Style Guidelines

Article and Book Titles

• Punctuation: Style for bibliographic information in footnotes, bibliographies, and folder lists

• Use title case. Capitalize book, journal, and article titles. Journal article titles also should be enclosed in quotation marks..

• If a report has been published (that is, you have name of publisher: MIT Press) capitalize the title. If a report is unpublished, put the title in quotation marks and capitalize. (Periods and commas go inside the quotation mark in the USA).

• In folder lists and footnotes put first name first.

Use Chicago manual of style, Notes and Bibliography, for citations:

Journal article

Author’s last and first name, “Title of Article,” Journal Title 73, no. 1 (1980): pages. url.

•  Keng, Shao-Hsun, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem. “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality.” Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.

• LaSalle, Peter. “Conundrum: A Story about Reading.” New England Review 38, no. 1 (2017): 95–109. Project MUSE.

• Satterfield, Susan. “Livy and the Pax Deum.” Classical Philology 111, no. 2 (April 2016): 165–76.

Book

Author’s last and first name, Title of Book, place of publication: name of publisher, publication date. If there is only a place of publication and a date: Place, date.

• Grazer, Brian, and Charles Fishman. A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

• Smith, Zadie. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press, 2016.

Dates in narrative text (note fields only)

• October 12 (not October 12th)
• October 12, 1952  (when used in narrative the year should be followed by a comma)
• The 21st century; 21st-century technology
• September 1990 (no comma)
• 1980s (no apostrophe)
• Use: from 1940 to 1960 (not from 1940-1960)
• Use: between 1980 and 1990 (not between 1940-1960)
• Use all digits in a number range: 1872 to 1888 (not 1872 to 88)

Numbers

• Use a comma in numbers of four digits or more: 2,670
• Numbers in narrative descriptive elements:
• Spell out numbers from one to nine. For all other numbers, use digits
• Spell out numbers that begin sentences.
• Use: from 1940 to 1960 (not from 1940-1960)
• Use: between 1980 and 1990 (not between 1940-1960)

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.
• In narrative fields: Use acronym after the first appearance of the full name, spell out full name then put acronym in parentheses after it
• At series/folder/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
  • Example: Greta Suiter instead of G. Suiter
  • Example: J.K. Rowling

Capitalization

(These are Chicago Style Manual rules, used by Tech Talk and MIT Press)

• Ad hoc, de facto, e.g., i.e.
• In narrative text: use lowercase for words such as president, chancellor, 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, President Vest, the president; the provost; the dean; Department of Chemistry, the department of chemistry; Center for International Studies, the center.
• 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.
• In notes where referring to boxes – do not capitalize Box

Conventions and Tricky Forms

• Cochair, coauthor (MIT preference)
• The Corporation (referring to the MIT Corporation)
• Vice president - (no hyphen) - MIT’s preference
• To designate degree from MIT:  name (comma) MIT (no comma) full year: Jane Smith, MIT 1980
• Fund raising (two words)
• Half-time, full-time (hyphen)
• Bylaws - no hyphen
• 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)
• Focuses (not foci) and indexes (not indices, except in mathematical usage),
• Symposia (not symposiums); millennia (not millenniums); memoranda; and appendices
• Web, website
• Spell out the word “regarding”, not “re”

Punctuation

Commas     

• In personal names - comma before and after Jr., but no commas with II or III
• Use a serial/Oxford comma, comma before the word “and” (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)
• —(dash) no space either side
• Period and comma go inside quotation marks; colon and semi-colon outside