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The editors at Strategic Relations and Communications have developed this editorial style guide for CU Boulder faculty and staff, especially those who write for an external or formal audience. Such documents include print and electronic materials designed to promote CU Boulder, its departments and its programs, and materials providing information about or accountability for CU Boulder and its activities.

In January 2014 we modified our CU Boulder editorial style guidelines to ensure our communication style is consistent across the campus, whether we’re writing news releases for the media, content for the web, or copy for print publications. The main change is that we’ve adopted The Associated Press Stylebook as our official style guide, in place of The Chicago Manual of Style. There are a few cases where we depart from AP style, however. Please check our list of those exceptions. 

Our primary focus with this guide is to provide university-specific information such as the official names of our colleges and schools, a list of our buildings, the abbreviations for our major fields of study and our nondiscrimination statements. For any style questions not addressed in this guide, please refer to The Associated Press Stylebook. For other spelling or usage questions not addressed in the AP guide, we encourage you to refer to Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Our goal is to present a consistent and high standard of writing that appropriately reflects CU Boulder’s standard of excellence. We encourage university faculty and staff to become familiar with these guidelines and to use them whenever possible. However, this guide is not intended to replace other writing style guides used for specific purposes or for publications such as scholarly journals.

Please direct questions or comments about this style guide to Paul Beique, senior editor in Strategic Relations and Communications, at paul.beique@colorado.edu.