PUBLICATIONS, WEBSITE & STYLE GUIDE
For the Mount St. Mary’s Campus Community

Publications Policy of the Office of Communications

The Office of Communications is available to assist you with every stage of producing your printed pieces— invitations, flyers, brochures, bound booklets, catalogs, newsletters, forms, and much more. We offer help with design, writing, editing, bidding, printer and graphic artist liaison and production management services. When these services are provided by the publications office, they cost you nothing. You pay only for the printing of the piece.

The Office of Communications makes every effort to produce attractive, up-to-date and economical material. It’s what we do. Our staff is trained specifically in publications production, so using our services guarantees that an experienced professional handles your job from beginning to end.

The Process

The amount of production time you will need will depend on the kind of job (invitation, brochure, catalog, flyer), print quantities, amount of artwork/photos or writing required, amount of text, and other jobs that are on our schedule at the time your job will be in production.

As soon as you know you will need a publication, call the Office of Communications at ext. 5366 for an appointment to discuss your project and arrange production time. Remember that most printers require 10-14 business days for a job after you and the Communications Office have completed your work. Full-color, large-quantity and other complex jobs will take longer...sometimes several weeks.

For example, a 4-page newsletter will take roughly 4 weeks from the time you provide us with the copy. A catalog, on the other hand, will require about 3-4 months from raw material to printed piece. Use these samples as general guidelines in planning, but please feel free to consult with a Communications staff member to determine a more specific schedule for the entire campus. We might need more time on this end if it is an exceptionally busy time for publications throughout the institution.

How can you get ready?

When you meet with the Communications staff, they will want to know the following information about your publication:

• Who is your audience? What is the message you want to convey?
• Is the copy in final form? Do you need writing or photography help?
• How much money can you spend?
• When do you want the finished publication delivered?
• How many pieces do you want printed? (Allow for extras.)
• How will your publication be distributed? (First-class mail? Bulk rate? Hand-delivered? Is it to be a self-mailer? Will we need to allow time for assembly?)

When you hand over your "raw" material or "copy" to the Communications Office, you should provide us with an electronic copy of your document on a 3.5 disk as well with a double-spaced printout of the copy. Some guidelines to follow:

• Make arrangements well ahead of the time your material is due for any writing or substantive editing.
• Your material should include every word that is to appear in the final piece, including titles, contents, index, captions, mailing indicia and so on, unless prior arrangements have been made with the Communications Office to provide any of these things for you.
• Unless you have made previous arrangements to have a Communications photographer provide photos or to have a staff person arrange preparation of other graphic elements, you must provide any artwork that you want included. Please provide your graphic elements on a disk, zip disk, or CD-ROM (separate from the disk that contains the text for your project).
• Key in text flush left with no indents, tabs or other coding. The disk file should consist entirely of straight text. New paragraphs can be indicated by starting a new line or skipping a space.
• Use only one space after a period between sentences.

Special points to keep in mind

YOU ARE THE EXPERT. While we in the Communications Office know a lot about publications, you know the most about your department or office. We routinely fact-check some institutionally related things (the current number of undergraduates, the approved anti-discrimination disclaimer, etc.), and we’ll be happy to research others—provided we’ve planned to and have allowed time in your production schedule to do so. Otherwise, you are responsible for the information you provide us.

TIME LOST IN THE BEGINNING IS TIME LOST AT THE END. Once you have set up a schedule with the Communications office, it becomes part of our master publications schedule. We then make it part of our printers’ schedule. Both the communications office and the printer have many other jobs going on as yours is produced. Therefore, if you miss a deadline, it will affect the delivery date of your piece.

GET YOUR CREATIVE JUICES FLOWING. If you know what you want but don’t know how to explain it, feel free to take a look at some of the many sample publications we have on hand in the office. Over time, we have put together a variety of different publications from other colleges and businesses from which you might get ideas of what you like (or don’t like). We consult our supply, too, from time to time, to ensure we’re up to date with standard practices and new ideas in the publications industry.

NOBODY’S PERFECT. But the best way to ensure your piece is everything you want it to be is to communicate with the Communications staff. If you tell us ahead of time what you want, when you want it and what you expect from us, you will be most likely to get a professional—quality piece on time and within your budget. If any problems or unforeseen complications arise—with your end or ours—the best way to solve them is to confront them immediately. Pick up the phone or send an e-mail if you have any questions during any point in the process.

Website Policy of the Office of Communications

The Office of Communications maintains the content of the Mount St. Mary’s external website, and the internal campus homepage. Because the website and the campus homepage are publications (albeit electronic ones), the stand publications policy applies to the website, too. Please refer to the publications policy and the style guide for specific guidelines not addressed in this policy.

The website was redesigned in 2000 to address an external audience of prospective students and their parents, alumni, friends, and fans. Its primary goal is to market the college to outside audiences. Some content on the site is database-driven (news areas, calendars, etc.) and can be updated instantly. The remainder of the content is "static," and is designed to be updated twice a year -- generally in January and July, with a few exceptions. Determining changes to the website is an institutional prerogative, and you must obtain permission from your supervisor and/or divisional vice president to request additional pages or major changes to the website. Please do this before contacting the communications office with website requests.

The campus homepage is the information of most importance to an on-campus audience. For security reasons, very few users have rights to the website and to the campus homepage. All changes, updates, deletions, etc., must be made through the office of communications unless you have specifically been granted administrative rights.

To make an appointment to add a departmental page or to change the configuration of your area of the campus homepage, please contact the office of communications for an appointment. We process requests in the order in which we receive them, as well as by institutional priority. While we will do everything we can to accommodate both your deadline and your creative ideas, please keep in mind that we must also try to maintain consistency and integrity across the site, so some requests might have to be reviewed with various other offices before we can process them.

The Process

STYLE ISSUES

Style consistency is important because it ensures everyone in the Mount Community conveys the same messages in recruiting and promotional materials.

Graphic Identity

Name
The official name of the institution is Mount St. Mary’s College and Seminary. The name, seal and logo are the exclusive property of the institution and may not be used by any outside organization without prior permission.

In general text, on first usage, the name should be spelled out in full, with the word "Saint" abbreviated (to reflect consistency with its abbreviation in our logo), as shown:

Mount St. Mary’s College and Seminary
Mount St. Mary’s College
Mount St. Mary’s Seminary

The entire name may be spelled out in full only in extremely formal documents such as citations, certificates formal invitations, etc.

Upon second or further reference, you may use:

Mount St. Mary’s
the Mount

Please note that the article "the" is not to be capitalized.

At no time is it acceptable to abbreviate the word "Mount" as "Mt." Also, please avoid the abbreviation "MSM," except in sports writing where space is crucial.

It is acceptable (though not preferred) to use capitals when referring to the College and Seminary in materials for a large external audience.

Logo
The Mount St. Mary’s logo represents the college wherever it appears, a unique symbol of identity for our institution, and it is important that you follow the established guidelines for its use. It is to be used as the main identifier of the college and should be used in any publication that leaves campus.

If the office of communications is not producing your publication, it is crucial that you still contact us for a copy of the camera-ready artwork for the logo. This is available both in hardcopy slicks and in electronic format.

Seal
The seal of the institution is to be used on formal and official documents only. For publications and other applications not supervised by the Office of Communications or the Office of the President, permission is required for use of the seal.

EDITORIAL STYLE

For help with issues not addressed in this guide, please refer to the Associated Press Stylebook and Webster’s Dictionary.

ABBREVIATIONS
A.C. B.C.
a.m. p.m.
U.S.
(See also "months" and "states")

ACADEMIC DEGREES
Avoid abbreviations in text. Spell out degrees in lowercase, using an apostrophe: bachelor’s degree, master’s degree. Abbreviate (after person’s name) as follows: B.A., B.S., MBA, M.A., M.Div., M.Ed, Ph.D.

ADVISOR
Preferred spelling (not adviser)

ALUMNI
Identify former students with their affiliation(s) and class year, putting an apostrophe before the year:
Rev. John Smith, C’xx, S’xx
Frank Jones, P’xx, C’xx, S’xx
Jeff Johnson, C’70, MBA’81

BOARD OF TRUSTEE
Capitalize Board of Trustees and Trustee as a title before a name. Lowercase trustee when used alone or after a name:
Trustee Daniel Curtin
Daniel Curtin, a trustee

CAPITALIZATION
Avoid unnecessary capitalization.

Capitalize formal titles when used before a name: Dean of Student Development Michael Zoll. Lowercase titles after a name: Michael Zoll, dean of student development.

EMAIL
Lowercase unless it’s the first word in a sentence, with no hyphen. Email addresses should not be italicized.

EXECUTIVE OFFICERS
The executive officers of Mount St. Mary’s College & Seminary are the president and the four vice presidents:

President Thomas H. Powell
Provost Carol L. Hinds
Vice President & Treasurer Sr. Paul Marie Buley, IHM
Vice President for Institutional Advancement S. Frank DeLuca
Vice President and Rector Fr. Kevin C. Rhoades

Also on the executive committee:
Assistant to the President and Secretary of the Coroporation Nancy Gillece
Director of Institutional Research Linda Junker
Chaplain Fr. Raymond Harris

Their titles are spelled out and follow the rules for capitalization (see above), except in presidential correspondence, where they are capitalized before and after the names.

FUNDRAISING
Spell as one word when used as adjective or a noun.

MONEY
Use the dollar sign and numbers: $15. Do not use a decimal and two zeros: $15.00. For dollar amounts beyond thousands, use the dollar sign, number and appropriate word: The grant was $15 million, not: The grant was $15,000,000.

UNDER WAY
Spell as two words.