Our foremost goals are clarity and consistency, and our interest is in preparing materials for a broad, general — and not necessarily Brown-affiliated — audience, from prospective students to journalists to alumni and more.
Generally speaking, these style guidelines are written for use in narrative copy — complete sentences and paragraphs as you’d employ in a news story, annual report or descriptive web copy. There can and should be exceptions made for other uses, however. Formal invitations may invite the need for more liberal capitalization, for example.
For narrative copy, our starting point is the Associated Press Stylebook. Unless we establish local Brown style to the contrary, AP style will always be correct. Because academic communities pose style questions not addressed by the Associated Press, we use the Chicago Manual of Style as a secondary guide. Web versions of both of these guides are available at no cost to the Brown community:
For issues not covered in these style guidelines, refer to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.