EDITORIAL STYLE

Style is a tool that helps writers and editors maintain consistency within an organization or a single publication. Communications and Marketing is charged with maintaining style guidelines to help ensure that all university publications present a consistent, positive image.

These guidelines were created for a purpose - in the interest of supporting the university as a whole and helping readers easily understand printed material. So that all divisions, departments and offices present a unified, consistent picture to their various publics through printed and electronic materials, please abide by the following guidelines as much as possible.

However, the style guidelines presented in this manual are just that - guidelines - not laws set in stone. The guidelines should be applied on a case by case basis, and the writers' and editors' judgment is part of that application. This manual also includes some rules of grammar and punctuation that are just that - rules - and they should not be arbitrarily changed.

As a general style guide, NMU publications generally follow the Associated Press (AP) style used in newspapers.

  Print this style guide in its entirety.

• abbreviations - avoiding alphabet soup
• academic and administrative titles
• academic degrees
• academic year
• commencement
• building names
• collective nouns
• computer terms
• copyright and fair use
• cities and states
• capitalization
• dates
• decades
• disabled, handicapped
• ethnic group designations
• federal/state
• freshman/freshmen
• geography
• G.I. Bill
• grade point average
• graduation years
• indentations
• justification
• liability
• musical notes, keys, terms
• numbers
• percent
• post office guidelines
• punctuation
• quality
• residence hall
• room numbers
• semi
• sexual stereotyping
• spacing
• specialized language
• spelling (and other words that might give you grief)
• states
• student loans
• teaching assistant/graduate assistant
• telephone numbers
• time of day
• titles
• type style
• unique
• United States/U.S.
• university publications
• university-wide
• other terms specific to Northern