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Table of Contents

Abbreviations

• Omit periods in abbreviations of academic degrees: BS, MS, PhD, ScD (use bachelor's degree, master's degree, doctoral degree or doctorate to spell out degree)
• Omit periods in country and state abbreviations: US, UK, UN, MA, MA
• Omit periods in MIT and in all acronyms of three or more letters, use MIT as an abbreviation in bibliographies and footnotes, but not in collection level title with rare exceptions (MIT Libraries, MIT Press).
• Spell out Massachusetts Institute of Technology in citation of collection and upon first use in any note field.
• In narrative fields: Use acronym after the first appearance of the full name, spell out full name then put acronym in parentheses after it
• Spell out the word “regarding”, not “re”
• At series, file, and item level: If known, spell out full name and then put the acronym in parentheses
• Names: Spell out names when known, unless persons are known by their initials
  • Use: Meg-John Barker (instead of M. J. Barker)
  • However, use: N. K. Jemisin

Capitalization

Distinctive collections follows Chicago Style Manual rules.

• In narrative text: use lowercase for words such as president, chancellor, professor, unless being used as a title (exceptions are the Corporation, which is referring to the MIT Corporation, the Association when referring to the Association of MIT Alumni and Alumnae, and the Institute) otherwise: Professor Vest, professor; President Vest, the president;the provost; the dean; Department of Chemistry, chemistry; Center for International Studies, the center; Ford Professor of Economics, professor of economics.
• Series and subseries titles: capitalize each word
• Folder title: capitalize only the first word of the folder unless it is the official name of a body or entity, or the title of a book or journal article.
  • If it IS the name of a body or entity, or a book or journal title: capitalize the first letter of all words except a, an, the, and prepositions as well as the first letter of the title and subtitle no matter what the word is. See: Referencing Published Materials below.
• In notes where referring to boxes – do not capitalize Box.
• ad hoc, de facto, e.g., i.e.

Dates

For detailed guidance on formatting dates, see: Dates.

Numbers

Use a comma in numbers of four digits or more: 2,670. 

Spell out numbers that begin sentences. 

Spell out numbers from one to nine. For all other numbers, use digits.

Punctuation

Commas

• In personal names - comma before and after Jr., but no commas with II or III
• Use a serial/Oxford comma (apples, oranges, and grapes)
• In narration put commas around the year in form: “March 12, 1947,”

Other

• If you use hyphens in a folder list, put a space before and after them (except in year spans: 1898-1899)
• —(em dash) no space either side
• Period and comma go inside quotation marks; colon and semi-colon outside

Stylistic Conventions

MIT Preferences

• Chair (not chairman, chairwoman)
• Cochair, coauthor
• The Institute (referring to MIT)
• The Corporation (referring to the MIT Corporation)
• Vice president - (no hyphen)
• First year (not freshman)
• To designate degree from MIT:  name (comma) MIT (no comma) full year: Jane Smith, MIT 1980

Compound Words

• Fund raising (two words)
• Half-time, full-time (hyphen)
• Bylaws - no hyphen
• Web, website

Proper Titles

• Whitaker College (one “t”)
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (not Institute)
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (not Science)
• Institute for Defense Analyses (not Analysis)
• National Institutes of Health (not Institute)

Plurals

• focuses (not foci)
• indexes (not indices, except in mathematical usage),
• symposia (not symposiums)
• millennia (not millenniums)
• memoranda (not memorandums, memos)
• appendices