Style Guide for Electronic Communications
Event Listings
Use a consistent format when listing events to help your visitors quickly scan and find what they are looking for. The guidelines below have been created to establish consistency.
Primary Event Sources vs. Referring Event Sources
Event listings on CLA webpages may serve as the primary source of information on the event, where the full information is included, or as a referring source, where only an abbreviated version is listed. Visitors may click on a link in the referring source to learn more on another webpage, the primary source.
A Note on Using PDFs
Posting information to your website using PDF can often result in search engines missing your information. They are not able to extract information from your PDF to put into the search results. To better ensure that your event shows up in search engine results, post the information in HTML as well as PDF.
Primary event source style
Listings for primary event sources should include:
- Event category (See "Event categories" below.)
- Event title
- Date, time, and location
- Description of the event
- Contact information
The listings may include:
- More detailed information about presenters
- More detailed information about the location
- Resources related to the event (e.g., webpages)
- Information about the sponsor(s)
Example of a primary event source
Exhibition: "Drawing: Seven Curatorial Responses"
Reception: Friday, November 19, 2004
6:00–8:30 p.m.
Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Regis Center for Art
This exhibition provides a forum for seven uniquely talented local curators whose work has invigorated the local scene. The invited curators will address contemporary drawing within an expanded field. Cole Rogers (High Point Press), Christi Atkinson (Soap Factory), John Rasmussen (Midway Contemporary Art), Kristopher Douglas (The Rochester Art Center), Tim Peterson (Franklin Art Works), Clarence Morgan (art department), and Suzy Greenberg (Soo Visual Arts Center). The project director for this exhibition is Alexis Kuhr (art department). The exhibit runs from November 16–December 16. Free.
Contact: Department of Art
Referring event source style
A referring event source provides just basic information about an event and refers visitors to a webpage with more information. Listings for referring event sources should include:
- Date
- Event category
- Event title, linking to another webpage that has the full information about the event
- Description (concise and brief)
- Time
Example of a referring event source
December 3
Performance: Brownout: Border Pulp Stories [links to webpage with full information about this event.]
Performance artist and cultural critic Guillermo Gómez-Peña explores a wide range of issues in Chicano culture and in global culture more broadly. Part of the Art and Commitment Symposium. Time: 8:00 p.m.
Event Categories
Before the title of the event, give the event a type using one of the categories below. Doing so can help visitors quickly scan the list. Categories include:
- art exhibit
- concert (may include recitals, master classes, musical performances)
- conference
- discussion/symposium
- lecture
- performance (may include dance, theatre, dramatic readings, or multidisciplinary presentations)
- reading (authors' readings of their texts—nondramatic)
Style Guidelines for Event Descriptions
Applying italics and quotation marks
See the Quick Reference Style Guide for Events for a guide to applying italics and quotation marks.
Names of scholars in event titles and descriptions
For events where one or more individuals are being listed, use the first and last names without titles (e.g., Mary Smith, not Dr. or Professor Mary Smith). Set off degrees, fields of study, departments, and the like with commas.
Example
"Mary Smith, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–LaCrosse, will present a lecture on …."
"John Jones, classical and Near Eastern studies department, will lecture on …."
Names of academic institutions in event titles and descriptions
Use the proper names of academic institutions in event titles and descriptions. Use abbreviations and acronyms sparingly unless your readership is familiar with them, (e.g. Harvard, UCLA, Yale).
Capitalization of academic departments
For University of Minnesota academic departments that are used in the event descriptions, the University of Minnesota Style Manual rules should be observed. (See the Grammar and Spelling section of this guide.)
Examples
- "John Doe, Department of English or English department, will lecture on… ."
- "Jane Doe, Department of Art or art department, will demonstrate… ."
- "Mary Doe, Department of African American & African Studies or African American & African studies department, will present… ."
Event dates and times
The date and time should include:
- Day of the week, spelled out
- Month, spelled out
- Day (Do not use st, d, or th after the day. List the day as May 1, August 3, October 10, etc.)
- Time, include a.m. and p.m. after each starting time and ending time when the times cross over noon or midnight; otherwise, just one time designation will suffice. Use an en dash between the starting time and ending time (HTML code: – or –).
Examples
Tuesday, August 3, 1:15–3:15 p.m.
Thursday, January 6, 11:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
For events with variable dates and times, such as a play, which may occur on different days of the week and at different times, it is not necessary to include date and time information. However, a link or some other means for visitors to easily find this information must be included.
Quick Reference Style Guide for Events
This guide, which has been adapted from the University of Minnesota Style Manual, provides a quick means of determining whether an event and words found in its description need italics, quotation marks, or neither. If you do not find an answer for your question here, please see the complete list from the University of Minnesota Style Manual below. If your situation is not addressed there, consult The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition.
Event type |
Italics |
Quotation marks |
No italics or quotation marks |
Art |
|
|
|
Musical works |
|
|
|
Poetry |
|
|
|
Spoken word (not poetry or plays) |
|
|
|
Written word (not poetry) |
|
|
|
Other |
|
|
|
The following list is taken from the University of Minnesota Style Manual.vi
TITLES OF WORKS
- Italicize (underline in typewriting or handwriting) titles and subtitles of:
- Published books, monographs, pamphlets, brochures, periodicals (magazines, newsletters, journals, etc.)
- Newspapers (entire titles), newspaper sections published separately
- Proceedings of conferences
- Collections of poems, plays, essays, short stories
- Long poems published separately
- Plays, motion pictures
- Operas, long musical compositions and their descriptive or traditional titles
- Albums or CDs
- Works of art
- Legal cases (except the v.) and shortened second references to cases
- Use quotation marks around titles of:
- Articles in periodicals and newspapers
- Parts and chapters of books
- Short stories and essays included in books
- Short poems
- Dissertations, theses, manuscripts, reports, unpublished lectures, speeches, and papers
- Radio and television programs (a useful way to handle titles of individual programs with a television series is “Yard ’n’ Garden: The Larch”)
- Songs, short musical compositions
- Substantive titles of conferences
- Official titles of art exhibits
- Do not italicize or use quotation marks around:
- University course titles; capitalize initial letters of major words
- Titles of sections of books (preface, index); capitalize a cross-reference, but do not capitalize a passing reference
- Titles of book series and editions; do not capitalize generic terms (series, edition) when they are not parts of titles
- Parts of poems, plays; do not capitalize them
- Names of depositories, archives, manuscript collections
- Names of musical compositions composed of music form, number, key
- Traditional or descriptive names of art works
- Descriptive titles of art exhibits and conferences
- Titles of regular newspaper columns
- Specific wording of short signs, notices, mottoes, inscriptions
Sources
vi University of Minnesota. University of Minnesota Style Manual 2002 <http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/style/italics.html#Anchor-49425> (5 July 2004)
Next Section: Captions, Credits, and Attributions