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Updated University Editorial Style Guide Now Available

Guide is helpful for Drupal administrators, content producers, and anyone who ever wondered if they need that comma before “and” in a list of things  You’re typing up a quick announcement for WPI Today about an upcoming event. You get to the time of the event and hesitate. Should it be 4:00PM? 4 P.M.? 4pm? What about the date? Is the event on Oct 8th or October 8? Does the guest speaker’s book title go inside quotation marks or get italicized?  Do any of these choices even matter?! The short answer to that last question is, simply, “yes.” The answers to the other questions are in WPI’s updated editorial Style Guide. While the stakes may seem low when it comes to punctuation and formatting, you still want readers to absorb the correct information. Put another way, you want readers to understand you. That’s the whole point of communication, after all. In our hypothetical example, readers are more likely to attend your event if they understand what the guest speaker is speaking about, not to mention when and where the speaker is speaking. The Division of Marketing Communications has updated and reformatted our editorial style guide to help everyone who writes (and reads!) content on the WPI website or other public-facing communications. A consistent editorial style takes the guesswork out of communications and elevates the university’s message with a more professional, unified voice. In addition to clear guidance on punctuation and formatting, the style guide includes WPI’s standards on how to indicate graduation years for alumni who earned multiple degrees from WPI, when to capitalize a person’s job title, when to spell out the numerous acronyms our community seems to love, and so much more.  Please check out the newly updated style guide, bookmark it, and refer to it often. Your readers—including future students and potential funders—will thank you.  And yes, you do need that comma before “and” in a list. That’s the serial comma the WPI style guide calls for. 

Guide is helpful for Drupal administrators, content producers, and anyone who ever wondered if they need that comma before “and” in a list of things 

You’re typing up a quick announcement for WPI Today about an upcoming event. You get to the time of the event and hesitate. Should it be 4:00PM? 4 P.M.? 4pm? What about the date? Is the event on Oct 8th or October 8? Does the guest speaker’s book title go inside quotation marks or get italicized? 

Do any of these choices even matter?!

The short answer to that last question is, simply, “yes.”

The answers to the other questions are in WPI’s updated editorial Style Guide.

While the stakes may seem low when it comes to punctuation and formatting, you still want readers to absorb the correct information. Put another way, you want readers to understand you. That’s the whole point of communication, after all. In our hypothetical example, readers are more likely to attend your event if they understand what the guest speaker is speaking about, not to mention when and where the speaker is speaking.

The Division of Marketing Communications has updated and reformatted our editorial style guide to help everyone who writes (and reads!) content on the WPI website or other public-facing communications. A consistent editorial style takes the guesswork out of communications and elevates the university’s message with a more professional, unified voice. In addition to clear guidance on punctuation and formatting, the style guide includes WPI’s standards on how to indicate graduation years for alumni who earned multiple degrees from WPI, when to capitalize a person’s job title, when to spell out the numerous acronyms our community seems to love, and so much more. 

Please check out the newly updated style guide, bookmark it, and refer to it often. Your readers—including future students and potential funders—will thank you. 

And yes, you do need that comma before “and” in a list. That’s the serial comma the WPI style guide calls for. 

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