University Communications

Dates and Time

Dates

Dates in text


Do not use st, nd, rd, or th following numerals in dates (i.e., April 1, not April 1st).

Days of the week

  • Avoid abbreviation, except when needed in a tabular form.
  • When you must abbreviate, use three letters with no periods (i.e., Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat).

Months of the year

  • Do not abbreviate.
  • When a phrase lists only a month and a year, do not separate the year with commas (e.g., March 1998 was a cold month.  March 17 was a cold day of the month. March 5, 2009, is my wedding date.).

Seasons

Lowercase spring, summer, fall, winter, and derivatives such as springtime, unless part of a formal name (e.g., The dance will occur in the spring, but Saint Peter’s Spring Fever is coming soon.)

Decades

  • Decades are either spelled out and lowercased or expressed in numerals with no apostrophe between the year and the s (e.g., the nineties, the 1990s).
  • You can abbreviate the year by replacing the first two digits with an apostrophe (e.g., the ’90s).  If a font naturally curves the apostrophe, it must open to the left.

Centuries

  • Spell out centuries (e.g., the twenty-first century).
  • Hyphenate when used as an adjective (e.g., twenty-first-century literature).

Times

Minutes should always follow the hour, and time should always be written in the 11:00 a.m. format.

a.m., p.m.

  • Always lowercase and use periods.
  • Avoid redundancies.
    • Never use 12:00 a.m. or p.m. when using noon or midnight.
    • Do not combine a.m. with in the morning, etc. (e.g., Meet me at 2:00 p.m., not Meet me at 2:00 p.m. this afternoon.).
    • 10 – 11:00 a.m. is preferred rather than 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Terminology

Annual
Avoid describing an event as annual until it has been held at least two successive years.  You may note that sponsors plan to hold the event annually.

Biannual
Biannual means twice a year or once every six months.

Biennial
Biennial means every two years.

Bimonthly
Bimonthly means every other month.

Semimonthly
Semimonthly means twice a month.

Biweekly
Biweekly means every other week.

Semiweekly
Semiweekly means twice a week.