Saint Ignatius High School
Name & title: Carolyn Kovach, Director of Communications
Institution & publication: Saint Ignatius High School, "Saint Ignatius Magazine"
Type of publication: Magazine
Readership audience: Alumni, donors, faculty, staff, friends, parents, grandparents, current students and area Catholic High Schools.
Number of pages: 44
Frequency of publication: Twice a year
Circulation: 16,000
Color: 4-color
Interesting facts about the publication: Redesigned the magazine this past spring.
Basic style manual: AP Stylebook
Reason for using the manual: Because of my journalism background, I find it easier to use AP Style. Also, I don't have to adjust my style when writing news releases vs. magazine articles.
Dictionary: Merriam-Webster
Reason for using dictionary: It's the dictionary the previous editor left behind, and I've always used good old Webster.
Other resources: Roget's Thesaurus, my old writing handbook from college and the Internet dictionary and thesaurus (when I'm in a hurry.)
Items on our house style sheet not covered in our manual: I abbreviate St. when referencing the saint, but spell out Saint when referring to our school: Saint Ignatius High School.
I abbreviate Fr. and use S.J. after the name with commas before and after S.J.
I capitalize Mass.
I capitalize departments but lowercase titles. For example, History Department vs. history teacher.
The last two digits of the class year follow an alum's name and is preceded with an apostrophe. For example, Tim Mack '90.
Book, movie and TV show titles are italicized.
Items on our house stylesheet that override our manual: I uppercase departments of the school because I'm producing a specialized magazine focused on academics. In the case of an educational publication, I think academic departments deserve to be treated as proper nouns.
I think the class year after an alumn's name is common practice for an alumni publication.
S.J. after a Jesuit's name is standard practice.
Unresolved issues: Which way should the apostrophe go when used before a class year? Should it curl in at the top like a beginning "quote mark does or should it curl out like the ending quote mark does"? It's hard to explain this question in words. It's easier to show what I'm talking about.
How do you treat Ph.D. in titles? AP says to only use Dr. when referring to an M.D. But in academic publications, I often see Dr. used in reference to Ph.D. titles.