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A »

Abbreviations
  1. Streets, avenues, roads,
    boulevards
  2. Days of the week,
    months of the year
  3. Acronyms
  4. City and state
  5. Pluralizing lowercase
    single-letter abbreviations
  6. Beginning a sentence
Academic Calendar/Terms
AD/CE
Addresses
  1. Addresses in copy
  2. Full mailing addresses
  3. Separating elements with commas
Advisor
Affirmative Action Statement and other Required Information
  1. Long Form
  2. Short Form
  3. ROTC
  4. Job Number
  5. Disclaimer
African American
Age
Alumnus, Alumni
Ampersand
Apostrophe
  1. Plurals of figures, years, or abbreviations
  2. Plurals of letters and
    academic grades
  3. Possessives of abbreviations
  4. Degrees
  5. Year of graduation
Art
Articles
(in newspapers, magazines, etc.)
Avenue
Awards, Prizes
B »

BC/BCE
Black
Board of Trustees
Books, Book Chapters
Buildings
C »

Campuses
Cannot
Capital Campaign
Capitalization
  1. Hyphenated compounds
  2. Parts of the world and regions of a country
  3. Compass directions
  4. Seasons
  5. Legislative, executive, and administrative bodies
  6. Corporate, professional, and governmental titles before a name
  7. Nonspecific noun and adjective references
  8. Political organizations, members
  9. Political and economic systems
  10. Numerical designation of
    historical time periods in a proper name
  11. Nouns in major reference headings
  12. Nouns in minor reference headings
  13. Genus names
  14. Geological eras, periods, epochs,
    and strata
  15. Titles of books, long poems,
    magazines, newspapers, plays,
    movies, pamphlets, CDs,
    long musical compositions, radio
    and TV programs, and works of art
  16. Titles of short poems and stories, essays, lectures, dissertations, book chapters, articles, grant
    proposals, and songs
  17. Titles of book sections
  18. Philosophical, literary, musical, and artistic movements, styles, and
    schools from proper nouns
  19. Acronyms
Carnegie Mellon University
Cathedral of Learning
CD
CE
Centers, Institutes, Laboratories
Cents
Century
Chancellor
Chapters (of books)
City of Pittsburgh
Class
Collective Nouns
Colons
  1. Capitalization of first word after colon
  2. Colons in titles
  3. Colons with quotations marks
  4. Space after colons
Commas
  1. In a series
  2. With Jr., Sr., or numerals in a name
  3. Nonessential/nonrestrictive clauses
  4. Essential/restrictive clauses
  5. Between two adjectives
Commonly Misused Words
Commencement
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Company Names
Computer Terminology
  1. Terms
  2. E-mail
  3. Breaking Web sites on two or more lines
  4. Web addresses at the end of sentences
  5. Web addresses in text
  6. Pitt e-mail addresses
  7. Using http
  8. Login/log in
Conferences
Courses, Classes, Majors
D »

Dashes
  1. Em dashes
  2. En dashes
  3. Hyphens
Dates, Years
  1. Days of the month
  2. Commas with dates
  3. BC/AD and BCE/CE
  4. Inclusive years
  5. Plurals of years
  6. Referencing dates
Days
Degrees (academic)
  1. Abbreviations
  2. Doctorate
  3. Honors
  4. Certificates
Degrees (temperature)
Departments, Offices, Programs, Schools
  1. Academic departments, offices, programs, schools
  2. Administrative departments and offices
  3. Schools of the health sciences
  4. University of Pittsburgh Police Department
Directions
Dissertations
Dollars
E »

Ellipses
  1. Within quoted material
  2. At the end of quoted material
    (full and incomplete sentences)
  3. At the beginning of a sentence
E-mail
Endowed Chairs, Professorships
Ethnicity and Race
F »

Fellowships, Scholarships
Forms
Fundraiser/Fundraising
G »

Gender Sensitivities
Genus Names
Grades
Grant Proposals
Greek
H »

Health Care
Health Sciences
Homecoming
Hospitals
Hyphens, Compounds
  1. Two-word compound adjectives
    before a noun
  2. Compound adjectives of three
    or more words before a noun
  3. Adverbs ending in -ly before an adjective
  4. Compound adjectives where the
    second word ends in -ed
  5. Nouns that represent different and equally important functions
  6. Prefixes
  7. Self- and ex- compounds
  8. Suffixes
I »

Institutes
Italics
J »

Jr., Sr., Numerals in a Name
L »

Laboratories
Latin Terms
  1. Latin terms in text
  2. Emeritus, emeriti
  3. Résumé, curriculum vitae, vita, CV
  4. Plurals of Latin terms
Lectures, Lecture Series
Lists (vertical, numbered, bulleted)
  1. Commas and periods
  2. Commas and periods with complete sentences
  3. Semicolons and periods with complete sentences
  4. Periods with series items that are complete sentences themselves
  5. Punctuating letters or numbers used to enumerate a list
  6. Capitalization of first words
M »

Magazines
Majors
Money
Months
Musical Compositions and Terms
N »

Newspapers
Numbers
  1. General rule
  2. Beginning a sentence
  3. In a list
  4. Age
  5. Percentages
  6. Dollars and cents
  7. Numerical amounts equal to or greater than 1 million
  8. Temperature, degrees
  9. Other exceptions
  10. Use of numerals for the sake of consistency
O »

Offices
Organizations
Orthopaedic Surgery, Department of; Orthopaedic
P »

Percent
Phone Numbers
Pittsburghese
Plurals, Possessives
Poems
Police
Prefixes
Professorships
Proved/Proven
Q »

Quotation Marks
  1. Placing commas and periods
  2. Placing colons and semicolons
  3. Placing a question mark, exclamation point, or dash
  4. Single quotation marks for quotations within a quotation
  5. Several paragraphs of a quotation
  6. Topics of talks, papers, or presentations
R »

Race
Radio Programs
Referencing People
Regional Campuses
Road
S »

Scholarships
Schools
Seal/Signature
Seasons
Semicolons
  1. General rule
  2. In a series
  3. With quotation marks and parentheses
Series
Social Security
Songs
Spacing
  1. Between sentences in copy
  2. Abbreviations in names
Special Events
Street
Student Terminology
  1. Academic years (freshman, sophomore, graduate student, etc.)
  2. Racial, linguistic, religious, and other groups
  3. Greek(s)
  4. Years of graduation
  5. Punctuating years of graduation
  6. The word class when used with a year
  7. Officers of a class, social organization, etc.
T »

Television Programs
Temperature
Terms
Tests
That/Which
Theses
Times
  1. Hours of the day, a.m. and p.m., noon and midnight, use of :00
  2. When used with o’clock
  3. Precise times
  4. Numbers of hours or minutes
  5. No commas between time and day or date
Titles of Persons
  1. General rule
  2. Courtesy titles and academic and professional degrees within text
  3. Standing alone without a name
  4. First, subsequent references
Titles (other)
  1. Books, television shows, movies, radio programs, plays
  2. Articles in magazines or newspapers
  3. Academic papers, dissertations, grant proposals, theses
  4. CDs, musical compositions, songs
  5. Lecture series, conferences, lectures, speeches
U »

United States
University
University Publications
University Seal/Signature
W »

Washington D.C.
Way/Ways
Web Site, World Wide Web
Who/Whom
Y »

Years
Appendices

Appendix 1:
Commonly Misused Words
Appendix 2:
Commonly Misspelled Words
Appendix 3:
School, College, and Campus Abbreviations
Appendix 4:
Postal Information and State Abbreviations
Appendix 5:
UPMC Hospitals
Appendix 6:
Department of University News and Magazines Exceptions
Top Tips for Good Writing
Official list of names for University departments, offices, programs, and schools





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