Style Guide for Electronic Communications
Headings and Capitalization
In addition to formatting headings by color and/or size to make your website easier to scan, follow the standards for capitalization below to create consistency across sites.
This style manual adopts the heading style presented in the Columbia University Digital Knowledge Ventures Editorial Style Guide, which reads as follows:
(You can see an example of applying the style below.)
"For levels 1 [main topics] and 2 [subordinate topics], use title style. That is, capitalize important words:
- adjectives
- adverbs
- nouns
- prepositions that have either two or more syllables or five or more letters
- subordinating conjunctions (as, because, if, that, when, etc.)
- vowels
- the first and last word of the head
The following words take an initial lowercase letter:
- articles (a, an, the)
- coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor)
- prepositions that have either only one syllable or four or fewer letters
Use sentence style [i.e., capitalize first word only] for level 3 heads and below.
Title style is necessary at the higher levels of head because, while in most cases we will use only two or three levels, we have to anticipate that in some cases we will need more. Case (upper and lower) is, along with font size and formatting features (boldface, italic), useful for creating distinctions between levels of head and indicating the hierarchy. If we have already used sentence style for levels 1 and 2, it would be confusing, or counterintuitive, to use title case for levels 3 and 4."i
An Example of Applying Headings
To apply heading levels, think of your text as being like an outline. Level 1 is the main topic of the information below it. Level 2 is for subordinate topics. Levels 3 and 4 are usually headings that either give context for a list below or is the topic of a paragraph. Here is a fairly straightforward example of applying levels:
Level 1: CLA Student Services
(Note capitalization)
Text talking about student services
Level 2: Student Communities
(Note capitalization)
Text talking about student communities
Level 3: Special CLASS resources for incoming students
(Note lack of capitalization)
(Some of the following items receive capitalization because they are the proper names of an online document or a course; otherwise, only the first word would be capitalized.)
Level 4: I Am New/Orientation Website (proper name of website)
CLA 1001 (proper name of the course)
How a first-year interest group can help you
How to choose a major
CLA Transfer Student Guide (proper name of the document)
Level 2: Using Your Student Community
(Note return to capitalization because of level 2 status)
Applying levels to navigation and lists of links
The persistent, or global, navigation should receive level 1 and level 2 treatment.
Lists of links that follow a heading or subheading should be treated as level 3 or 4 and receive capitalization only for those items that would normally be capitalized (e.g., a proper name, a title, etc.).
Sources
i Columbia University Digital Knowledge Ventures Style Guide. <http://www.dkv.columbia.edu/edstyleguide/> (2 July 2004)
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