Hearts & Minds - Information for Change

Style Checklist
for our website and printed publications

Dear Volunteer:      

Thanks for helping us with this project. This checklist will help you make our web pages more professional and effective. The website will be uniform, making it much easier to read. It also appears better if everything is formatted and organized the same way.

Spelling

  • Hearts & Minds, not Hearts and Minds
  • Use American, not British, spellings: color, not colour.
  • Run spell check (F7 in MS FrontPage) before finalizing your work
  • "Internet" is capitalized, "website" is not
  • Website is one word, web page is not
  • Numbers below 10 are written out (one - nine). Numbers are numerals when they include a fraction, like: 7-1/2. All numbers are spelled out when they begin a sentence. Numbers 1,000 and above use the commas.
  • Percent is written out (do not use %).
  • White and Black as racial groups are capitalized.

Punctuation

  • Do not use periods when abbreviating states, directions (NW, SE) or when typing PO Box. Use USA instead of US to avoid confusion. Our nation's capital should appear as Washington, DC
  • The last comma in a series is not necessary unless needed for clarification.
  • (A period goes within a parenthesis when there's a complete sentence inside.) and outside the parenthesis when that clause is part of a larger sentence.
  • E-mail is always hyphenated.
  • From now on, all paragraphs on our website except for organization listings are indented 7 spaces.

Spacing

  • IMPORTANT: These punctuation marks are followed by only one space: ,.)?;:
  • Do not break up hyphenated words for the sake of spacing at the end of a sentence. Keep the word on the same line.
  • If using hyphens as dashes, use one hyphen with one letter space before and after the hyphen. For example: easy - and affordable

Type sizes and style

  • All type in our website is Arial, and make sure it's scalable (will change sizes when one changes view/type size in Foxfire and MS Internet Explorer). All body copy is 12pt, subheads are 12 pt, bold, and This exact color, with only the first word (and any proper nouns capitalized
  • Captions are set in a text box under the picture. Center the caption, do not leave a dangling word on the bottom line. All body copy is in 10pt and in italics.

Miscellaneous

  • Only capitalize necessary words: beginnings of sentences and proper nouns.  Also, following a colon, capitalize only the start of a complete sentence. Some organizations may capitalize unnecessary words in their mission statement, so make those lower case when you paste them to the page you are working on.
  • Avoid passive verb usage (should have done, has been doing). Always use verbs in the present tense when describing what an organization currently is doing (even if they've been doing it for a long time).
  • Articles or chapter titles are in quotes. Titles of books or publications are italicized if the text is in regular font, and are in regular font if the the text is italicized.
  • TITLES are all capitalized, subheads have only the first word capitalized (except where they include proper nouns).
  • That is used to introduce a dependent clause (a phrase in a sentence that depends on the rest of the sentence to make sense) if the sentence looks or sounds awkward without it. When in doubt include that. Omission can hurt. Inclusion never does.
  • The first time an abbreviation is used (unless already widely known such as USA, first give the full name, then the abbreviation in parentheses: Credit Reporting Agency (CRA).
     
  • Use the words over and under only for directional purposes.  Always use more than and less than when referring to numbers.
     
  • Never use an "s" following backward or toward.
     
  • Over is used only for directional purposes.  Use more than and less than for quantities.

Additionally, for our links pages:

  • List the organizations in alphabetical order.  If the organization's name begins with "The,"  ignore and arrange according to the word next to "the."
     
  • Skip one line between each organization listed but never within the listing. 
     
  • Add a person's title to his or her name if it is available.
     
  • Do not include the number sign (#) in the organization's address.
     
  • All USA phone numbers should include a 1 first, in this format 1-212-280-0333.

 

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E-mail: editor@heartsandminds.org

Written by Lauren Murray and Bill Blackman
This web page and entire website © Copyright: 1997 - 2007 by Hearts and Minds Network, Inc.
http://www.heartsandminds.org/howto/style.htm - online August 1, 2002, latest text changes June 24, 2006

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