Just as the Buffalo State College logo visually helps present the college consistently to the world, this style guide is designed to help present the institution's written material consistently and clearly. In short, this guide defines a common writing style for the Buffalo State community. It is meant to be used by all campus offices, departments, and programs for various types of communication to both internal and external audiences: brochures and advertisements, reports and letters, videos and web pages.
This guide addresses issues of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization (Is it E-mail, email, or e-mail?), but it goes beyond this, with the goal of unifying all written communication emerging from diverse campus entities.
This guide incorporates and cites the following sources:*
Reflecting the dynamic nature of the Buffalo State campus as well as the English language itself, this guide will be updated continually. If you have a suggestion or correction, please contact the editor.
You may find it useful to supplement this guide with a specific style guide for your own department, office, or program, incorporating commonly used terms and names.
*For items not covered in this guide, we recommend consulting these sources directly. Entries that contradict Merriam-Webster's 11 supersede the dictionary.
A list of standard proofreaders' marks is available from Merriam-Webster or the Chicago Manual of Style Online.
