• Identify all students with their class year. Make sure that the apostrophe opens up to the left (example: Sally Sophomore ’10).
• Identify people by their full name when you first mention them. For subsequent mentions, use only the last name, without their class year.
o Example: Sally Mulligan '10 circulated the petition over the course of two weeks. Mulligan collected over 200 signatures.
• Use “first-years,” not “freshmen.”
• If a title comes before a person’s name, capitalize it. If a title comes after the person’s name, do not capitalize it.
o Example 1: Professor Douglas Ambrose, Dean of Faculty Joseph Urgo, Director of Campus Safety Francis Manfredo
o Example 2: Douglas Ambrose, professor of history, helped found the Alexander Hamilton Institute.
Concentrations, Departments and Offices
• When writing about concentrations, use the lowercase form unless you are writing about a specific department or when the subject is always capitalized (i.e., it is a proper noun).
o Example: The new class president studies geology and French. He is a TA in the Geology Department.
• Capitalize names of College departments, programs and offices. The subject comes first in the title.
o Examples: Philosophy Department, not Department of Philosophy; Dean of Students Office, not Office of the Dean of Students.
• Always capitalize departments and offices such as the Diversity and Social Justice Initiative, Alexander Hamilton Institute, Cultural Education Center and the Writing Center. For offices and support services that are commonly referred to by a shortened version of their name, use that shortened version (i.e., write Writing Center instead of Nesbitt-Johnston Writing Center).
Buildings and Locations
• For buildings, use the same rule of thumb as for departments and offices: if a shortened version is commonly used, write that on the first reference (write the List Center instead of the Vera G. and Alfred A. List Center).
• For the Kirner-Johnson Building and Christian A. Johnson Hall, write the long version on the first reference. Use KJ and CJ for subsequent references.
• Capitalize the College when referring to Hamilton. Capitalize Central New York and Upstate New York.
• Capitalize the Hill and College Hill.
• Write residence hall, not dorm.
Contractions
• In general, remove contractions. For articles that are more informal (i.e., “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down” or the sex column), contractions are fine.
