The following editorial guidelines are specific to the College and should be reflected in all print and online materials coming out of the Dean’s Office. Although the default for editorial content is AP style, these are specific instances in which the College either goes against AP style or addresses something not noted in the AP stylebook.
Academic quarters
Quarters in the UW academic calendar include autumn, winter, spring and summer quarters. There is no “fall quarter” at the University of Washington.
Academic years
Use 2015-2016 academic year, not AY 2015-2016, AY 2015/16 or academic year 2015-2016.
Example: During the 2015-2016 academic year, enrollment in the program grew 15% when compared with the previous year.
& vs. and
Use and spelled out in all cases, including web text and page headings, event materials, print materials, social media, online collateral, etc.
Example: School of Marine and Environmental Affairs.
College community members
When listing members of the College community, please always include all of the following:
- faculty
- staff
- postdocs
- students
Example: Dear, faculty, staff, postdocs and students. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
College name
Do not refer to the College as CoEnv, COE or CoE. The following are all acceptable ways to reference the College of the Environment:
- University of Washington College of the Environment
- UW College of the Environment
- College of the Environment at the University of Washington
- UW Environment
- College of the Environment
- the College (uppercase)
College website address
The College’s website should be listed as environment.uw.edu on print materials, no www. or https:// preceding it.
Course titles
Capitalize course titles in all instances. Do not bold, italicize or put quotes around course titles.
Example: To prepare for their trip aboard the R/V Thompson, student in Charles Nittrouer’s Rivers and Beaches class spent months studying Earth’s surfaces.
Image credits
All images should include a credit to the copyright holder unless the image was created by College of the Environment staff. By default, credit the institution or department of origin and include the photographer’s name when requested. When using images licensed through Creative Commons, always include the credit specified and a link to the license. When posting images from other websites or materials, always preserve the credit from the original. All of the following are acceptable photo credits:
- University of Washington
- UW College of the Environment
- Jane Smith, University of Washington
- Joe Smith, UW College of the Environment
- Beth Smith (Creative Commons license)
Ocean Sciences Building
The Dean’s Office is located in the Ocean Sciences Building. The official UW abbreviation for the Ocean Sciences Building is OCN, not OSB.
Scholarships, fellowships, fellows
Always use the full name of the fellowship or scholarship (Ex: The Levinson Early Scholarship Award; 2017 Bonderman Travel Fellowship). Undergraduates can only receive scholarships, whereas graduate students can receive scholarships, fellowships or both. Scholarships cover tuition, fees and books. Fellowships cover additional living expenses. The receipt of a fellowship does not make someone a fellow. Many national academic organizations (like American Geophysical Union and American Association for the Advancement of Science), as well as the National Academies, refer to their members as Fellows.
Examples:
- Environmental Studies student Sarah Smith received the College of the Environment Scholarship.
- Jared Johnson, a Ph.D. student in the School of Oceanography, was awarded the Hershman Marine Policy Fellowship.
- Lisa J. Graumlich is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Title and sentence case
All page titles should be title case, meaning most words are capitalized. Everything else, including story titles, headings and subheadings should be sentence case. That is, only the first letter of the first word in a heading or title is capitalized, like a sentence. Proper nouns should also be capitalized. Event names should be treated as titles and use title case, while session names or agenda headings should use sentence case.
Examples:
- Meet Our Students
- Adam Summers advises Pixar on fish movements in new ‘Finding Dory’ film
- Future Student Visit Day
- 10:00 a.m. – noon | Breakout sessions: Explore classes and research opportunities
Unit and department names
Do not use acronyms like SMEA or SEFS. Instead, spell out the entire unit or department on first mention and remove “School of” or “Department of” in subsequent mentions, maintaining the capitalization. You may include the unit acronym in parentheses after the first mention of the full name, if it’s useful to the reader.
Example: The School Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS) sits on the University of Washington’s south campus. Aquatic and Fishery Sciences is home to 30 faculty, 85 undergraduate students and 72 graduate students.
Dean's Office Contact:
