Just as the Buffalo State College logo visually helps to present the college consistently to the world, this style guide is designed to help present the college's written material consistently and clearly. In short, this guide defines a common writing style for the Buffalo State community. It is meant to be used by all college offices, departments, and programs for various types of communication to both internal and external audiences: brochures and advertisements, reports and letters, videos and Web pages.
This guide addresses issues of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization (Is it E-mail, email, or e-mail?), but it goes beyond this, with the goal of unifying all written communication emerging from diverse college entities.
This guide incorporates:
- The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.*
- The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.*
- Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2003.*
- The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. New York: The Associated Press, 2000.*
- Strunk Jr., William and E. B. White. The Elements of Style, third edition. New York: Macmillan, 1979.
Reflecting the dynamic nature of the Buffalo State campus as well as the English language itself, this guide will be updated continually. If you have a suggestion or correction, please contact the editor.
You may find it useful to supplement this guide with a specific style guide for your own department, office, or program, incorporating commonly used terms and names.
* For items not covered in this guide, we recommend consulting these sources directly.
To print a copy of this guide, please download the PDF version (498 KB).
This file requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, available for download at
www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html.
A list of standard proofreaders' marks is available from Merriam-Webster.
