Capitalization and Titles

Capitalize the complete formal names of NIU colleges and departments, offices, committees, programs, course titles (i.e., Department of Marketing, Center for Black Studies, Honors Program). Please see the Official Names List for a complete list of formal names.

Lowercase any fragmentary titles (i.e., the college, the university, the center, the marketing department, the department's program in finance).

Lowercase titles that follow a name or stand-alone (i.e., Poppy Pomfrey, dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences; chair of the School of Nursing and Health Studies; director, Health Services).

Capitalize formal titles preceding names (i.e., President Arthur Weasley; Dean Pomfrey; Professor Minerva McGonagall). However, lowercase a job title when it precedes a name if it serves primarily as an occupational description, such as, "Contact program advisor Sue Smith for more information."

Examples of the different usages of personnel titles:

• Formal title: Professor Minerva McGonagall
• Job title following a name: Minerva McGonagall, professor of transfiguration, Hogwarts
• Job description title: transfiguration professor Minerva McGonagall

The Dr. title is reserved for persons holding medical degrees. For Ph.D. degree holders, state their name followed by the degree (i.e., Parvati Patil, Ph.D.).

In listing the various degrees after a person's name, list academic degrees in the order in which they were earned, then professional designations (i.e., Jane Doe, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., MSN, RN, CNE).

Follow AP style which states:

Apply the guidelines listed here to book titles, computer and video game titles, movie titles, opera titles, play titles, poem titles, album and song titles, radio and television program titles, and the titles of lectures, speeches and works of art.

The guidelines, followed by a block of examples:

• Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters.
• Capitalize an article — the, a, an— or words of fewer than four letters if it is the first or last word in a title.
• Put quotation marks around the names of all such works except the Bible, the Quran and other holy books, and books that are primarily catalogs of reference material. In addition to catalogs, this category includes almanacs, directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, gazetteers, handbooks and similar publications. Do not use quotation marks around such software titles as WordPerfect or Windows.

Examples: "The Star-Spangled Banner," "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," "Gone With the Wind," "Of Mice and Men," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Time After Time," the NBC-TV "Today" program, the "CBS Evening News," "This Is Us," "A Star Is Born," "Star Wars," "Game of Thrones." See television program names for further guidelines and examples.

Reference Works: IHS Jane's All the World's Aircraft; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second Edition.

Names of most websites and apps are capitalized without quotes: Facebook, Foursquare.

Exception: "FarmVille" and similar computer game apps are in quotes.

Foreign works: Rousseau's "War," not Rousseau's "La Guerre." But: Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa." Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" if sung in English but "Le Nozze di Figaro" if sung in Italian. Mozart's "The Magic Flute" if sung in English but "Die Zauberflöte" if sung in German. "Die Walküre" and "Götterdämmerung" from Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" if sung in German but "The Valkyrie" and "The Twilight of the Gods" from "The Ring of the Nibelung" if sung in English. Janacek's "From the House of the Dead," not Janacek's "Z Mrtvého Domu."

—For other classical music titles, use quotation marks around the composition's nicknames but not compositions identified by its sequence.

Example: Dvorak's "New World Symphony." Dvorak's Symphony No. 9.

AP Stylebook