* The AP Stylebook is our general use stylebook. Familiarize yourself with it, if possible.
* Internet is lowercase. So are web and net, when referring to the World Wide Web and internet by those names.
* E-mail takes a hyphen. Always.
* Numbers: Spell out one through nine, in most cases. “Eight people attended the talk.” But render them as numerals in statistical instances: “Nearly 8 percent of the population is unemployed.” With large numbers, always use commas as appropriate. It’s 1,000, not 1000.
* When a company or product has a lowercase letter as the first letter of its name (eBay, iPhone, etc.), cap the letter if it begins a sentence. (EBay officials said Monday….) Proper punctuation trumps branding conceit. Elsewhere in text, and in headlines, go ahead and respect the lower case affectation.
*LEGO is in all caps. Rather than “LEGOs” for the toys, use “LEGO bricks” or some such phrasing when possible.
* Always spell out state names. Don’t abbreviate them when they’re used with cities or political affiliations. It’s San Jose, California, not Calif.; Dianne Feinstein (D-California), not (D-Calif.). This is an exception to AP style.
* Since we write and edit in American English, use the singular pronoun when referring to a company: Yahoo is losing its shirt, not their shirt. The Brits use the plural pronoun, which is why their bloody empire is dead.
* Same with spelling. No British spellings: colour, etc. But: If you’re citing a British institution, such as the Defence Ministry, use the British spelling.
* Go ahead and use the serial comma. With impunity, even.
* Change your settings to use straight quotes and apostrophes. We change curly ones all the time. If you’ve forgotten to do this in advance, please save your work as Text Only, before copying pasting into Teamsite, Typepad, WordPress or any of our production tools.
* Remember: One space between sentences.
Headlines: We use a caps style. All principal words in the hed are capped. All verbs are capped, including little ones like “Is.” All words four letters or longer, regardless of what they are, are capped.
headlines and decks Headlines are limited to a 62-character count (for display and SEO purposes). Headline style is all initial caps. “Microsoft Loses Antitrust Case.”
Capitalize the word following a hyphen for compounds made of two words, as well as compounds where one part is just a prefix or suffix, like E-Mail or Quasi-Official. However, if the compound is a trademark or brand, like Blu-ray, do not capitalize the second word.
Numbers under 10 should not be spelled out in headlines, even if it is the first word. In other words, always use numerals in heds.
Generally, excerpts should be short; three to four lines are best.
