Newsletter Style Sheet

guidelines

Newsletter Style Sheet

guidelines

Fearrington Homeowners Association

Published by The Newsletter Staff

The following styles and practices will be used by The Newsletter staff. To the extent those submitting can follow these practices, it will be appreciated as it saves editing time, but is not required. Fonts are noted here for newsletter staff’s purposes only. For general editing decisions the newsletter staff will also rely on The Associated Press Style Book.

TopicFHA Newsletter Style Guidelines
Attribution• Informational articles should contain the name of the author
• Attribution is welcome, but not necessary for club and group announcements 
Formatting• Paragraphs are flush left
• One space, not two, between sentences 
Fonts• Georgia – headings & sub-headings
• Tahoma – article text
Spelling
&
Hyphenation
Words frequently used in our newsletter should appear as:

• email (noun, verb)
• fundraiser
• healthcare (adjective)
• potluck
• website

Abbreviations

Do not use periods with most abbreviations (US; NC; PhD)
• FHA (for Fearrington Homeowners Association…no need to spell out)
• Most other abbreviations? Spell out first time in body of text, and then abbreviate thereafter, e.g. Fearrington Tennis Association (FTA)
• Headlines – use abbreviations when possible
• “And” – in general use the word and not an ampersand (&) in phrases and titles

CapitalizationCapitalize:
        • The Board or FHA Board; The Barn; The Gathering Place; The Directory (FHA Directory)

Do not capitalize:
        • federal government

Punctuation Use the serial comma for lists, e.g. visual arts, music, and fun
• Periods and commas go inside closing quotation marks: “…reappraisal in many quarters.”
• Use an em dash (not a hyphen) for interrupting words/phrases, such as: rare day—or year—in my life.

Italics
Quotation Marks
Underscoring
&
Boldface

Italics for books, movies, and titles
Italics for emphasis (not boldface, all caps or underscoring)
• ” ” Quotes around song titles and lecture titles
Underscore web sites and email addresses
• No underscore for phone numbers
Boldface for dates, times and event locations
Numbers,
Units of Measure
&
En Dashes
Use figures for numbers or units of measure over 10, but spell out a number that starts a sentence

• 1-inch thick
• …has 20 members
• Thirty-one artists will show their works.
• Treat related numbers alike: 3 men and 20 women
• $15 (not $15.00)
• Use “to” or an en dash in ranges: 8–10 people. But, use “to” when “from” precedes the range: from 20 to 30 people

Dates
&
Times
Always spell month in dates: November 15
• Do not include the year in dates, unless needed for clarity
• 7:00 pm
• 9:00 to 11:30 am, BUT 11:30 am to 3:00 pm
• 12:00 noon OR 12:00 pm
• Meeting on November 10 (NOT 10th)

See also The Newsletter Guidelines