We follow the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook.
| Internet Terms | Capitalize the I in Internet, the W's in World Wide Web and the W in Web. |
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| Lowercase the i in intranet. | |
| Web site and home page are two words. | |
| Online, login, logon, and logoff are each one word. Email is one word, without a hyphen. | |
| Spelling | Use American spelling variations instead of British or Canadian spelling. |
| Names | Use an apostrophe in bachelor's degree, master's degree, and similar names. |
| Do not precede a name with a title for an academic degree and then follow it with the degree's abbreviation in the same reference. Dr. Mike Smith, Ph.D. would be wrong. Dr. Mike Smith would be correct, as would Dr. Mike Smith, a psychologist. | |
| In the names of academic departments, use lowercase except for words that are proper nouns or adjectives. For example: the department of history, the history department and the department of English. | |
| Acronyms and Abbreviations | The first time an acronym is used, write out the full term. After that, use the acronym. For example, use "SUNY Learning Network (SLN)" the first time, and then "SLN" for all subsequent instances. |
| For acronyms composed of initial letters, do not use periods: NYS, NCAA, USA, and PO Box. | |
| When listing a measurement, use a non-breaking space between the value and the units: 4 MB, 6 cm. | |
| Bold and Italics | Use bold and italics to emphasize a word or phrase. Use them sparingly, and do not apply them to whole sentences or paragraphs. |
| Contractions | Contractions suggest a casual, conversational tone, so use them only where that tone is appropriate. For more formal contexts, use the full form of the words. |
| Hyphens | Do not use hyphenation, except for compound words (which require hyphen breaks). |
| Lists | Introduce a list with a lead-in sentence that briefly describes the list's purpose, followed by a colon. Keep lead-ins concise and use parallel structure throughout the document. |
| Capitalize the first letter of each list item. | |
| Use parallel structure for each item in the list. | |
If any of the following conditions are true, add a period after each item in the list:
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| Use bulleted (unordered) lists when items are related and parallel, but not sequential. | |
| Use numbered (ordered) lists when items are sequential. Numbered lists require at least two steps, and ideally should have no more than seven to ten steps. | |
| Possessives | For nouns that are plural in form but singular in meaning, add only an apostrophe. For example, mathematics' rules. |
| Sentence Casing | Do not use ALL CAPS for text. Text in all caps is read as yelling or screaming online, which is unprofessional, and is more difficult to read. To emphasize a word or phrase, use bold or italicized text instead. |
| Series | In a series with commas, do not use a comma before the conjunction (and and or). For example, "The SUNY Web site is teal, orange and gray." |
| Sentence Construction | Keep sentence construction parallel and use parallel lead-ins whenever possible. |
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| Keep topic headings short and descriptive. | |
| Keep sentences as short and simple as possible, without fragmenting them. | |
| Avoid lengthy prepositional phrases. Limit the number of sentences that start with a prepositional phrase. | |
| Avoid strings of nouns and modifiers. If a sentence has several objects, consider a bulleted or numbered list. | |
| Wording | Use terminology consistently. Do not invent synonyms for standard terminology. |
| Avoid vague pronouns, such as it or this. These are unclear references. | |
| Avoid (or minimize) helping, auxiliary verbs, such as could, may, might, shall, should and would. | |
| Office Addresses | We follow the Postal Addressing Standards by the US Postal Service. For security purposes, do not include building or room numbers in addresses at State University Plaza. A correct address at the Plaza would be: Ms. Mary Smith Office of Public Relations State University of New York State University Plaza Albany, New York 12246 |