Punctuation
- Do not use a comma before Jr., Sr., II, III, IV, etc.: William P. Smith III presented the guest lecture.
- Dates
- Dates are punctuated month, day, year:
- Example: "May 12, 2001 , was the date set for commencement.”
- This differs from the Chicago Manual , which prefers day, month, year.
- If using only the month and year, there is no comma: "Commencement was in held in May 2000."
- When using a numbered date in text, write the number without a “th” or “nd” suffix, “June 7” – this eliminates the need to use subscript type styles.
- Quotation marks are placed outside commas and periods and inside semicolons and colons.
- Question marks and exclamation points are placed inside quotation marks if they are part of the quote and outside if they are not.
- Items placed inside quotation marks include
- article titles
- direct quotes
- parts of books
- song titles
- short poems
- television and radio programs
- Italics are used for
- book titles
- periodicals
- newspapers
- pamphlets
- proceedings
- movie and play titles
- works of art
- operas and other long musical compositions
- Acronyms (Should be avoided almost always See our guide to Bellevue College Terms, Names & Formatting). If you do need to use them
- Acronyms should be all caps, no periods, closed up: GPA, ID cards.
- Acronyms should be introduced by the full title the first time used on a page or section, and followed with an abbreviation introducing the acronym in parenthesis following the title.
- When capitalizing a compound (hyphenated) word, just capitalize the first part, as in Late-start.
- Ampersand (&) may be used in titles, headings and headlines to save space. Please spell out “and” in text.

