Style Guide

The following rules apply to any promotional text written for Saint Michael's College, including brochures, flyers, invitations, programs and the College's Web site.  Please contact Caroline Crawford (654.2556) with any questions on these, or other stylistic issues that are not addressed here.

For rules regarding Web site development, please see our Web site Content Management
Policy [PDF].

Student Class Years

  • Refer to students in their first year at Saint Michael’s as “first-year students” rather than “freshmen”
  • Refer to students past their sophomore year as “upper-level students” rather than “upper-classmen” or “upper-class students”

Faculty Titles

  • Capitalize a person’s title if it appears before his or her name, such as "Professor of Religious Studies John Doe," but keep the title lower-cased if appearing after his or her name (where it functions as a descriptor, not a title): John Doe, professor of religious studies

Department/Office References

  • Capitalize official department names (Department of English, Office of Admission) but do not capitalize unofficial names (English department, admission office)

Society of Saint Edmund

  • "SSE" is preferred (rather than "S.S.E.")

Telephone

  • Write telephone numbers using periods instead of hyphens: 802.654.0000

Saint Michael's College References

  • Our institution should always be referred to as "Saint Michael's College" or "Saint Michael's" rather than "St. Michael's," "St. Mike's" or "SMC"

Building Names

  • "Founders Hall" does not contain an apostrophe before the "s"
  • "Saint Edmund's Hall" is preferred (not "St. Edmunds")
  • "Elley-Long Music Center at Saint Michael's College" is preferred (rather than just "Elley-Long")

Common Terms

  • "Web site" is preferred (not "web site" or "website")
  • "e-mail" is preferred (not "email")