St. Peter's Prep
Name & title: Ginny Needham-Doyle, director of communications
Institution & publication: St. Peter's Prep, Prep Magazine
Type of publication: Magazine
Readership audience: Alumni, parents (alumni & current students), faculty & staff
Number of pages: 24+ cover
Frequency of publication: 2x a year
Circulation: 14,000
Color: 4-color
Interesting facts about the publication: Book was published regularly for years, then due to staffing, it fell off. We have been able to resurrect it, but it is hard to get it out each time (time, level of urgency).
Basic style manual: NY Times Manual
other style manuals: MLA
Reason for using the manual: Preferred style of department head, who teaches journalism at Prep.
Dictionary: Merriam-Webster
Reason for using dictionary: I use the on-line version for quick verification.
Other resources: Roget's Thesaurus, Bartlett's Quotations, "Writing That Works" (Ken Roman & Joel Raphaelson)
Items on our house style sheet not covered in our manual: multiple year listing for the parents of students (Mr. & Mrs. John Smith, P'99,'01,'05) We omit the space after the comma.
When to use Reverend vs. Rev. vs. Father vs. Fr., especially on invitations, ads and in program listings.
Capitalization of the school's academic departments and teams-should we or shouldn't we? (We don't other than English.)
Items on our house stylesheet that override our manual: The phrase "Jesus Himself" was recently used in copy in an article by one of our Jesuits. NY Times would have you use "himself" -- we didn't follow that style.
We use Mass, and Saint.
Although it is proper to use sts. as the abbreviation for streets, (as in "at the intersection of Grand & Warren sts.") I think most people do not know this, and so I use Streets.
Unresolved issues: According to etiquett books, woman who is a widow is properly identified as Mrs. John Smith. Referring to her as Mrs. Mary Smith would indicate that she is divorced.
The widows of our older alumni would "know" this, however, younger women prefer to be known by their own first name. I have this debate with the development director every year when we do the annual report. We need to be consistent, but we can not offend our donors, young or old.
Also, we do not list a recipient of a Ph.d as Dr. in the annual report. The jury is out on this one.