EH&S Style Guide

11 General Guidelines Spacing after a period Use only a single space after all punctuation, including: • after commas, colons, and semicolons • after punctuation marks at the end of sentences • after periods that separate parts of a reference citation • after periods of the initials in a person’s names Acronyms First Use in each section or chapter For the most part, try to avoid abbreviations in running text. Spell out, on first use in each section or chapter, a word, name or title that is to be used repeatedly in shortened form within the text; include the short form in parentheses following the spelled-out form. Use the short form alone in subsequent references. The Department of Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) will soon be residing in a new building. EH&S is currently located… Unless the abbreviation is more familiar to your reader than its fully expanded term, do not abbreviate a phrase that appears only once or infrequently. Define any abbreviation/acronym you use unless you are certain that its meaning is clearly understood by everyone in your audience. If an abbreviation is commonly used as a word, it does not require an explanation. For example, abbreviations and acronyms such as CPR, laser and mm are generally understood by a nontechnical audience. If the first reference of an abbreviation/acronym is in a heading, either use the abbreviation/acronym or the full term in the heading, but define the abbreviation/acronym in the following paragraph. Ampersands Do not use an ampersand as an abbreviation for “and” in university unit, department, or program names. • Environmental Health and Safety • not Environmental Health & Safety Lists Ordinarily, commas are not used following a series of items in a vertical list. If the vertically listed items are phrases, especially long phrases that grammatically complete the sentence containing them, commas may, but need not, be used. If commas are used, the last item is followed by a period. Omit periods after items in a vertical list unless one or more of the items are complete sentences. If the vertical list completes a sentence begun in an introductory element, the final period is also omitted unless the items in the list are separated by commas or semicolons. You may have a variety of list in the same document. Examples of Biosecurity • fences