We like the Oxford comma but no periods in DC, and other general style guide rules

What do we think about when we write headlines? Do we use % or write percent? When do we capitalize County and when don’t we?

Greater Greater Washington mainly follows Associated Press style, but we’ve developed our own style guide with rules for terms we use often. Reading publications’ style guides can be a lot of fun (if you’re a language nerd, at least), as we saw when the Washington City Paper published their guide in 2014 or WAMU’s Jordan Pascale recently tweeted pieces of the 1989 Washington Post style guide.

We divide ours into a few sections: general rules for headlines, punctuation, numbers, etc.; geographic place names; and other specific terms. Here are our general rules. What do you notice? Is anything missing?

General practices

Headlines
Headlines should be catchy and sentence-like: have a subject and active verb. In most but not all cases, you should be able to put a period on the end and have a sentence.

If the headline is just one sentence, don’t put a period on the end. If it’s more than one sentence, use full punctuation including at the end.

Don’t make the sentence only a gerund (a phrase that starts with an -ing word), like Cleaning the river. This can be part of a larger sentence with an active verb.

Don’t Capitalize Every Word. Just capitalize the first word and proper nouns. If there’s a colon, capitalize the word after the colon.

Do not use terms like should except in opinion articles (and even so try to avoid it because it can be overused). Instead of Metro should offer flexible passes, say Flexible Metro passes would bring in more riders, and in a news article favor i.e. Flexible Metro passes would bring in more riders, advocates say. The bonus is that you can fit information in the headline that way; instead of just asserting something should happen, you can say why (briefly) and who is arguing that.

Main headlines that fit on no more than two lines are preferred over longer headlines. The Home Page Title allows for a shorter headline for the home page; use this if in the top boxes of the home page the title is taking up more than three short lines.

Introductory paragraphs
The first paragraph should be fairly short, like 1-2 sentences or 3-4 lines. It should state the main takeaway of the article. If the reader only reads that, will they know what the article is about?

Start an article with a statement about the issue, not your source for the information. Instead of The Washington Post reports… start with the actual thing that happened. Then credit the source at the end of that sentence or in a subsequent paragraph. The same goes for A study found…; say i.e. Half of humans are at or above the median, a study by the Brookings Institution concluded.

Similarly, avoid starting an article (or Breakfast Link) with the name of an administrative agency. Instead of The Montgomery County Department of Transportation will build new protected bikeways in Silver Spring, write New protected bikeways are coming to Silver Spring and in the second paragraph, explain, e.g. the project, by the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT), will take six months.

Paragraph breaks
Break up long paragraphs that go more than 4-5 lines. It makes things more readable, especially on mobile devices.

Subheaders and bullets
Use subheaders for new sections put it in bold with a blank line before and after (as its own paragraph). As with titles, Don’t Capitalize Every Word.

Lists
Use bulleted lists for lists of short items (less than one line for all or most). For longer items, make each item its own paragraph, and create a short boldfaced title for each, which should be at the start of the paragraph and ending with a period. Continue the rest of the paragraph starting on the same line.

Corrections
For a minor error (typo, wrong number), fix the article and if a commenter pointed it out or someone emailed us, also reply to the commenter or emailer. For any errors of material fact or significant post-publication changes, add an italicized note/explanation at the bottom of the article explaining the change.

If an article was erroneous at the time we published it, prefix the bottom explanation with Correction and a colon. If something happens subsequently that changes the situation from what was the case when the article was published, or if we find out additional information which adds to the story but doesn’t render anything previously reported to be incorrect, use Update and a colon.

Numbers

Spell out numbers under 10, like eight-car trains. Use digits for other numbers and follow exceptions in AP style. If a number starts a sentence, write it out if it’s under 100, but it’s better to avoid this when it’s possible to rearrange the sentence not to. Breakfast Links, tweets, and headlines can use digits at any time if it helps with length.

Use commas for numbers over 1,000 (i.e. 2,300 instead of 2300).

Currency
Write out million, billion, etc. in dollars, like $5 million instead of $5m or $5M.

Percent
Prefer the % sign for a percentage rather than the word percent, as in 42% instead of 42 percent. In this case, use the numeral even for small numbers, e.g. 1%.

Times
For times, use 8:00 am (lowercase, no periods) rather than 8:00 AM or 8:00 a.m. and same for pm. Put a space between the hour number and am or pm (not 7am).

Punctuation

Commas
Use the Oxford comma, where there is a comma before the word and in a multi-item list. For example: Lions, tigers, and bears.

Em dashes
A dash separating two thoughts, if used, should be an actual em dash symbol (—) and not a hyphen/minus (-). Put spaces before and after an em dash for line break purposes. However, it is easy to over-use em dashes, and so they should be used sparingly at most or avoided, such as by dividing the sentence into two shorter ones.

To insert an em dash, click on the symbol tool in the editor (icon is an omega Ω) and then choosing the long dash (just under the t). Or, on a Mac, press option-shift-minus. Do not just use the hyphen/minus (-).

Italics
As per AP style, italicize names of publications and books.

Quotation marks
For quotations, use American style, where a period or comma always goes inside the quotation marks, not outside. Question marks, exclamation points, colons, semicolons, etc. go inside if the quoted person used them; they go outside if they are the author’s. For example, “See, the period is inside.” But: Did he really say “Chicago is better than DC”?

Always use double quotes, even when citing a single word, except for quotations inside of other quotations, which get single quotes.

Periods (abbreviations)
Don’t use periods for multi-word abbreviations, such as DC (not D.C.) and US (not U.S.). This is different from most publications’ style.

Capitalization

County, city
Do not capitalize county, plan, city, trail, etc. except when written as part of the full name of a larger proper noun (Arlington County, Comprehensive Plan, City of Rockville, Metropolitan Branch Trail): The trail is in the plan, county officials say. Do capitalize District when referring to the District of Columbia.

Email
The words web, website, and email have become common nouns and can appear without capitalization or hyphenation.

Federal
Relating to the government of the United States. We do not capitalize this term. Many people don’t know it, but Logan Circle is federal property.

Legislative district
When referring to a legislative ward or district with number, capitalize: DC Councilmember Mary Cheh represents Ward 3. Lowercase when using more generically: Her ward is the District’s wealthiest. See also other rules under Councilmember and Party.

Metro line
When mentioning single Metro lines like the Red Line, capitalize both the color and the word Line. But if mentioning more than one line, like Blue and Yellow lines, only capitalize the color. See also Street.

Street
Road type words like Street, Avenue, etc. are capitalized when applied to a single road: Lynn Street. Do not abbreviate to St., Ave., etc. except as needed in headlines and tweets. When citing multiple roads with the same type word, use lowercase: North Veitch Street and Wilson Boulevard, but 30th and Taylor streets or Georgia and Connecticut avenues.

Titles
A person’s title or an administrative body is capitalized only if that title is part of a noun phrase naming them. For example, WMATA General Manager Richard Sarles reports to the WMATA Board of Directors, but the general manager reports to the board and often meets with individual board members, all lowercase.