House Style
The Institute's editorial conventions.
The Institute follows a small set of standing conventions in its prose, its citations, and its typography. The guide below is binding upon Institute publications and is offered, without ceremony, to chapters and members who wish to align their own writing with the house style.
I Foundational
The Institute as a body
The Institute is a singular noun and takes a singular verb. Write The Institute is, never The Institute are. The same convention extends to other named bodies (the Board, the Committee, the Office of the Recording Secretary). British conventional usage to the contrary is acknowledged but not adopted.
Capitalization of titles
Officer titles are capitalized when standing alone or following a name (the President, M. Doyle, President) and lowercased in attributive use (presidential prerogative, secretarial duties). Institutional names and bodies are capitalized throughout (the Standing Committee on Notability).
II Numerals and Quantities
Spelling out numerals
Numerals from one through one hundred are spelled out. Round numbers beyond one hundred (two thousand, five thousand) are likewise spelled. Other figures take Arabic numerals, set in tabular form where they appear in proximate columns or runs.
Currency
Sums under one thousand dollars are written with the dollar sign and no separator ($25, $250). Sums of one thousand and above take the comma separator ($1,500, $10,000). The ISO three-letter code is used in international contexts (USD).
Percentages
The percent sign is used in technical and quantitative contexts; the word percent is preferred in narrative prose. Percentage point is used for differences between two rates and is not to be elided to percent.
III Punctuation
The Oxford comma
The serial comma is used without exception. It is preserved in coordinate sequences, in lists of three or more, and across independent clauses where its omission would produce ambiguity. The Institute does not consider this matter open to dispute.
Em dashes
The em dash is set without spaces in print contexts and with hairline spaces (U+200A) on either side in screen-rendered prose. It is used sparingly: too-frequent dashes render the prose breathless. Two em dashes per long paragraph is the practical ceiling.
Quotation marks
The Institute uses American conventional ordering: double quotation marks for primary speech and quoted material; single marks for material nested within. Punctuation is set inside the closing mark in declarative prose; outside the mark in technical citations where precision of the quoted material is at issue.
IV Citation
Books
Title in italics, author surname-first in parenthetical reference, date and place of publication in the form (Boston, 1972). Edition is given where it materially affects the cited matter.
Articles and serials
Article title in roman within quotation marks, periodical in italics, volume and issue separated by a comma, page range with an en dash. Example: "On the Hypocoristic," Onomastica Americana, Vol. XII, No. 3, pp. 41–58.
Internal documents
Internal documents are cited by their full archival name and the accession number assigned by the Recording Secretary. Example: Resolution 2024-11, Institute Correspondence Files, Accession 2024-A-114.
V Names
Members in correspondence
In correspondence and citation, members are referred to by initial and surname (M. Doyle, M. Power). The full given name is supplied at first mention only when the context warrants — for instance, when more than one Michael of the same surname is in play. The honorifics Mr., Ms., Mrs., and Mx. are used as the addressee's expressed preference dictates.
Variant spellings
Variant spellings are preserved as the bearer renders them. The Institute does not, in its publications, anglicize Mihály to Michael or vice versa, except where doing so is strictly required for the comprehension of an English-speaking general readership and even then the original is given parenthetically.
VI Voice
The Institute's voice is patient, declarative, and lightly formal. Exclamation points are not used. Rhetorical questions are used sparingly. The first-person plural is preferred to the first-person singular; the institutional we is permitted in correspondence over the President's signature but is otherwise to be avoided. The second person is reserved for direct instruction and for forms of address.
Hyperbole, where it appears, is dry. The Institute would rather be thought too sober than too clever.