FRACTIONS Use numerals to show fractions. 6 1/2, not “six and one-half” 35 3/4, not “35 and three-fourths”
ABBREVIATIONS Please reference page 8 and 10 POSSESSIVES “It’s” vs. “Its,” “Its” vs. “Their” and Other Possessives If a word — including a name — ends in “s,” add an apostrophe at the end. Do not add an additional “s.” If you are talking about a contraction of the phrase “it is,” use “it’s.” If you are talking about a possessive situation — “the thing belonging to it”— use “its.” It’s no secret that Susie likes chocolate cake. Use: “it” and “its” when referring to possessive situations involving groups, departments, institutes, etc.; they are entities. DO NOT use: “their.” The Sands-Constellation Heart Institute has increased the number of its (not “their”) faculty. PUNCTUATION • Use single line spacing with no extra space before or after a paragraph (use return). • Use one space between sentences. • Commas and periods are placed inside the quotation mark. • Dashes, question marks, exclamation marks, and semicolons are placed inside the quotations only when they apply to the quoted matter – otherwise, they are placed after the quotations. • Use an em dash to connect two statements, add a space before and after em dash. • Semicolons should be used sparingly. Shorter sentences are easier on the reader. • Em dashes can also be used to offset the appositive, especially if the appositive contains one or more commas (because additional commas would be confusing for the reader). • In a series, use a comma before a conjunction. > Patients, visitors, and employees are welcome. • Do not spell out the name of a place or program and follow it with an acronym in parenthesis. AP style says, if people can’t easily link the name and the acronym, the acronym shouldn’t be used.
SPELLING STANDARDIZATION • The names of diseases are not capitalized unless they are proper nouns. > For example, cancer, heart failure and diabetes are all lower cased while Alzheimer’s disease and Munchausen syndrome are upper cased.
a lot (two words) body mass index (BMI on second reference) CEO (no periods) checkup CT scan (even on first reference/ formerly CAT scan) email follow-up health care (two words) heart (to refer to all things cardi- ac-related) in hospital (two words, no hyphen) inpatient internet long-term care Medicaid (capitalized) Medicare (capitalized) minimally invasive MRI (even on first reference)
noninvasive nonprofit nonsurgical OB/GYN (not OBGYN, OB-GYN, etc.) OBGYN ( for web only) on-site orthopaedic orthopedic (for web only) outpatient percent (spelled out in body) physician post-operative preventive state-of-the-art subspecialist under way website, similarly: web, webcam, webcast, webmaster X-ray % (for creative treatment)
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BRAND EDITORIAL STYLE GUIDE | ROCHESTER REGIONAL HEALTH 19
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