Communications & Marketing

Common Errors

COMMON GRAMMATICAL, PUNCTUATION & SPELLING ERRORS

  • Adviser, not advisor
  • African-American hyphenated; Asian American (no hyphen); Native American (no hyphen)
  • Alumnus: one male graduate
  • Alumna: one female graduate
  • Alumnae: two or more female grads
  • Alumni: two or more male or mixed-gender grads; avoid “alumnae/i
  • Alumni association: capitalize only when “Union College” precedes it
  • B.A., B.S., M.A., Ph.D.: include periods
  • Bachelor’s degree: lowercase
  • Board of trustees: capitalize only when “Union College” precedes it
  • Chair: not chairwoman, chairman, or chairperson
  • Class of 2008 (not Class of ’08)
  • Committee: capitalize only in full name, e.g., the Curriculum Committee
  • Course work: two words
  • Emeritus, emerita, emeriti: no italics; directly follows the word “professor”
  • Every day: two words unless used as an adjective — e.g., “an everyday event”
  • First-year student: hyphenated as a compound adjective
  • Freshman: when possible, avoid (use first-year student).
  • Latino, Latina