Editorial Guidelines

The correct and full designation of CCS is the College for Creative Studies (“the” not capitalized). CCS or the College is also acceptable after the first use of the full designation.

Spell out all acronyms and initialisms on the first reference with initials following in parentheses. Use the acronym or initialism on subsequent instances: The project was sponsored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA). The AIGA is the leading professional association for design.

Do not italicize course titles or put quotation marks around them. Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters, and place a colon after the course code: DVC 200: Concepts and Methods of Visual Culture.

Capitalize all corporate titles and functions: Jane Doe, President and CEO of XYZ Corporation, Director of Marketing.

Titles of art movements should be capitalized: Renaissance, Impressionism, Cubism, Conceptual Art, Relational Aesthetics.

For guidance on how to describe specific works of art, including dimensions and mediums, consult the Association of Art Editors (AAE) Style Guide.

Always use Arabic figures, without st, nd, rd or th: March 4, not March 4th.

Spell out months used with a specific date: Fall Open House will be held on October 8.

When a phrase lists only a month and year, do not separate the month and the year with commas: The new website will launch in December 2007.

When a phrase refers to a month, day and year, set off the day and the year with commas: January 15, 2008, was the first day of the semester.

Use en-dash to indicate ranges – e.g., July–September, 1998–2009, etc.

Cap semesters – e.g., Fall semester, Winter semester, etc., but not seasons: We met last spring.

Spell out the numbers one through nine. Use Arabic numerals for 10 and up. Always use Arabic numerals for ages and percentages, even for numbers less than 10. 7-year-old; 1 percent.

Spell out numbers that start a sentence. If the result is awkward, re-work the sentence: Seventy-five students attended the symposium yesterday. Yesterday, 635 seniors were awarded degrees. The exception to this rule is a sentence that begins with a calendar year: 2007 was a record-breaking year for fundraising.

In the case of proper names, use words or numerals according to the organization’s practice: 3M, Twentieth Century Fund, Big Ten.

Phone number format: 313.664.7425, 313.664.7495, 800.952.ARTS.

Apostrophe

• For plural possessive nouns ending in s, add an apostrophe: the students’ grades, states’ rights.
• For singular common possessive nouns ending in s, add ’s: the hostess’s invitation, the witness’s answer.
• For singular proper names ending in s, use only an apostrophe: College for Creative Studies’ mission. HOWEVER, the possessive of the abbreviation CCS is ’s (i.e., CCS’s) as the S refers to the first letter of Studies and not the last.
• For plurals of a single letter, add ’s: She received all A’s this semester.
• Do not use ’s for plurals of numbers or multiple letter combinations: the 1960s, OEMs.

Colon

• Capitalize the first word after a colon only if it is a proper noun or the start of a complete sentence: She promised this: The team will go to nationals this year.
• A colon may be used before a list of items without capitalization: There were three issues with the project: expense, time and feasibility.

Comma

• Do not put a comma (aka, the Oxford comma) before the conjunction in a simple series: Boston, Newton, Cambridge and Lexington. Exception: Use a final comma, if needed for clarity, in a long series.
• Use commas to set off a person’s hometown and age: Jane Smith, 22, graduated yesterday.
• Place commas on either side of non-essential statements within sentences: John, who loves cars, went to the auto show.

Hyphen

• Use a hyphen for compound adjectives before the noun: well-known student, full-time job, 20-year sentence.
• Do not use a hyphen when the compound modifier occurs after the verb: The student was well known. Her job became full time. He was sentenced to 20 years.
• Do not use a hyphen with adverbial modifiers: BBDO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Omnicom.
• Do not use a hyphen when describing U.S. ethnic groups: African American, Italian American, etc.

Parentheses

• The temptation to use parentheses is a clue that a sentence is becoming contorted. Try to rewrite the sentence, putting the incidental information between commas or dashes, or in a separate sentence. If you must use parentheses, follow these punctuation guidelines:

Place a period outside a closing parenthesis if the material inside is not a sentence (such as this fragment).

If the material is an independent, complete sentence, place the period inside the parentheses.

Period

• Use a single space after the period at the end of a sentence.
• Do not put a space between initials: C.S. Lewis; J.K. Rowling.
• If a URL falls at the end of sentence, you should use a period.

Quotation Marks

• Periods and commas always go within quotation marks.
• Dashes, semicolons, question marks and exclamation points go within the quotation marks when they apply to the quoted material. They go outside when they apply to the whole sentence.
• Use single marks for quotes within quotes: Smith said, “She told me, ‘I wish I had been accepted to CCS.’”

Semicolon

• Use to separate independent, but related, clauses. Each clause should be able to stand on its own as a sentence: Rowena Reed Kostellow was a renowned educator and helped define the discipline of industrial design; her book is required reading for incoming students.
• If a list of items is long and complex, or within clauses with intermediary punctuation, semicolons may be used in place of commas for the sake of clarity.

Books, Computer Games, Movies, Operas, Plays, Poems, Albums, Songs, Radio and Television Programs, Lectures, Speeches and Works of Art

• Capitalize the principal words; also capitalize prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Travels With Charlie.
• Italicize titles of books, scholarly journals, websites, individual works of art, full-length albums, symphonies,
  operas and feature-length films: Journal of Consumer Culture, BrandChannel.com, Manet’s Olympia.

Exception: Do not italicize the Bible.

• Put quotation marks around the titles of articles, essays, poems, short stories, pop songs, short films
  and TV shows: George Orwell’s “My Country Right or Left.”
• Titles of exhibitions are italicized in uppercase and lowercase: e.g., Primitivism in Twentieth-Century Art.

Exception: Expositions, world’s fairs or recurrent shows, should be written in roman type, uppercase
and lowercase: Whitney Biennial, Documenta, North American International Auto Show, etc.
Newspapers and Magazines

• Capitalize “the” in the name if that is the way the publication prefers to be known.
• Lowercase “the” before names if listing several publications, some of which use “the” as part of the name
  and some of which do not: Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post and the New York Times.
  Directions/Regions
• Lowercase north, south, northeast, northern, etc. when they indicate compass direction: The cold front is moving east.
• Capitalize compass points when they designate U.S. regions: A storm system that developed in the Midwest
  is spreading eastward.
• With names of countries, lowercase compass points unless they are part of a proper name or are used
  to designate a politically divided nation: northern France, western United States, Northern Ireland.
  Seasons
• Lowercase spring, summer, fall and winter, as well as derivatives like wintertime, unless part of a formal name: the Winter Olympics.

Proper spelling and capitalization rules for some technological terms: