Appendix L

Style Guide for the Washington University Web

 

The Web site for Washington University in St. Louis represents the University to key external audiences and casual visitors, as well as to the students, faculty, and staff who make up the University community. Because of this, each entity that maintains a series of Web pages linked to the University’s top-level page needs to monitor those pages carefully to be sure words are spelled correctly, titles and names of divisions are correct, and the language is grammatically correct.

For consistency across the University’s Web presence, the Web Pages Task Force recommends the following.

Style for heads and subheads

 

Capitalization: Uppercase the first letter of each word, unless it is a preposition, article, or conjunction. Do not capitalize a preposition, article, or conjunction unless it’s the first word in the headline or made up of more than 6 letters.

Punctuation: Use a comma after the noun in a series preceding “and,” “or,” etc.

University name: It can be abbreviated for space, but use “WUSTL” (our web domain) rather than “WU.”

And: Use an ampersand in headlines and subheads to save space. Spell out in text.

Capitalization: Cap major words in heads and subheads. Cap the first word in the explanation following a link. As always, cap proper names.

E-mail

  Use a hyphen. In headlines, cap “e,” but not “m.” As part of a sentence in text, use all lowercase.

E-mail addresses

  The entire address should be lowercase (i.e. “financial@wustl.edu”)

Months

  Abbreviate without periods to save space.

School

  In text, lowercase the word “school” unless part of an official name.

Schools

  Use the correct names for the 7 schools:
Arts & Sciences (use an ampersand)
Olin School of Business
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
School of Engineering & Applied Science (use an ampersand)
School of Law
School of Medicine
George Warren Brown School of Social Work

Spacing

  Use only 1 space between sentences.

Washington University’s name

  The entire name— “Washington University in St. Louis”—should appear at the top of all second-level pages. In headlines, use “WUSTL” rather than “WU.” Never use “Wash U” to identify the University.