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 2028 (not Class of ’28)
  • 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: Avoid (use first-year student).
  • Latino, Latina: Latinx should be used only when a specific individual or organization requests it as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino (m) or Latina (f)