Style Guide

& Not to be used except in official firm names and some top level links on the Web site

age Always use numerals. When used as adjectives before a noun or as substitutes for a noun use hyphens: 5-year-old boy, but the boy is 5 years old.

ALL CAPS Don't use except for acronyms

alumni and current students Names should be followed directly by degree program and year of graduation, no punctuation: John Smith JD '04

Atrium Capitalize when referring to Law School's

Bluhm Legal Clinic Use on first reference, can be clinic or legal clinic on second reference.

capitalization of prepositions in titles See Chicago Manual Style (CMS) (15th ed.) 8.167 on page 366. This is a NEW rule and interpretation from CMS. Example: Learning From Victory

capitalization of organization names (including judicial) See CMS (15th ed.) 8.66 through 8.76. Based on this rule, lowercase references that use the more generic organization name: Center on Wrongful Convictions, but just center on second reference.

Center for Career Strategy and Advancement Use Career Strategy Center for short

Center on Wrongful Convictions Not Center for Wrongful Convictions; use center or acronym CWC on second reference

Communication and Legal Reasoning Not Communications

Contact Information

Addresses - Follow this format:

Northwestern University School of Law
(Department)
(Building, Room (spell out))
(Street - All words spelled out: East Chicago Avenue not E. Chicago Ave.)
Chicago, IL 60611-3069

Phone numbers - parenthesis around area code, (312) 555-5555
(List internal extensions as 5-5555 in publications for internal audiences only.)

course titles Actual course titles are uppercase: He teaches Contracts, or a section of Contracts. But areas of law when not referring to actual courses are lowercase: He teaches a course in contracts or specializes in contracts.

dates Always use Arabic figures, do not use st, nd, rd, or th (April 3 not April 3rd). (See months)

David Van Zandt, Dean Use in name tags; do not use Dean and Professor

degrees No periods: JD, LLM, PhD , etc. Joint degrees connected with hyphen, but degree/certificate uses slash: JD-MBA but LLM/Kellogg

em dashes One space before and after (However, hyphens and en dashes do not have spaces)

e-mail Not email

EsqwireCentral One word; Esqwire for short

Faculty names Use full formal name with middle initial on first reference, and last name only on second reference. In some cases may choose to use informal first name only on second reference. Either way must pick one style and stay consistent throughout the publication.

firm names Use full name (Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott , not Bartlit Beck); double check all firm names

International Team Projects The name of an actual program; it even has an acronym, ITP, so it should be uppercase. In running text, the first reference would be the complete name followed by the acronym in parenthesis, and then subsequent references would just be the acronym.

Kellogg School of Management Not Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Use Kellogg on second reference.

LLM Not LL.M. (see degrees )

Law library Use Pritzker Legal Research Center

Law School Capitalize when referring to Northwestern but lowercase if referring to law schools in general or another law school.

legal clinic See Bluhm Legal Clinic

months PRESS RELEASES: When used with a specific date, abbreviate Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec. Spell out when using alone, or with a year alone. When phrase uses month, day, and year, set off year with commas: January 2004; Jan. 5; May 15, 2005, is the convocation date. PUBLICATIONS: Spell out the month. (See dates)

Northwestern University School of Law Use in official press releases; use School of Law on second reference. **Never use NU.

Northwestern Law Use on Web site; can use the Law School on second reference. **Never use NU

NU Do not use, spell out Northwestern University

numbers Spell out numbers less than 10. (see percentages )

over vs. more than "Over" is used to indicate location; use "more than" when referring to amounts, time, etc.: He jumped over the log; There are more than 10 students in the class.

percent Spell out, do not use symbol "%"

percentage Use numerals, don't spell out unless the first word of a sentence: He is late 50 percent of the time; Five percent of the class is female.

periods Only one space follows periods

prefixes hyphens See CMS 7.9, #3 (page 306). According to CMS, it should be "posttrial" but we don't like that, so leave it "post-trial". (Also don't like coauthor because of three vowels together, so use co-author).

proper names as possessives See CMS (15th ed.) 7.17, page 281, so it should be Evans's

semesters Lowercase "spring" and "fall"

spacing Soft breaks ( ) follow headings. Hard breaks () between section paragraphs.

<Heading 1>
Text text text text text text text...

<Heading 2>
text text text text text...

HTML:
Heading 1 
text text text text

second paragraph
Heading 2 
text text text text

Tax Program Not Graduate Tax Program

titles of books, law reviews, magazines Should be italicized (different treatment than AP style); if regular text is italicized, then these titles are in roman (normal) type

Off-site links Any links to pages not on the Northwestern Law site (including main University pages) should open in a new browser window. To do this, click on link name and select "blank" in the dropdown menu under "Target" in the Properties toolbox.

pro bono No hyphen

Program on Negotiation and Mediation Not Negotiations

T-shirt Not t-shirt

titles CMS (15th ed.) rule 8.23, on page 318, "titles used in apposition": When title is used before a personal name, not as part of the name but as a descriptive tag (often with the), lowercase: the clinic director Tom Geraghty; Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

Lowercase and spell out titles when not used with personal name: The dean made an announcement. Capitalize title when used directly before a name.

U.S. vs. United States Use U.S. only as an adjective; use United States as a noun: U.S. Supreme Court; He is from the United States.

videotape, videotaping One word

web site Not website or Website