Titles

Titles of Persons

• Do not identify individuals by race, religion, or national origin unless such identifications are essential to an understanding of the story.

• The heads of departments at Wright State are referred to as chairs, not chairmen or chairers.

• Do not hyphenate vice president and vice chair.

• The title for the dean of the branch campus is Lake Campus dean.

• Always include the first name or initials of persons the first time they appear in an article.

• Abbreviate courtesy titles, such as Mr., Mrs., and Dr., when they precede a name; but do not use them in combination with any other title or with abbreviations indicating scholastic or academic degrees.
  
  

  Paul Shore, Ph.D., not Dr. Paul Shore, Ph.D.
  Carol Burns, M.D., or Roger Morefield, D.V.M.; not Dr. Carol Burns, M.D., or Mr. Roger Morefield, D.V.M.

  Never use Mr., Mrs., Miss, or Ms. except in Artist Series programs and formal invitations.

  Use the title Dr. when referring to a doctor of medicine, dentistry, or veterinary medicine in formal context.

• Abbreviate other titles, such as professor, only when they precede the first name or initials; spell out titles when they are used before the surname alone.
  
  

  Prof. E. B. Holden
  Professor Holden
  Profs. E. B. Holden and J. T. Sykes
  Professors Holden and Sykes

  Apply the title professor only before the name of a staff member of professional rank: professor, associate professor, or assistant professor. Do not qualify the title professor with associate or assistant before a person's name, but do qualify it after the name.
  
  

  Prof. Samuel Jones, Professor Jones
  Samuel Jones, associate professor of biology
  For distinguished professors:
  Cyrus Harding, Frederick A. White Distinguished Professor of Service and professor of environmental geoscience

• Military titles may be written as follows:
  
  

  John D. Cadet, USAF, 2Lt.
  Jayne D. Doe, USAF, Lt. Col.

• When a civil or military title is used with the surname only, the title must be spelled out. With full names, most such titles are abbreviated.
  
  

  Brig. Gen. Thomas Tilney
  Lieutenant Colonel Smith
  Senator Finan
  Sen. Rhine L. McLin

• The word the should be supplied before Reverend in formal publications. The abbreviation Rev. should never be used without the first name or initial(s). The use of clergy titles varies among religions and Christian denominations, and the protocols of the religion or denomination should be considered in formal communications.
  
  

  The Reverend Joseph L. Longham, thereafter, Father Longham (for a priest), Mr. Longham (in some denominations), or Pastor Longham (in some other denominations)
  Never Rev. Longham, Reverend Longham, J. L. Longham, or Longham
  Rabbi Joseph Horowitz, thereafter, Rabbi Horowitz

  The Rev. Dr. can be used with a title to distinguish a clergy member with a doctoral degree from a professor or medical doctor.
  
  

  The Reverend Dr. Oswald will join Professor Alloway and Dr. Milligan in a panel discussion entitled "The Role of the Chaplain in Health Care Advocacy"

• The title Honorable is spelled out if preceded by the. In other instances, the title is abbreviated when used with the full name.
  
  

  Hon. Frank Hawkins

• The Honorable is the preferred title in addressing most high-ranking officials in office or retired. These include presidential appointees, foreign diplomats, officials of the cabinet, charges d'affaires, federal and state elective officials, and mayors. As a general rule, other county and city officials are not so addressed.
  
  The Honorable is not used in speaking to a person or in salutation, although it is sometimes used in platform introductions. It is never used before a surname only. When appearing in text or other communication, the is not capitalized.
  
  

  A speech given by the Honorable Jayne Deaux held the audience spellbound.

• His or Her Excellency applies to a foreign chief of state or head of government, a foreign cabinet officer, or foreign ambassador (i.e., the president of a foreign country, a premier, or prime minister).

• It is customary to omit such a title when addressing the prime minister or a cabinet officer of a country within the British Commonwealth. A prime minister takes the title the Right Honorable in addition to and preceding the appropriate title denoting rank of nobility, if any.
  
  

  The Right Honorable Tony Blair, prime minister of England

• Avoid using long titles before the names of people, such as: Superintendent of Public Instruction John H. Hard. Rather say, John H. Hard, superintendent of public instruction.

• In running text, capitalize titles of persons when they immediately precede a name (i.e., used as part of the name). Lowercase titles of persons when they follow a name.
  
  

  The conference will feature President Goldenberg as the main speaker.
  Kim Goldenberg, president of Wright State University, is the featured speaker for this year's conference.

• However, titles used in apposition to the name (i.e., used with other qualifying information and therefore are not part of a title) are lowercased.
  
  

  Wright State University's president, Kim Goldenberg, is this year's featured speaker. (The name is used in apposition to the title; i.e., there is only one president of Wright State, so the name is not necessary to understand the meaning of the sentence.)

  Special note: If you wish to capitalize the title, rewrite the sentence so that the title is a part of the name.
  
  

  President Kim Goldenberg, Wright State University, is the featured speaker.

• In address lines and program listings, capitalize the title when it is used after the name:
  
  

  For more information, send the attached card to:
  Cathy Davis, Director
  Office of Admissions
  Wright State University
  3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy.
  Dayton, Ohio 45435-0001
  
  

  10-11 A.M.

  Kim Goldenberg, President Wright State University "Looking to the Future"

  Titles of Works/Headlines
  
  

  Do not change the spelling (including hyphenation) of original titles of works. Capitalization and punctuation may be changed for style purposes.
  Use single quotation marks instead of double quotation marks.

• Titles of the following works are italicized:
  
  

  books	official titles of quarterly class schedules
  essays	paintings
  journals	pamphlets
  magazines	plays
  long musical compositions	radio programs and series titles
  movies	sculptures
  newspapers	television programs and series
  official titles of catalogs

• Titles of these works are set off by quotation marks:
  
  

  chapters in books
  dissertations and theses
  lectures and papers read at meetings
  magazine or journal articles
  manuscripts in collections
  poems
  radio series episodes
  short musical pieces
  short stories
  television series episodes

• Capitalize the initial letters of the following types of words when used in titles of works and in heads and subheads:
  
  

  the first word in the title
  the last word in the title
  nouns
  prepositions of four letters or longer (e.g., beneath, under, against)
  pronouns
  adjectives
  verbs
  adverbs
  subordinate conjunctions (e.g., as, because, before, if, since, though, when, while)

• Lowercase the following types of words, except when they appear as the first or last word or when they follow a colon in the title or a head.
  
  

  articles (a, an, the)
  coordinate conjunctions (and, or, for)
  prepositions shorter than four letters
  to in infinitives
  
  Death of a Salesman Debuts
  Traveling Through Time Is Possible Says Researcher
  President to Arrive on Monday

• Capitalize the first element of hyphenated compounds. The second element should be capitalized if it is a noun or proper adjective. The second element should not be capitalized if it is a participle that modifies the first element or if both elements together comprise a single word.
  
  

  Eighteenth-Century Literature
  Self-actualizing Experience
  Re-creating
  Non-French-speaking People
  Middle-sized City
  Twenty-five People