The following consists of editorial style rules that and rules that apply to common writing mistakes.
1. At first mention, always write out the proper name of a business, group, organization, and so forth. If you intend to
abbreviate the name later in the article, place that abbreviation in parenthesis just after the first reference. Use that
abbreviation for the future references in the piece. The Fort Worth Moms Blog (FWMB) likes you. Do not ever doubt
how much FWMB likes you.
2. Per Chicago Manual of Style: “Items in a series are normally separated by commas. When a conjunction joins the last
two elements in a series of three or more, a comma – known as the serial or series comma or the Oxford comma –
should appear before the conjunction. I like to eat cake, cookies, and pie.
“When elements in a series include internal punctuation, or when they are very long and complex, they may
need to be separated by semicolons rather than by commas.” The referee reported the scores to the crowd: Blue
team, 4; red team, 7; and the green team, 2.
3. Write out numbers zero through nine. Use numerals for numbers 10 and above. I ate seven cookies and 14 donuts.
4. Your typing/computer teacher was wrong: Do not hit the space bar twice between sentences. This is incorrect: I like
you. Do you like me? This is correct: I like you. Do you like me?
5. Write out state names; do not abbreviate state names at any reference.
6. Here’s how we write time: The meeting is at 2:00 p.m. Please do not write out time (two o’clock), capitalize a.m. or
p.m., forget the colon or the numerals after the colon, or adjust the spacing between the numerals and letters.
7. Lower case job title unless a proper noun; the same applies to degrees, schools, etc. Lori is the president of the
organization. She holds a bachelor of arts in English from her state university.
8. Noun and pronoun agreement is a thing. If you have a singular noun, you need to have a singular pronoun. If you
have a plural noun, you need to have a plural pronoun. These mistakes are often made in one of two cases:
*Incorrect: Your child loves to eat apples. Let them eat two or three a day.
Correct: Your child loves to eat apples. Let him or her eat two or three a day.
*Incorrect: Target launched a new designer fashion line. They are offering a 10 percent discount to our readers.
Correct: Target launched a new designer fashion line. It is offering a 10 percent discount to our readers.
9. Capitalize all words in a title except articles and prepositions that have less than five letters. Note: Verbs are always
capitalized, no matter if it is an action or linking verb. Sample title: I Was Scared of Walking into a Wall
10. Formatting text using all caps letter, italics, bold, ellipsis, and the like is helpful, often creating emphasis for the
reader or expressing humor/emotion. However, such will lose its punch if it is overused. Once you’ve written a piece,
review it for these elements. Are they overused? Just right?
11. Titles of books, movies, art, albums/musical compilations, and ships/boats are always italicized and follow the rules for
capitalization of titles.
12. When using an ellipsis, insert a space before and after each period. I love tacos . . . and cookies. When using an ellipsis
to separate two sentences, use four periods. This is often used when quoting another source. “This is a quote from
Harry Potter . . . . I wanted to leave out some of the words between the first sentence and this one, so I used four
periods in my ellipsis to show that these words are not part of the same thought.”
13. When more than one word is used as an adjective, hyphenate it. My two-year-old son is cute. My two year old is cute.
She is a stay-at-home mom. I am planning to stay at home.
14. Commas, periods, and exclamations points ALWAYS go INSIDE quotations marks no matter where they fall in the
sentence. “I love cookies,” said Susan. I know about the “big surprise.” Questions marks go inside the quotation marks
when the content inside the quotations marks is a question. “Do you know about the ‘big surprise?’” When the content
inside the quotation marks is not a question, the question mark goes on the outside of the quotations marks. Have you
seen the “monster”?