seasons

Lowercase unless part of a formal name, e.g., They went to the Spring Fling dance. But spring semester. Note: No comma when used with a year—spring 2000.

second and subsequent references

Do not capitalize approximated or shortened second references to entities, organizations, or places within a story or document, e.g., IIT’s Main Campus is large; The campus covers 120 acres. The GraduateCollege serves industry; The college also prepares professionals for success.

serial comma

Always use for maximum clarity, e.g., We ate toast, cereal, and bacon for breakfast; She packed her green, yellow, red and white, and blue dresses.

smart/“curly” quotes

Oftentimes text copied from an email message or from a website and pasted into another document will not include quotes or apostrophes (“ ‘, ’ ”) but rather the symbols for feet and inches (', ''). These should be corrected manually.

South Side

Capitalize in all uses.

spacing

Keystroke one space after periods and colons.

state names

Spell out state names when they stand alone. Special abbreviations are used when state names are paired with most cities or towns. [see state names abbreviations list] Use two-letter postal abbreviations only in addresses in correspondence. A number of recognizable United States and international cities do not need to be identified by their state or country names: e.g., Chicago, Philadelphia, Moscow, Paris, etc. [see city designations list]

streets

Capitalize street when it is part of the street name: 10 West 35th Street. Lowercase street(s) when used generically or referring to more than one street in a sequence, e.g., IITRI sits on the corner of 35th and State streets. See also Greater Grand Boulevard.

Student Services Center

superscripts

television shows

Capitalize and place in quotation marks.

that, which

That does not require punctuation; it is used where there is more that one possibility, e.g., Choose an option that meets your needs. A comma should precede which; which is used to add information on to something that has already been identified, e.g., He completed the survey, which was sent to him via email.

the

Do not put this definite article before Illinois Institute of Technology. Be careful to avoid putting it before other proper names.

time of day

8 p.m., not 8:00 p.m. Use noon and midnight and not 12 p.m. or 12 a.m.

times of day

Follow this order in the notice of events: day, date, time, and, place, e.g., Friday, October 13, 1988, 7:30 a.m., Perlstein Hall Auditorium.

trustee

Do not capitalize in conjunction with a person, e.g., Bob Smith, an IIT trustee, has been one of the most active supporters of the university. In general, do not capitalize a title when it follows the name of a person, but capitalize trustee and titles that precede names.

United States

Spell out when used as a noun. Use U.S. only as an adjective. The abbreviation is acceptable on second references.

university

IIT is a university, not an institute or college. In second or subsequent references, use the university or, alternatively, the institution, not the University.

Web

Web addresses

Avoid allowing Web addresses to break at the end of a line or placing punctuation immediately after them. To avoid bad line breaks, editors and writers may wish to refer to the websites in copy without giving the address; an accompanying sidebar or chart can list addresses for any sites mentioned in the story or document. You may omit the http:// for brevity. But use the full URL form (http://islat.iit.edu) when the Web address does not begin with www.

website

widows

In body copy of printed publications, be careful to avoid one-word lines. Also avoid instances where one or two lines of text begin a new column, or where one or two lines of text end a column above or beneath an image.

World Wide Web

Capitalize in all uses. Note: www in website addresses is always lowercase.

Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)

workforce

workplace

workstation

years

Use an “s” without an apostrophe to indicate spans of decades or centuries, e.g., the 1980s, the 1900s. Also ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s (note direction and use of closed apostrophe).

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