Editorial Style Guide

This guide for School of Pharmacy (SOP) communicators comprehensively describes the writing style for official School of Pharmacy communications in any medium, including print, web, social media, and official and formal correspondence.

On this page

• Who should read this
• How to get what you need
• Table of contents

Who should read this

This reference is for members of the School of Pharmacy community involved in official communications. (UCSF communicators outside the School of Pharmacy may refer to the UCSF Editorial Style Guide found at Editorial Expression.)

How to get what you need

• If you are in the School of Pharmacy and need an answer to a simple question, ask us at Website and Communications Support. We aim to reply within two business days.

• If the writing guidance you seek is not found in this guide, you’ll need to consult one of our standard references.

Table of contents

• Introduction
  • Overview
  • Scope
  • Standard references
• Brand, audience, and inclusive language
  • UCSF and the School brand
  • Who is your audience?
  • Inclusive language
• People
  • Names and titles
  • Degrees
  • Other details
• The University, the School, and other entities
  • The University and sub-brands
  • The School
  • Departments
  • Programs, centers, labs, and more
  • Affiliated entities
• Addresses
  • Overview
  • FedEx zip codes
• Numbers
  • Overview
  • Numbers in a range
  • Dates
  • Times
  • Percentages
  • Phone numbers
• Punctuation and spelling
  • Oxford comma (aka serial comma)
  • Spelling, hyphens, and compound words
  • Contractions
  • Ellipses
  • Parenthetical elements and commas, em dashes, parens, brackets
  • Bullets and lists
  • Separator
• Other style topics
  • Abbreviations and acronyms
  • Links to downloadable files
  • Citations
  • Image credits
  • Editing quotations
  • Title and heading casing
  • Link casing
  • Collective nouns
  • Word list

First topic: Introduction