Colby Buildings and Departments, Capitalization

Capitalize the names of Colby departments, offices, and divisions and the words department, office, and division when they appear together: Art Department, Department of Art, Admissions Office, Office of Admissions. For majors and minors, refer to this page

Right: Office of the President, President’s Office
Right: The director of campus life is in the Division of Student Affairs.
Right: The English Department office is in Miller Library.
Right: New offices were created for the departments of Government, History, Economics, and Anthropology.

Use the official name of campus facilities with capitals in formal communication. On the second reference, if the name is partial, you may shorten the name with the appropriate designation. On the second reference when you use no proper name, lowercase hall, center, union, and building. Do not use building, hall, union, and center interchangeably.

Right: The Eustis Administration Building houses the Office of the President. The building is near Cotter Union.
Right: The Office of Institutional Research and Assessment is also in the Eustis Building. The office keeps track of enrollment data.

Lowercase alma mater (unless in a title).

Lowercase all second references to the association and council.

Right: 3 p.m., 9 a.m. (For more about times, see Section 3.7 on page 14.)

Capitalize Board of Trustees. Capitalize Trustee, President, and Visitor (formerly Overseer) as a title before a name. Lowercase titles used after the person’s name. Lowercase second reference to the board or to trustees. Refer to the Visitors (not Board of Visitors [formerly Board of Overseers]). When referring to Visitors as an entity, capitalize. Do not capitalize faculty, president, or visitor except as a title preceding a name. Refer to the chair of the board, not chairman or chairwoman.

Right: On Monday, Trustee John Wilkins made a speech.
Right: She has been a trustee for four years.
Right: The board sets policy on funding for the College.
Right: The president talked to the Visitors.

Classes are individual sessions; courses generally last for a semester (or Jan Plan term). Use lowercase when you refer to courses and classes unless you use the specific name of a course (as listed in the catalogue) or the course uses a proper noun or numeral. Do not use quotes around course titles.

Right: I had a mathematics class and an environmental studies class yesterday.
Right: I took a mathematics course and an environmental studies course last semester.
Right: I am taking American Music, Introduction to Psychology, and Intermediate Spanish.

Capitalize Class in all references to Colby class years. Use the apostrophe (not opening single quote) to abbreviate class years. Use four digits in class years from more than 90 years ago.

For parents and grandparents, use P or GP followed by an apostrophe and the abbreviated class year. For parents or grandparents with more than one child, add a comma followed by a second apostrophe and class year.

If alumni are also parents, use their class year first, followed by the parent convention described above.

Right: The Class of 1956 broke the fundraising record.
Right: Dr. Clarence E. “Doggie” Dore ’39 was the College physician. (Not ‘39.)
Right: Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Class of 1826, was a martyr to abolition and freedom of the press.
Right: Michael ’72 and Anne O’Hanian Szostak ’72 returned to campus in June.

Right: Dick Schmaltz ’62, P’87, GP’15 is a frequent summer visitor on campus.

Right: Colby’s Young Observatory was made possible by the generosity of David P’18, ’18 and Deanna Young P’18, ’18.
Right: Kristen Hock Davie ’90, P’21 has been the correspondent for the Class of 1990 since 2010.

Capitalize all references to funds, e.g.: the Colby Fund, the Colby Fund for Parents or the Parents Fund. Lowercase all second references to the fund. (No apostrophe in Parents—it’s an adjective, not a possessive noun.)

Capitalize College by itself only when it refers to Colby.

Capitalize reunion only when used in the titles Reunion Weekend or the specific year, e.g. Reunion 2022. Capitalize Family Homecoming Weekend (no hyphen). Capitalize commencement only as part of the formal title and only when it refers to Colby’s commencement, as in Commencement 2019 or Colby’s 195th Commencement.

Capitalize names of committees and clubs and lowercase second references. Lowercase names of subcommittees.

Right: The Student Affairs Committee met Thursday. Our committee planned to honor the guest speakers.
Right: The marketing subcommittee of the Development Committee meets Saturday.

Titles are capitalized only when written before a person’s name. Refer to the Colby College Catalogue for official titles. Do not put a courtesy title before a person’s name if a degree title follows it. Use the abbreviations only after a full name, never after just a last name. Lowercase titles unless they precede a name. Second and subsequent references generally use last names only.

Vice president has no hyphen.

When used after a name, a courtesy title is set off by commas. Titles such as C.P.A. are preceded by a comma. Jr. or ordinals in names (III etc.) are not preceded by a comma.

A title is never used for an honorary degree. Colby publications only use the title Dr. for medical and osteopathic doctors.

Courtesy titles such as Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Miss are generally not used in either first or subsequent references.

Professor may be used as a courtesy title, capitalized before the person’s name. Coach is lowercase, with or without the specific name of the sport coached.

Wrong: Dr. John Thomas, Ph.D.
Right: Kevin Jones, Ph.D.
Right: Dr. Marie Jones (if she is a medical doctor)
Right: Vice President Richard Uchida ’79 is an alumnus.
Right: Richard Uchida ’79, vice president, general counsel, and secretary of the College, is an alumnus.

Do not capitalize first-year student, sophomore, junior, or senior, whether referring to a class or to an individual student. When referring to a particular class year, capitalize Class, e.g., Class of ’15, Class of 1845. Use first-year (with hyphen) when referring to an individual or the whole body of first-year students.

Right: The senior class sponsored the lecture.
Right: He is a senior English major.
Right: Sara is a first-year student with the Class of 2026.

Consult the American Heritage Dictionary, but generally capitalize the names of historical periods. Spell out first through ninth centuries and use numbers for 10th and above with century in lowercase. Hyphenate century when using as an adjective.

Right: the Renaissance
Right: Baroque music
Right: the 20th century
Right: the 20th-century historian

Lowercase cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude. Do not italicize.

When they are not a part of a designated degree, do not capitalize majors, specializations, or concentrations of study except for proper names: English, Spanish, German, etc.

Right: He received a bachelor of arts in history.
Right: She majored in economics and Spanish.
Right: concentration in creative writing
Right: a program in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies
Right: the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

Capitalize regions within the United States as nouns, e.g., East Coast and the Midwest. Generally lowercase adjectives, e.g. the northern U.S., western Pennsylvania. (An exception is Southern California.) Lowercase when referring to central Maine or the state of Maine. Belgrade Lakes is capitalized.

Right: Colby and the Belgrade Lakes are located in central Maine.
Right: The sun sets in the west.
Right: America’s water crisis is worst in the West.

Lowercase spring, summer, fall, and winter and all derived words such as springtime. Capitalize only when part of a formal name.

Right: fall semester, summer session
Right: Winter Olympics
Right: We had an especially dry summer.

Lowercase state in all references. Use caps for federal as part of formal name or title. Lowercase it when used as an adjective to distinguish something from state, country, city, town, or private entities.

Right: our state colleges
Right: the federal loans
Right: the state of Maine
Right: a Federal Stafford Loan

The word web is lowercase, as are words derived from it (e.g. website, webcam, webmaster)
The word cloud is lowercase.
The word internet is not capitalized.
HTML and URL are uppercase.
The word online is one word, not capitalized.
The word email does not have a hyphen.
The word Twitter is capped, tweets/tweets/tweeted are not.
When referring to URLs, omit http:// and www. In running text, Colby’s website is simply colby.edu.