Editorial Style Guide
Dean’s Office Communications produces this editorial style guide
to improve effective communications and promote consistency throughout
School of Medicine publications.
For general editorial conventions, we follow the Chicago Manual of
Style, 14th edition.
The Communications office also produces a graphic
identity style guide to address design/redesign issues, and a guide
to communicating effectively on the web.
- Use title case in site titles and headers. Do not use all-caps.
- In titles and headers, spell out names of programs, units and departments.
Names may be shortened but not abbreviated.
- In body text, spell out names with abbreviations at first mention.
- Highlight links to global navigation items such as the department
listing or the faculty listing through in line text links.
- Calls to action (Contact Us, Register) should use the notification
table in the LeftHandNavigation bar.
- Calls to action should begin with an active verb, then noun. "Apply
Online" is better than "Online Application".
- Place links to outside organizations in the See Also table in the
RightHandNavigation. Links outside UCSF should pop up in a new page.
(Target=blank in Dreamweaver)
The most formal style for letters, invitations, academic papers, and
the like, is to identify faculty by full name (including middle initial,
if available) and degree: Jane A. Doe, M.D., Jackson W. Brown, Ph.D.
For general use publications, you can omit the periods and use MD and
PhD. Try to avoid using the title “doctor,” as it is less
precise than specifying a degree.
Capitalize full titles before names: Dean Kessler, Executive Vice Dean
Yamamoto. Long titles, however, are best placed after names and lowercased:
Bruce Spaulding, vice chancellor for university advancement and planning,
Mark A. Goldsmith, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of medicine, UCSF
School of Medicine, and associate investigator, Gladstone Institute
of Virology and Immunology.
Hyphenate co-chair, never hyphenate vice dean or postdoctoral.
Capitalize these titles only when immediately preceding personal names:
president, chancellor, dean, chair, director, professor. For example:
President Atkinson met with Chancellor Bishop, the vice chancellors,
and the deans of all four schools.
Other professional and occupational titles preceding a name are not
capitalized: Several staff members attended the session, including radiologist
Jose Fernandez, animal technician Louise Ma, and admissions director
Bridget McIntosh.
Terms such as med students, grads, residents, docs, MDs, postdoc, alum,
P.I. are too casual for publication: use medical students, graduates,
resident physicians, physicians, postdoctoral researcher, alumnus/alumnae,
principal investigator.
Honors: the Nobel Prize in medicine/Nobel laureate/Nobel Prize winner.
Capitalize disciplines only when referring to specific courses or
departments
ex:
That professor teaches anatomy courses, the other one teaches Biochemistry
201A.
In a first reference, use the full name of the department, then the
more generic name or initials in subsequent references
ex :
- Department of Neurology/neurology department/neurology
- Biomedical Sciences Program/BMS
- Program in Biological Sciences/PIBS
- Office of Human Resources Services/Human Resources/OHRS (never
Personnel)
- Information Services Unit/ISU or information services
Capitalize the following words only when they are part of a title.
Subsequent references are lowercase.
- department
- institute
- center
- program
- office
- committee
Maintain consistency in your titles.
ex:
Do not refer to the Office of Human Resources in one paragraph and
the Human Resources Office in another.
Capitalize full names of buildings, laboratories, libraries, and museums,
but not subsequent references to them:
ex:
- the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute/the institute
- Millberry Union/the student union.
- Anatomy
- Anesthesia & Perioperative Care*
- Anthropology, History & Social Medicine
- Biochemistry & Biophysics*
- Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology
- Dermatology
- Epidemiology & Biostatistics
- Family & Community Medicine*
- Laboratory Medicine
- Medicine
- Microbiology & Immunology*
- Neurological Surgery
- Neurology
- Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences
- Ophthalmology
- Orthopaedic Surgery
- Otolaryngology
- Pathology
- Pediatrics
- Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Science*
- Physiology
- Psychiatry
- Radiation Oncology
- Radiology
- Surgery
- Urology
- Cancer Research Institute/CRI/cancer institute/the institute
- Cardiovascular Research Institute/CVRI/cardiovascular institute/the
institute
- Institute for Health Policy Studies/IHPS/health policy institute/the
institute
- Institute for Global Health/IGH/global health institute/the institute
- G.W. Hooper Foundation
- Hormone Research Institute
- Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute
- Metabolic Research Unit
- Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases
- Center for Reproductive Sciences
- AIDS Research Institute/ARI/the institute
- Comprehensive Cancer Center/cancer center/the center
- Diabetes Center/the center
- Center for Health & Community*
- Osher Center for Integrative Medicine/Osher Center/the center
- Wheeler Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction/Wheeler Center/the
center
- Center for Tobacco Control & Education
*(Ampersands are OK in titles and headlines but never in body copy;
use “and.”)
- Parnassus Heights/Parnassus
- Laurel Heights
- Mission Bay
- San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center/SF General/SFGH
- San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center (not Veterans Administration)/the
VA/SFVAMC/SFVA
- UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program/ UCSF Fresno/the Fresno program
- UCSF Medical Center/the medical center/UCSF Children’s Hospital/Moffitt-Long
Hospitals
- UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion/Mount Zion
For correct spelling of buildings, departments, institutes, etc. not
listed above, try searching the campus website.
- University of California, San Francisco/UC San Francisco/UCSF (no
periods or hyphens)
- UCSF School of Medicine/medical school/the school (not S/M or SOM
for external use)
All printed and electronic materials produced at the University are
copyrighted by the Regents of the University of California.
While it is not required by copyright law to receive copyright protection,
a copyright notice is always a good thing to include, as below:
- Copyright 2004 UC Regents or
© 2004 UC Regents
- Copyright 2004 the Regents of the University of California or
© 2004 the Regents of the University of California
Consult Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary or The Chicago Manual of
Style for words not shown here.
- campuswide
- coauthor
- coworker
- coeducation
- cooperate
- coordinate
- course work (but fieldwork)
- cross-cultural
- e-mail
- ex officio
- fax
- fieldwork
- filmmaking
- follow up (v.)follow-up (n., adj.)
- full-time (adj.)
- groundbreaking
- healthcare
- high-tech(nology) (adj.)
- high technology (n.)
- home page
- housestaff
- interdisciplinary
- Internet
- judgment
- multidisciplinary
- nonprofit, nonresident, nonstudent
- online (adj.)
- part-time (adj.)
- percent
- postdoctoral
- preregister
- systemwide
- underrepresented
- underway (adj.), under way (adv.) Universitywide
- workstation
- worldwide
- World Wide Web, the Web but web page, website
- $10-million grant
- 1960s and 70s
- 1975-2002, 2002-03
Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition
Merriam Webster Dictionary
and Thesaurus
Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, 29th edition
For more information, or if you have questions or additions, contact
the Office of Communications at (415) 502-6450. E-mail editorial@medsch.ucsf.edu
