Editors | Emeritus | Wharton Business School (University of Pennsylvania) (WH) Style Guide | ECFO / ECOO / ECPO / ECXO / EPAI.SEPO R2

Key Style Guide Information and Links

This card covers style guidance for WH e-learning documents.

• For any style points not covered in this guide, refer to:
• Editors | Emeritus | Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS) Guidelines for Emeritus Content
• Spelling: Merriam–Webster
• Dialect: US English
• For marketing documents, use:
• Proofed | Editors | Emeritus | Wharton Business School (WH) Marketing Content Style Guide
• For video editing specifics, refer to:
• Proofed | Editors | Emeritus | Wharton Business School Video Style Guide

Floryboard Specifics

Format the "This module has..." text at the beginning like this:

• This module has seven videos, self-study activities including two readings, one crowdsource activity, one discussion, one try-it activity, and one knowledge check, as well as required activities including one reading and one capstone checkpoint.

If there is only one required activity, format the text like this:

• This module has seven videos, self-study activities including two readings, one crowdsource activity, one discussion, one try-it activity, and one knowledge check, as well as one required capstone checkpoint activity.

The text for the transcript text under a video should be:

• Here is the transcript for this video.

School and Course Terminology

course, teacher and learners

Bold green indicates the preference for this school/the specified courses.

WH-ECFO / WH-ECPO / WH-ECXO / WH-EPAI.SEPO R2

WH-ECOO

school name and faculty

• School name: Wharton or the Wharton School (not the Wharton School of Business)
• Do not capitalize "the" before "the Wharton Business School."
• Use Professor, not Prof. or Dr.
• Use the following format for names:
• First use: [Academic/Professional Title] Firstname Surname
• Further uses: [Academic Title] Surname
• Do not use periods in academic titles or qualifications (PhD, Dr).
• Do use periods following initials in names: C. H. Smith.

Important Course-Specific Notes

• If an official department title doesn't contain a serial comma, don't add one.
• When referring to employees or candidates, use these terms rather than the more general "individuals" or "people."
• Use second-person you to address the learner.
• Present program titles in italics.
• WH-ECFO: Do not change "firm" or "company" to "organization".

Capitalization

• Capitalize "Playbook" only when being used as part of the name of a specific instance:
• Marketing Analytics Playbook
• Look through the playbook carefully.
• Capitalize after a colon if it's a complete sentence.

Headers/subheaders

• Headers: CMoS Title Case
• Subheaders: sentence case
• Includes "Key takeaways" in sentence case.
• Exceptions—the following should always be in title case:
• Discussion Introduction
• Discussion Prompt
• Estimated Time to Complete
• Learning Outcome(s) Addressed
• Submission Instructions
• Suggested File Type
• Suggested Length
• Suggested Time Commitment
• Suggested Word Count
• and similar

Punctuation

• Use the serial comma.
• Parenthetical dashes: use spaced em dashes.
• Use periods in U.S. and U.K.

Numbers

• Spell out numbers one to nine; use numerals for 10 and above.

Times and Dates

• Use periods in a.m. and p.m.
• Do not abbreviate months.

Bullet Lists

• Use periods only for full sentences.
• Be consistent: either give periods for all of the points in a list, or for none of them.

Citations/Referencing

• Use CMoS Notes and Bibliography style for citations and references.

Subject-Specific Terminology/Spelling Preferences

• best practices (not best practice)
• coursework
• COVID-19
• database
• decision-making (noun and adjective)
• deep dive (noun, not verb)
• co-founder, co-director, co-chairperson, etc.
• dot-com
• E-commerce (not e-commerce), E-book (not e-book)
• email
• genAI (lowercase, but GenAI in a header or at the beginning of a sentence)
• health care (two words)
• internet, intranet (lowercase)
• life cycle (two words)
• more than means "in excess of/greater than"; over means "higher in position" or refers to a higher age
• More than 50 students in the class are over 21.
• Not Over 20 people responded "yes."
• multidisciplinary, multinational, etc.
• noncredit, nonprofit, etc.
• prerequisite, but pre-term
• road map (two words)
• startup
• succession planning (no hyphen for adjective or noun)
• talent management (no hyphen for adjective or noun)
• trade-offs (not tradeoffs)
• World Wide Web/web
• Work-from-home
• Use hyphens for both noun and adjective:
• Work-from-home policies
• The challenges of work-from-home (i.e., where it’s specifically the name of the activity)
• No hyphen for gerund/verb phrases:
• the challenges of working from home
• He was told to work from home.