Avera Style Guide
Dates and Times
Time
- Use figures except for noon and midnight. Do not put a 12 in front of noon or midnight.
3:30 p.m.
They placed the call at midnight. (not 12 midnight)
- Use lowercase letters. Use a space in between the number and a.m. or p.m.
5:30 p.m. (not 5:30pm, or 5:30 PM or 5:30 pm)
- Use a colon to separate hours from minutes. For time “on the hour,” do not use zeroes to denote minutes.
1:30 p.m.
11 a.m., 2 p.m. (not 11:00 am, 2:00 pm)
- When writing a mix of full-hour and partial-hour times, use 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.
Do: Class times are 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.
Do Not: Class times are 2:00 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.
- When writing time ranges, use a double dash (en dash), not “through” or “to” and the following style:*
Do: 9 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Do Not: 9 a.m. through 2:30 p.m.
Do: 2:30 – 4 p.m.
Do Not: 2:30 to 4 p.m.
*Exceptions to these time range guides may be used in print ads which are considered word art.
- When referring to a range of times in narrative form, spell out the word “to” in place of the hyphen. (It is acceptable to use a hyphen in narrative form if the text needs to be easily scanned.)
5 – 9 p.m.
The Adult, Child and Infant CPR class will run from 5 to 9 p.m. on July 19.
- When listing time, date and location of an event, preferred style is to do so in that order:
The Christmas Tea will be from 10 a.m. to noon, Friday, in the Avera Sacred Heart Hospital lobby.
Time Zones
- Use the abbreviation only if it is linked with a clock reading.
New Mexico is on Mountain Standard Time. The marathon begins at 7 a.m. MST.
Dates
- Use cardinal numbers in dates, not ordinals (st, th, rd).
Do: The next meetings will be held Nov. 4 and Dec. 2.
Do Not: The next meetings will be held Nov. 4th and Dec. 2nd.
- When listing a range of dates, use a hyphen in between the dates. Do not include a space before or after the hyphen. When referring to a range of dates in narrative form, spell out the word “to” or “through” in place of the hyphen. (It is acceptable to use a hyphen in narrative form if the text needs to be easily scanned.)
Oct. 20-21
May 22-June 1
Avera Health will co-host a High School and Collegiate Sports Medicine Conference Friday, July 22, through Sunday, July 24.
Days
- Capitalize days of the week and do not abbreviate.
The party on Saturday, July 4, was a huge success.
Months
- Certain months are spelled out in all cases: March, April, May, June, July. The remaining months should be abbreviated (Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.) only when they are used with a specific date.
Columbus sighted land on Oct. 12, 1492.
Thanksgiving will fall on Nov. 28 this year.
- Spell out all names of months when they stand alone or appear only with a year.
It’s a long time from May to December.
January 1972 was a cold month.
NOTE: When a month and year are used without a specific date, they are not separated by a comma.
- When a phrase refers to a month, day and year, use commas to separate the year.
Feb. 14, 1991, was the target date.
Years
- Use an s without an apostrophe to indicate spans of decades or centuries.
the 1920s
the 1800s
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Italics
- Use italics for titles of books, magazines, newspapers, plays, long poems, movies, paintings, sculpture and long musical compositions.
National Geographic
the movie Titanic
Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Journal of Pediatrics
Argus Leader
- Use quotation marks to designate titles of chapters, short stories or magazine or journal articles.
His article titled “Appropriate Medication for Pediatric Patients” appeared in the Journal of Pediatrics last month.
- Use italics for terms that are defined in the sentence.
Heart failure is often accompanied by edema, an accumulation of fluid that produces swelling.
- Use italics for foreign words and phrases not listed in English-language dictionaries.
c’est la vie
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Brochures, Presentations and Web Content
Brochures, presentations and Web content that are developed outside of the Department of Marketing and Communications should be written and designed using the Avera Health Graphics Standards Manual and Avera Brand Policy 510. In addition, the editorial styles listed below should be followed.
Presentation Titles, Headlines and Subheads
- Presentation titles, headlines, subheads and other similar verbiage should be treated in upper/lowercase, never in all capital letters.
Top 10 Recommended Health Care Websites
Family-Centered Care
- Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters. Capitalize an article – the, a, an – or word fewer than four letters when they are the first or last word in a title
Learning to Live With ADHD
Planning for Surgery
The Problem of Pain
NOTE: Be sure to capitalize short verb forms such as Is and Be.
- When hyphenated words are in a heading or title, capitalize all the elements except articles, short prepositions and short conjunctions.
Fine-Tuning the Focus on Autism
Addressing Anxiety Build-up
- When referring to the title of a work, use titled rather than entitled, which means having a right to do or have something.
The article was titled “Thoracic Injury in Children.”
He was entitled to receive the refund.
Trademark and Registered Trademark Symbols
- Products or services that are trademarked or have registered trademarks should be identified with a trademark symbol (™) or registered trademark symbol (®) at the first mention of the product or service and once on each page where the product or service appears.
Avera eICU® CARE
Avera HealtheCARE™
- If possible, use a generic term rather than a brand name.
acetaminophen versus Tylenol®
tissue versus Kleenex®
Copyright Information
- Publications, presentations, pamphlets, brochures or other similar proprietary materials should include a copyright symbol (©), the year of the copyright and the name of the organization within the document, usually on the back of a printed piece or in the footer of a presentation.
©2005 Avera Health
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Netiquette
Preferred Spellings and Capitalization for Internet Jargon
- These common electronic media terms should be spelled and capitalized as follows:
AveraNET
download
e-mail (not E-mail, Email or email. However, E-mail should be used at the
beginning of a sentence and in a headline.)
home page
Internet
intranet
online
URL
webcam
webcast
webmaster
webpage
website (not Web site or web site)
World Wide Web (Web, not web, when referring to the World Wide Web)
e-mail
- It is not appropriate to write an e-mail using all capital letters.
- Format your e-mail address with firstname.lastname@[averainstitution].org using all lowercase letters.
john.doe@averaqueenofpeace.org
This rule may not apply to advertising or other cases when several words together become unreadable.
www.WorriedAboutMyHeart.com vs. www.worriedaboutmyheart.com
www.AveraQueenofPeace.com vs. www.averaqueenofpeace.com
Other Web Issues
- If an Internet address falls at the end of a sentence, end the sentence with a period.
- The official Internet address for Avera is www.Avera.org.
- The official intranet address for Avera is http://averanet.
- Include the preceding “www” when referring to URLs in print.
Call (605) 322-4700 or visit www.Avera.org for more information.
Writing for the Web
- Make sure to cover who, what, when, where, how and why at the beginning of the text.
- Be brief and to the point when writing for the Web; don’t use “fluff.” Avoid unnecessary words.
- Avoid directional references, such as:
Click here
Below
To the right
The graphic on the left
This page
This chapter
- Webpages should contain a minimum of 150 to 250 words (for search engines) and should focus on one topic. Avoid long pages.
- Each paragraph should contain no more than five sentences (no more than 20 words in a sentence); try to keep the sentences fairly short. Break up the text using bullets, subheads, etc.
- Try to place the key search words in the beginning of paragraphs and at the top part of the page.
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