The House Style Guide

Amit M. Manthanwar

College of Engineering, Pune

Summer 2010
Contents

Revision Log iii

1 Writing Style 2

2 Curriculum Style Guide 3

Revision Log

No Date Who Reason

1.0.0.0 04-Apr-2009 AMM Initial Version

Abstract

Given the transplant nature and global accessibility of documents in today’s information age it
is very important to adhere to a certain quality standards. This style guide provides a basic
set of standards for writing documents. The guide enables to achieve uniformity in style and
formatting of the documents. The overall goal of preparing this house style guide is to provide
a platform for further formalization and visibility of the College brand.
 1

Writing Style
ˆ Use and instead of ampersand ‘&’ character.
The ampersand is deemed to be pretty ugly by many style guides and by most pro-
fessional journals or book publishers. Use the ampersand where it is a must, e.g., R&D,
AT&T, P&G.
To use ‘&’ character write LATEX command \&.

ˆ Use e.g. and not eg

ˆ Use etc., and not etc,

ˆ Use i.e. and not ie

ˆ Use Master’s and not Masters or masters

ˆ Use software and not softwares or software’s

ˆ Use equipment and not equipments

ˆ Use program only in software context, otherwise use programme

ˆ Use state-of-the-art and not state of the art

ˆ Use online and not on-line

ˆ Use email and not e-mail

ˆ Use website and not web-site or web site

ˆ Use P.L. Deshpande and not P L Deshpande or PL Deshpande with notable exception Pu
La Deshpande

ˆ Use a simple hyphen - to break words, to link numbers and words, e.g. non-linear

ˆ Use an en dash -- two hyphens between times, dates, etc., e.g. 2010--2011

ˆ Use an em dash --- three hyphens (with no space either side) to break clauses in sentence,
e.g. “he has been a member of staff—in the loosest sense of the word—for three years.

ˆ Spell numbers in full up to nine. Use numerals from 10. Spell out numbers at the start of
a sentence.

ˆ Foreign words and phrases that are not normally part of the English language should be
italicized, e.g. commonly used Latin words and phrases a priori, in situ, de facto, vice
versa, versus, faux pas carpe diem, dolce vita etc.
 2
Curriculum Style Guide
Following style guidelines are recommended while writing COEP curriculum.

ˆ Avoid assigning course ID 420 for your Academic Subject for obvious reasons

ˆ Line beginning with ‘%’ is a Comment and will be ignored by LATEX

ˆ Use LATEX commands $^{2}$ for superscript 2 and $_{2}$ for subscript 2

ˆ Use LATEX smart quotes.

LATEX treats left and right quotes as different entities.
For single quotes, ‘ (on keyboards, this symbol is found on the key adjacent to the
number 1 or ∼ key) gives a left quote mark, and ’ (on keyboard, apostrophe key) is
the right. For double quotes, simply double the symbols, and LATEX will interpret them
accordingly.

ˆ Enclose the letter of a word in curly brackets that you want to appear in capital, e.g.,
Mc{G}raw

ˆ Write course unit name using following LATEX Command

\unit{<Name of the Unit>}{<Number of Hours>}

\unit{Introduction to Digital Control}{6}

ˆ While editing for text and reference books fill in all the appropriate fields and remove the
empty fields.

\item
\bookAuthor{<List of Authors>};
\bookTitle{<Book Title>},
\bookPublisher{<Name of the Publisher>},
\bookEditor{<List of Editors if any>},
\bookEdition{<Edition Number>},
\bookYear{<Year of Publication>},
\bookUrl{<Internet Link>},

\item
\bookAuthor{F. G. Shinskey};
\bookTitle{Feedback Controllers}
\bookPublisher{PHI}
ˆ Add List Laboratory Experiments using following LATEX command

\begin{labs}
\item Experiment one
\item Experiment two
\end{labs}
ˆ Rest of the course update and editing procedure is self explanatory.