Editorial Style Guide

Styleguide Contents

Names and Titles

Degrees with Names

Use a comma between a person’s name and degree.

Maria Tedesco, MA

Government Programs

Following the general rules of capitalization, full formal or accepted titles of plans, policies, laws, and similar documents or agreements, together with names of programs resulting from them, are usually capitalized. Incomplete names are lowercased.

Under the Berne Accords, which are part of U.S. law, all material fixed in a tangible medium is inherently copyrighted.

Names for Racial and Ethnic Origins

See A Note on Diversity at the end of this guide.

Names with Initials

When using initials with a period, maintain spacing as you would for the full name. When punctuation is not used (e.g., when referring to certain U.S. presidents) do not leave a space.

Professor Brett Smith presented a paper on W. E. B. DuBois.
The students researched the New Deal policies of FDR.

Names with Job Titles

Capitalize titles only when they immediately precede a name. (For more examples, see the Capitalization section.) Do not use courtesy or academic degree titles when referring to academic personnel.

Professor Aiko Komura, art history OR Aiko Komura, professor of art history; NOT Ms. Aiko Komura or Professor Dr. Aiko Komurav

Names with Suffixes

Omit commas before and after Jr., Sr., and the designations I, II, III, and IV unless you know that person uses a comma. However, degrees and professional titles should still be set off with a comma.

Steve Meisler Jr. was introduced by Craig Beel III.
BUT Stacy Kazerian, MD, has been a podiatrist for 17 years.

Publications, Presentations, and Reports

Titles of books, journals, movies, TV and radio programs, and campus publications are italicized with initial caps (see the Capitalization section for more information). Titles of articles, episodes, short stories, book chapters, poems, conference papers, and essays are not italicized (also referred to as roman text) and enclosed in quotation marks. Titles of forms, reports, workshops, seminars, and conferences are also set in roman text with initial caps.

The annual University Profile booklet contains facts and statistics about U-M.
The “White Rabbit” episode of Lost was one of the subjects of Professor Mitchell’s paper, “Shadows and Ghosts: The Search for the Other,” which she presented at the Conference on Media and Culture.
Both the student and the parent borrower must complete the Federal Direct PLUS Loan Application Form.