Culverhouse Style Guide

Culverhouse and UA Style and Branding Resources

When it comes to a Culverhouse style guide, we default to the style guide provided by The University of Alabama’s Division of Strategic Communications, or StratComm.

StratComm has assembled a huge set of resources ready to maximize the impact of our message across all platforms, whether it is distributed by web, print, social media, radio, etc.

UA Style and Branding Resources

We have an in-house design and communications team that can help with most if not all College-specific needs.

Submit a request or reach out to Zach Thomas, Director of Marketing and Communications, at rzthomas@ua.edu.

Avoid using CCB when at all possible. Upon second reference, the Culverhouse College of Business may be shortened to “Culverhouse” or “the College” (see “College” below).

Some people are offended by “adopted child” because it sounds like you are specifying that they are not a biological child, ergo, not a “real” child. Better: “They have five children, one through adoption, two through fostering and two biological.” Or you could say that their “child came home through adoption or joined their family through adoption.”

Ampersands (&) are fine for informal body text. Avoid for headings and more formal situations.

Black instead of black or African-American, unless specified by client.

Headings and Subheadings

When writing headings and subheadings, you can approach capitalization in one of two ways:

  1. You can use sentence case, which means you only capitalize the first word in the heading or subheading, just like you would in a sentence.
    This is an example subheading.
    Sentence case is good for less formal situations like email subjects lines and FAQ web copy.
  2. You can use title case, which means you capitalize pretty much everything except articles and other less important words.
    This is an Example Subheading.
    Title case is more formal and, despite AP style, is the default at UA. When in doubt, use this.

Use the College (cap) when referring to Culverhouse at large, or a specific college (like Accounting).

Cyber security to follow course catalog.

Use Full-Time MBA not Traditional MBA or Traditional Path to the MBA.

Out instead of “openly gay”; see this article.

We use Oxford commas in College-level communications. Since the AP Stylebook is mostly neutral on the matter, we find that the use of Oxford/serial commas lends precision to language.

Resume, which differs from StratComm’s style guide. Make sure from the context, it cannot be confused with the verb.

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