Columbia Climate School | Earth Institute Resource Center

The Columbia Climate School uses AP style for its communications, with a few exceptions. You can access the online guide through the Columbia Library. Just go to https://library.columbia.edu/ and enter “AP StyleBook” in the search field. The AP site will let you go through the guide by chapter or search at the top.

Use mixed cap style for headlines. This means major words like nouns, verbs, etc. are capitalized; prepositions with four or more letters (“with,” “through,” etc.) are capitalized; and less significant words like “a” and “the” are lowercased.
Do not use the acronym “CCS.” Our full name is Columbia Climate School but this can often be shortened to “the Climate School” or “the School” when the formal name has already been established.
Use only one space between sentences.
In general, avoid the capitalization of people’s titles. Try to form sentences so that titles follow people’s names and are separated by commas. Example: Deirdra Q. Barnum, professor of engineering, gave the lecture.
- Named professorships need to be capitalized in any format. Example: Jeffrey D. Sachs, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, also attended.
- In the few cases where a person’s title precedes that person’s name, it is capitalized, as long it is a proper title (as opposed to “writer” or “researcher”). Example: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Malawi.
- Do not use Dr., Mrs., Ms., Mr. or Rev. to refer to an individual. After initial identification, the individual’s last name is sufficient.
In story titles, use single quote marks around quoted text. Anywhere else, use double quote marks for quoted text.
Website is written as one word, and “web” is not capitalized. Commonly used Climate School web addresses like climate.columbia.edu, etc., do not need the “www.” (Make sure you always test an address in your browser to make sure it works without the www before writing it that way.) When possible, or when one does not seem like a simple web address, use accompanying text that indicates it is online like “Learn more online at earth.columbia.edu/education.” Try to ensure consistency of format within a document if multiple web addresses are used.
Only proper nouns should be capitalized
Use acronyms sparingly, unless they are household names, such as NASA, EPA, etc.