Top 10 Style Tips

1. Use abbreviations and acronyms sparingly. When you do use them, tell the reader what they stand for the first time you mention them.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is responsible for issues of identity theft. We won’t know how to proceed until an FTC representative contacts us.

2. Punctuate dates as follows:
The author was born on September 4, 1973, in Washington, DC.
Write out the month (do not abbreviate), and place a comma after the year.

3. Write out numbers one through ten; use numerals for numbers over ten. However, use numerals when expressing ages, dollar amounts, measurements (height, width, weight), and percents.

4. Instead of using his or her in an effort to be gender neutral, try making the pronoun plural, eliminating the pronoun altogether, or using you.
Avoid: A salesperson must know his or her client.
Better: Salespeople must know their clients.

5. Do not capitalize north, south, east, and west when indicating direction. Capitalize only when referring to a specific region (the Midwest). Do not capitalize the names of seasons unless they are part of an official name.

6. Consult a dictionary when punctuating prefixes. Some general guidelines: Include a hyphen when the word that follows the prefix is capitalized (pro-Canadian). Also hyphenate when the prefix ends in a vowel and the word that follows begins with the same vowel (multi-industry). Do not use a hyphen when the word that follows the prefix begins with a consonant (multimillionaire).

7. Write out the names of states except in postal addresses. When a place is identified by city and state, place commas between the city and state and after the state:
He was born in Wichita, Kansas, and stayed there most of his life.

8. Format times as follows: 6 a.m., 4:30 p.m. Avoid redundancies such as 6:30 a.m. this morning (a.m. indicates morning already). Use numerals in combination with a.m. and p.m.; spell out numbers when they are followed by followed by o’clock.

9. Capitalize and italicize names of books, newspapers, magazines, periodicals, movies, and TV shows. Use quotation marks for titles of chapters, articles, reports, poems, songs, and musical works.

10. Capitalize titles only when they appear directly before a person’s name: President George W. Bush; George W. Bush, president of the United States.

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