENTS/HOLIDAYS/WARS. Capitalize awards (Medal of Honor, Nobel Prize), historic events (Camp David Peace Treaty), periods (the Great Depression, Prohibition), holidays (Christmas Eve, Mother’s Day) and wars (the Civil War, Gulf War).

3.3 BIBLE/GOD. Capitalize Bible (no quotation marks) to refer to the Old and New Testaments and God to refer to any monotheistic deity. Lowercase pronouns referring to the deity (he, his, thee). The preferred spelling for the Muslim holy book is Quran.

3.4 BRAND NAMES. Capitalize brand names: Buick, Ford, Mustang. Lowercase generic terms: a car. Use brand names only if they are essential to a story.

3.5 BUILDINGS/ROOMS. Capitalize the proper names of buildings, including the word building if it is an integral part of the proper name: the Williams Building; the Stone Building; Oglesby Union (but “the student union”). Also capitalize the names of specially designated rooms: the Skybox; the Common Room. Use figures (for room numbers) and capitalize room when used with a figure: Room 2, Room 211.

3.6 CAPITOL. Capitalize U.S. Capitol and the Capitol when referring to the building in Washington, D.C., or to the capitol of a specific state.

3.7 CONGRESS. Capitalize U.S. Congress and Congress when referring to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Lowercase when used as a synonym for convention. Lowercase congressional unless it is part of a proper name: congressional salaries, the Congressional Record.

3.8 CONSTITUTION. Capitalize references to the U.S. Constitution, with or without the U.S. modifier. Lowercase constitutional in all uses. Also capitalize Bill of Rights, First Amendment (and all other amendments to the Constitution). When referring to the constitutions of states or other countries, capitalize only when used with the name of the state or country: French Constitution, Montana Constitution.

3.9 DIRECTIONS/REGIONS. In general, lowercase north, south, northeast, etc., when they indicate a compass direction; capitalize when they designate geographical regions, including widely known sections of states or cities: the Atlantic Coast states, Deep South, Sun Belt, Midwest. He drove west. The cold front is moving east. The North was victorious. She has a Southern accent. He grew up on the East Side of New York City. She moved to Southern California.

3.10 DO NOT CAPITALIZE. Administration, first lady, first family, government, presidential, presidency, priest, seasons of the year (summer, fall, winter, spring), and years in school (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior). Also lowercase the common-noun elements of all names in plural uses: the Democratic and Republican parties, Main and State streets, lakes Erie and Ontario.

3.11 EARTH. Generally lowercase earth; capitalize when used as the proper name of the planet.

3.12 GOVERNMENT. Capitalize city, county, state and federal when part of a formal name: Dade County, Federal Trade Commission. Also capitalize city council, county commission, city hall, police department, legislature, assembly and all other names for governmental agencies when part of a proper name: Boston City Council, Los Angeles Police Department. Retain capitalization if the reference is to a specific city council, legislature, police department, etc., but the context does not require the specific name: The City Council met last night. Generally, lowercase elsewhere: The council approved the ordinance.

3.13 HIGHWAYS. Use these forms, as appropriate in the context, for highways identified by number: U.S. Highway 1, U.S. Route 1, U.S. 1, Illinois 34, Illinois Route 34, state Route 34, Route 34, Interstate Highway 495, Interstate 495. On second reference only for Interstate: I-495. When a letter is appended to a number, capitalize it but do not use a hyphen: Route 1A.

3.14 MILITARY. Capitalize names of the U.S. armed forces: the U.S. Army, the Navy, Marine regulations. Use lowercase for the forces of other nations: the French army.

3.15 NATIONALITIES/RACE. Capitalize the proper names of nationalities, races, tribes, etc.: Arab, Caucasian, Eskimo. However, lowercase black, white, etc.

3.16 PLURALS. To form the plural of a number, add s (no apostrophe): 1920s. To form the plural of a single letter, add’s. To form the plural of multiple letters, add only s: Mind your p’s and q’s. She knows her ABCs.

3.17 POLITICAL PARTIES. Capitalize both the name of a political party and the word party: the Democratic Party. Also capitalize Communist, Conservative, Republican, Socialist, etc., when they refer to a specific party or to individuals who are members of it. Lowercase when they refer to a political philosophy. After a name, use this short form, set off by commas: D-Minn., R-Ore., Sen. Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., said. . . .

3.18 PROPER NOUNS. Capitalize proper nouns that constitute the unique identification for a specific person, place or thing: Mary, Boston, the Columbia River. Lowercase common nouns when they stand alone in subsequent references: the party, the river, the city.

3.19 SATAN. Capitalize Satan but lowercase devil and satanic.

3.20 TITLES. Capitalize formal titles when used immediately before a name: Professor Anne Coldiron; Dean Sam Huckaba. Lowercase formal titles used after a name, alone or in constructions that set them off from a name by commas: Anne Coldiron has been a professor at FSU since 2005. Use lowercase at all times for terms that are job descriptions rather than formal titles: astronaut John Glenn, movie star Tom Hanks, peanut farmer Jimmy Carter.

SECTION 4: NUMERALS

4.1 GENERAL RULE: Spell out whole numbers below 10, use figures for 10 and above. Exceptions: Figures are used for all ages, betting odds, dates, dimensions, percentages, speeds, times and weights. Also, spell out a number at the beginning of a sentence, except for a calendar year. Avoid beginning a sentence with a large number or a calendar year.

Use the same rules for ordinals. Spell out first through eleventh. Use numerals and st, nd, rd or th for larger numbers: 12th; 21st; 32nd; 43rd; 77th.

4.2 AGES. Use figures for all ages. Hyphenate ages expressed as adjectives before a noun or as substitutes for a noun: a 5-year-old boy, the 5-year-old, but the boy is 5 years old. The boy, 7, has a sister, 10. The woman is in her 30s (no apostrophe).

4.3 CENTS. Spell out the word cents and lowercase, using numerals for amounts less than a dollar: 5 cents, 12 cents. Use the $ sign and decimal system for larger amounts: $1.01.

4.4 DECADES/CENTURY. Use Arabic figures to indicate decades of history. Use an apostrophe to indicate numbers that are left out; show the plural by adding the letter s: the 1890s, the ’90s, the Gay ’90s, the mid-1930s. Lowercase century and spell out numbers less than 10: the first century, the 21st century. Hyphenate when used as a modifier: 19th-century British literature.

4.5 DOLLARS. Lowercase dollars. Use figures and the $ sign in all except casual references or amounts without a figure: The book cost $4. Dollars are flowing overseas. For amounts of more than $1 million, use the $ sign and numerals up to two decimal places: He is worth $4.35 million. He proposed a $300 million budget.

4.6 FRACTIONS. Spell out amounts less than one, using hyphens between the words: two-thirds, four-fifths, seven-sixteenths. For precise amounts larger than one, convert to decimals whenever practical: 1.25, 3.5.

4.7 MEASUREMENTS/DIMENSIONS. Use figures and spell out inches, feet, yards, etc. Hyphenate adjectival forms before nouns: He is 5 feet 6 inches tall or the 5-foot-6-inch man. The rug is 9 feet by 12 feet or the 9-by-12-foot rug.

4.8 MILLION/BILLION. Do not go beyond two decimals: 7.51 million people, $2.56 billion. Decimals are preferred where practical: 1.5 million, not 1 1/2 million. Do not drop the word million or billion in the first figure of a range: He is worth from $2 million to $4 million, not $2 to $4 million, unless you really mean $2.

4.9 NUMBER. Use No. as the abbreviation for number in conjunction with a figure to indicate position or rank: No. 1 woman, No. 3 choice.

4.10 ODDS. Use figures and a hyphen for betting odds: The odds were 5-4. He won despite 3-2 odds against him.

4.11 PERCENTAGES. Use figures: 1 percent, 2.56 percent. For amounts less than 1 percent, precede the decimal point with a zero: The cost of living rose 0.6 percent. The word percent should be spelled out; never use the % symbol.

4.12 RATIOS. Use figures and a hyphen for ratios: The ratio was 2-to-1, a ratio of 2-to-1, 2-1 ratio.

4.13 SCORES. Use figures for all scores, placing a hyphen between the totals of the winning and losing teams: The Reds defeated the Red Sox 4-1. The Giants scored a 12-6 victory over the Cardinals. The golfer had a 5 on the last hole but finished with a 2-under-par score.

4.14 TEMPERATURES. Use figures for all temperatures except zero and spell out degrees: The high Wednesday was 5 degrees. Use a word, not a minus sign, to indicate temperatures below zero: minus 10 degrees.

4.16 WEIGHTS. Use figures for all weights. The pie recipe calls for 2 pounds of sweet potatoes and 4 ounces of milk.

SECTION 5: PUNCTUATION

5.1 COMMA

5.1.1 AGE. An individual’s age is set off by commas: Jane Jones, 30, is a doctoral candidate in literature. Note: Ages will rarely be used when writing about a person in the present, but could come up when referring to a person’s past. In that case, the structure is “Jane Jones was 25 years old when she began her master’s program.”

5.1.2 CITY-STATE. Place a comma between the city and the state name, and another comma after the state name, unless the state name ends a sentence: He was traveling from Nashville, Tenn., to Albuquerque, N.M.

5.1.3 HOMETOWN. Use a comma to set off an individual’s hometown when it is placed in apposition to a name: Mary Richards, Minneapolis, and Maude Findlay, Tuckahoe, N.Y., were there. However, the use of the word of without a comma between the individual’s name and the city name is generally preferable: Mary Richards of Minneapolis and Maude Findlay of Tuckahoe, N.Y., were there.

5.1.4 QUOTATION. Use a comma to introduce a complete, one-sentence quotation within a paragraph: Wallace said, “She spent six months in Argentina.” Do not use a comma at the start of an indirect or partial quotation: The water was “cold as ice” before the sun came out, the lifeguard said. When the attribution follows the quotation, change the period at the end of the quotation to a comma: “I will veto the bill,” the governor said. Always place commas and periods inside quotation marks. “The journey must end,” she said. “We cannot go on.”

5.1.5 SERIES. Use commas to separate elements in a series, including a comma before the conjunction in a simple series: The flag is red, white, and blue. He would nominate Tom, Dick, or Harry. Note: This is a deviation from traditional AP Style; basically, we use the Oxford/serial comma in our writing.

5.2 COLON

5.2.1 LISTS. The most frequent use of a colon is at the end of a sentence to introduce lists, tabulations, texts, etc.: There were three considerations: expense, time and feasibility.

5.2.2 QUOTATIONS. Use a colon to introduce direct quotations longer than one sentence within a paragraph and to end all paragraphs that introduce a paragraph of quoted material.

5.3 SEMICOLON. Use semicolons (instead of commas) to separate elements of a series when individual segments contain material that also must be set off by commas: He leaves three daughters, Jane Smith of Wichita, Kan., Mary Smith of Denver and Susan Kingsbury of Boston; a son, John Smith of Chicago; and a sister, Martha Warren of Omaha, Neb. Note that the semicolon is used before the final and in such a series.

5.4 EXCLAMATION POINT. Never use an exclamation point in your writing. If you want to show emphasis with a quote, use the attribution to make the point: “I can’t wait until the end of the semester,” Joe Smith said, with excitement in his voice.

SECTION 6: TIME

6.1 HOURS AND MINUTES. Use figures except for noon and midnight. Do not put a 12 in front of them. Use a colon to separate hours from minutes: 11:15 a.m., 1:45 p.m., 3:30 p.m. Avoid such redundancies as 10 a.m. this morning or 10 p.m. Monday night. Use 10 a.m. today or 10 p.m. Monday. The hour is placed before the day; a.m. and p.m. are lowercase, with periods.

6.2 DAYS. Use the words today, this morning, tonight, etc., in direct quotes, in stories intended for publication in afternoon newspapers on the day in question, and in phrases that do not refer to a specific day: Customs today are different from those of a century ago. Use the day of the week in stories intended for publication in morning newspapers and in stories filed for use in either publishing cycle. Use yesterday and tomorrow only in direct quotations and in phrases that do not refer to a specific day.

6.3 DAYS/DATES. Use Monday, Tuesday, etc., for days of the week within seven days before or after the current date: The council will meet Wednesday. Use the month and a figure for dates beyond this range: The council will meet May 27. Avoid such redundancies as last Tuesday or next Tuesday.

6.4 MONTHS. Capitalize the names of the months in all uses. When a month is used with a specific date, use these abbreviations: Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov. and Dec. Jan. 2 was the coldest day of the month. Do not abbreviate March, April, May, June or July. His birthday is June 26. Spell out the names of all months when using alone or with a year alone.

When a phrase lists only a month and a year, do not separate the year with commas. January 1978 was a cold month. When a phrase refers to a month, day and year, set off the year with commas: Feb. 14, 1976, was the target date. Do not use st, nd, rd or th after the Arabic number in a date.

SECTION 7: TITLES

7.1 GENERAL RULE. Formal titles that appear directly before a name are capitalized and sometimes abbreviated, when appropriate: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Always spell out all forms of faculty address and capitalize if appears directly before the name: Professor Jane Smith. If the title comes after a name or is alone, then it should be lowercase and spelled out: The professor has office hours every Tuesday afternoon. Pope John Paul II gave his blessing. Do not repeat a title the second time you use a person’s name: Professor Jane Smith teaches Visual Rhetoric and What is a Text? Smith has taught these courses several times.

7.2 BOY/GIRL. The terms boy and girl are applicable until the age of 18. Use man, woman, young man or young woman for people 18 or older.

7.3 COMPOSITIONS. Capitalize the principal words in titles of books, movies, operas, plays, poems, songs, television programs, lectures, speeches and works of art. (We use italics for all titles, unless it is a chapter in a book or a TV episode, along with other exceptions – ask if you’re not sure.)

7.4 CONGRESSPEOPLE. Use congressman and congresswoman only in references to specific members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Use representative if the gender is unknown or when referring to more than one member of the House, and abbreviate it when it used before a name: Rep. John Dingle; Sens. Richard Durbin and John Cornyn. Do not use legislative titles on second reference except as part of a direct quotation. Readily recognized organizational titles may be used: Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Organizational titles should be capitalized when used before a name. Other common legislative titles are city councilman, city councilwoman, assemblyman, assemblywoman, delegate, alderman. Capitalize such words used before a name.

7.5 COURTESY TITLES. In general, do not use the courtesy titles Miss, Mr., Mrs. or Ms. on any reference. Instead, use the first and last names and middle initial (if necessary) on first reference to a person. A woman’s or man’s marital status should not be mentioned unless it is clearly pertinent to the story. For a married woman, the preferred form on first reference is to identify her by her own first name and the last name she uses, which could be her spouse’s or her birth name: Susan Smith. Use Mrs. on the first reference only if a woman requests that her husband’s first name be used or if her own first name cannot be determined: Mrs. John Smith.

On the second reference, use only the last name of a man or woman, unless the courtesy title is needed to distinguish between two people with the same name in the same story. On first reference to couples, use both first names: John and Mary Smith.

7.6 INITIALS. In general, use middle initials to help identify specific individuals. Middle initials are most helpful in such things as casualty lists and stories naming a person accused of a crime. Use periods and no space when an individual uses initials instead of a first name: O.J. Simpson. Do not give a name with a single initial (O. Simpson) unless it is the individual’s preference or the first name cannot be learned.

7.7 MAGAZINES. Capitalize magazine titles but lowercase magazine if it is not part of the publication’s formal title: Newsweek magazine.

7.8 NEWSPAPERS. Capitalize the in a newspaper’s name if that is the way the publication prefers to be known: The New York Times. If the state in which the newspaper is published is needed but is not part of the official name, use parentheses: The Huntsville (Ala.) Times. Do not underline or add quote marks.

7.9 REFERENCE WORKS. Capitalize, but do not use quotation marks around, the proper names of books that are primarily catalogs of reference material: The Reader’s Guide. These rules also apply to almanacs (the Farmers’ Almanac), directories (the Columbus City Directory), dictionaries (Webster’s New World Dictionary), handbooks (the News & Record Employee Handbook) and encyclopedias (the Encyclopedia Britannica).

Department style guide (some basics)

People’s names

Use full name on first reference (David Kirby) but use only last name on second and subsequent references (Kirby). If two people with the same last name are featured prominently in your article, generally use first and last names for clarity. In general, refer to children 15 and younger by first name on second reference. Ex.: You mention a person’s child in the profile, and the child happened to be at the interview.

Kirby has a 10-year-old son named Jeffrey, who spoke up when the discussion turned to teaching.

“My dad is a great teacher, even at home,” Jeffrey said enthusiastically.

Numerals

Spell out one through nine. The academic year has two main semesters, fall and spring.

Use figures for 10 and above and whenever preceding a unit of measure or referring to ages of people, animals, events, or things. A baseball team has nine starting players, and a football team has 24 starting players, including the special teams.

Titles

Capitalize before a name only: She has Professor Tarez Graban for What is a Text?

Do not capitalize a subject connected with it unless it is a proper noun: Joe Smith nominated philosophy Professor Jane Martin for a teaching award and English Professor Mark Winegardner for a mentor award.

Use lower case if the title comes after the person’s name: John Ribó, a professor of philosophy, has been teaching for 10 years.

Do not abbreviate title: Professor John Ribó, not Prof. John Ribó.

Do not continue with use of title in second reference and use the last name only.

Important note: Check the exact title of any professor you write about. The English department has full professors, associate professors, and assistant professors. You can check titles through the English department’s online directory at https://english.fsu.edu/people/faculty. Use www.fsu.edu/directory/ to check titles for professors in other departments.

Graduate students are not professors. See below for ways to identify them in articles.*

Emeritus, emerita

Sometimes, but not always, professors and deans who are retired are given an honorary title or rank of the last office they held.

If using emeritus (for a man) or emerita (for a woman) with the title before a name, capitalize it: Professor Emeritus John Fenstermaker.

If using it after the person’s name, lowercase it: Helen Burke, professor emerita.

Dr.

Dr. is used as a formal title only for a medical doctor, dentist, or veterinarian. If a person has earned a Ph.D., write that in the person’s ID: Maria Lopez, who earned her doctorate in English from FSU in 2016, is now an instructor in the English department.

Do not use “Dr.” to identify graduate students in articles. In addition to the rule above, they have not completed their studies, so they do not have the academic title of “doctor.” If you are writing about or quoting a current graduate student, give their academic information in a reference to that person: Maria Lopez is a master’s (or doctoral) student in FSU’s Creative Writing Program.

Degrees

Ph.D. is correct, not PhD

bachelor’s, master’s (She received her bachelor’s degree in English.)

Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts (She received her Bachelor of Arts in English.)

Department names

Capitalize department when it is part of the official title (Department of English, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry); lowercase in all other uses (the department, the English department, the chemistry department)

Names of majors

Do not capitalize the names of majors (except for words that are already proper nouns: German major, English major): She is a history major, and her brother is an English major.

Note about the English major: Students major in English with a concentration in one of three programs/tracks: literature, media, and culture; creative writing; or editing, writing, and media. Written example: Jane Smith is an English-Editing, Writing, and Media major.

Program names

Capitalize the official names of programs, such as the Creative Writing Program, Literature, Media, and Culture Program, the Rhetoric and Composition Program, the First-Year Composition Program, and the Honors in the Major Program, for example. However, do not capitalize something if it is not an official program name, such as the editing, writing, and media track.

Building names Capitalize the names of campus buildings and the word “building”: Williams Building, James E. “Jim” King, Jr. Life Sciences Building. On second reference, lowercase unless the whole name is used or unless it’s a proper noun: Westcott, the student union, Strozier (but “the library”).

Publication titles

Exception to AP style: Italicize titles of books, magazines, and journals

Use quotation marks with the titles of articles (newspaper, magazine, journal)

Semester names

Capitalize semester titles when they are listed with the year (Fall 2021); otherwise, lowercase them (fall semester)

Quotations

To sound more like a magazine than a newspaper, use “says” when attributing quotes to a speaker unless you need to mention the date that someone said something, as in Lopez said at the end of Fall 2021.

Use the speaker-verb order for your attributions: ex.: Tran says. Switch the order if you elaborate on who the person is. Ex.: "I passed my final exam in Visual Rhetoric,” says Tran, who wants to attend law school after graduation.

Avoid using other verbs (e.g., “comments,” “laughs,” “jokes”) in attributions because they can add an unnecessary editorial element. Stick with “says,” in general. You can add a detail about the person’s demeanor after the attribution: “I passed my final exam in Visual Rhetoric,” Tran says, expressing relief as he recalls the incident.

Put periods and commas inside the quotation marks.

In general, try to avoid using partial quotes (although sometimes they are good for emphasis within a paraphrase)

Here are some examples of how to punctuate quotes:

“With proper training and experience, anyone is capable of being a successful team leader,” Smith says.

“With proper training and experience, anyone is capable of being a successful team leader,” Smith says. “However, not many people have what it takes to be president of a major organization such as Microsoft or Toyota.”

“With proper training and experience,” Smith says, “anyone is capable of being a successful team leader.”

Use square brackets if you need to insert a word or phrase of your own into the quote for clarification: Original quote: With this, anyone is capable of being a successful team leader. Revision in your article: “With [proper training and experience], anyone is capable of being a successful team leader,” Smith says. Another original quote: He is the funniest professor I’ve ever had for a class. Revision in your article: “[Kirby] is the funniest professor I’ve ever had for a class,” Smith says.

Grad/undergrad

In general, use “graduate” instead of “grad,” “undergraduate” instead of “undergrad.”

Alumni

Alumna (one woman)

Alumnae (more than one woman)

Alumnus (one man)

Alumni (more than one man; or a man and woman together; or men and women together)

Some common style errors in writing, in no particular order:

Use “toward,” not “towards”: She is working toward her Ph.D. in literature. (Toward is American English, towards is British English.)

Use among, amid, while, not amongst, amidst, whilst

Use advisor, not adviser

Use All right (never alright)

Use backward (not backwards) and forward (not forwards)

When a compound modifier comes before the noun it modifies, hyphenate the modifier; no hyphen if it doesn’t.

Ex. She is a well-known author on the subject. He is well known in his field of study. One exception is adverbs ending in -ly: a critically acclaimed book; your highly appreciated contribution; my completely uneventful morning

These phrases do not need hyphens because the purpose of hyphens is to prevent misunderstandings about what is modifying what. Since an adverb ending in -ly almost always modifies the word that follows, misunderstanding these phrases is very unlikely, and the hyphen is not needed.

In general, use the relative pronoun “who” when referring to people. Ex: The student who wrote the article is an English major.

In general, use the relative pronoun “that” when referring to animals and things. Ex. The dog that lives next door helps keep the area safe.

That/which clauses: Use “that” with essential/restrictive clauses and “which” with nonessential/nonrestrictive clauses.

I like movies that I’m still talking about days after watching them.

The movies you like are generally restricted to ones you are still talking about days later.

A sign of a good movie to me, which might not be the same for everyone, is when you are still talking about the plot twists days after watching the film.

The clause which might not be the same for everyone is not essential to the sentence’s meaning or point.

Use “such as” when giving specific examples. Use “like” for comparison.

I like fruits you don’t have to peel, such as apples, plums, and grapes.

Suspense thrillers like Get Out or The Circle draw big crowds on opening night.

internet, email (lowercase, no hyphen), Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, tweet (AP lowercases), web (lowercase), website (lowercase, one word), webcam, webcast, webmaster