| Rule | Example |
|---|---|
Abbreviate months with 6+ letters if used with a specific date. Spell months with 5 or fewer letters. Do not use 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. |
Jan. 1, Feb. 2, March 3, April 4, May 5, June 6, July 7, Aug. 8, Sept. 9, Oct. 10, Nov. 11, Dec. 12 |
Spell the month when used without a specific date. |
In September, the leadership team… The session begins in February 2016. |
Do not abbreviate days of the week. |
Wednesday, June 1 |
For time, use numerals, a space, lowercase letters, and periods for a.m. and p.m. * Do not use extra zeros on times. * Specify time zone (include “D” if daylight savings is in effect). * Include UTC time for global audiences. |
7 p.m. EDT (11 p.m. UTC) 10:15 a.m. ET (3:15 p.m. UTC) 8 a.m.-2 p.m. 8-11 a.m. Bookmark this time zone converter: http://tiny.cc/time-zone-converter |
Spell out numbers under 10. Use numerals for 10 and above, unless it’s the first word of the sentence. |
There are five directors. No, wait, there are 15. Sixteen, now that I count them. |
| Rule | Example |
|---|---|
Always use the Oxford (serial) comma. |
Apples, oranges, and bananas. |
Avoid exclamation points. |
No more than one per document. Zero, if possible. |
Avoid ampersands (&) or plus signs (+). |
Use only if truly necessary to omit 2 extra characters, in which case, use plus sign. |
| Rule | Example |
|---|---|
Use sentence case capitalization for headlines, headings, subheadings, job titles, and most other situations. (Capitalize only first word, proper nouns, and first word after a colon or em-dash.) Exceptions: Use “title case” for product, event, and award titles. Pro-tips: http://tiny.cc/sentence-vs-title |
Join us for a town hall on Super Project 1.0 with vice president Mike Smith Favorite beverage of ALDP graduates: Milk Happening today—The OpenStack Summit Google named among Fortune’s Most Innovative Companies |
| Rule | Example |
|---|---|
Avoid acronyms. Spell out, unless it’s something that’s known primarily as an acronym. |
HTML (not “HyperText Markup Language”) |
Use 2-letter abbreviations for U.S. states. Spell out countries (except when using “U.S.” as an adjective). |
Austin, TX - See stateabbreviations.us Brno, Czech Republic In the United States vs. in U.S. history |
| Essential = no comma | Nonessential = comma |
|---|---|
I will give the document to my peer Chris. (I have more than one peer. Chris’s name is essential info and should not be set off with a comma.) |
I will give the document to my director, Kim. (I have only one director. Her name is nonessential and thus set off with a comma.) |
That |
Which |
John’s cars that are leased are never kept clean. (The dirty cars are specifically those that John leased; John might have non-leased cars that are kept clean.) |
John’s cars, which are leased, are never kept clean. (All of John’s cars are dirty. The fact that those cars are leased is not essential to the meaning of the sentence.) |
We visited Berlin too. (“Too” is an adverb. When a sentence ends with an adverb that is essential to the meaning of the sentence, the adverb should not be set off with a comma.) |
Mary Smith, a staff writer at the Big City Times, recently wrote a book on that subject. (Nonessential information requires a comma.) |