Blog Style Guide

“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.” — Joseph Pulitzer

Capitalize

Names referring to the Deity: God, Father (but not heavenly Father), Son, Holy Spirit or Spirit (but not spirit of God), Almighty (but not almighty God), Creator (but not creator God), Trinity (but not the triune God), One (but not the one true God), King of Kings, Comforter, Prince of Peace, Lord, Savior, etc.

Names of Satan and angels. Do not capitalize the word god when referring to pagan deities.

Pronouns referring to God: He, Him, His, You, Yours. This is reverent and respectful as well as helpful for the reader to know we’re talking about God.

Religious writings, groups, and terms: the Bible, God’s Word, Scripture, Pentateuch, the Beatitudes, Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Apostles’ Creed, Original Sin, the Fall, the Crucifixion, the Atonement, etc.

Gospel when referring to the first four books of the New Testament. Gospel meaning “good news” is lowercase.

Adjectives such as Christian, Christlike, Godhead, God-given.

LOWERCASE

Place names, including heaven, hell, paradise (meaning heaven but Paradise if referring to the garden of Eden), garden of Eden, kingdom.

General references to Jesus such as friend, person, baby, child, boy, man.

Most derivatives referring to God, including godly, godlike, lordship, sonship.

Relative pronouns referring to God such as who, whom, whoever, whomever.

word useage

Spell judgment, not judgement — Spellcheck with not catch this one.
Use toward, not towards.
Do not use that in a sentence more than once.
If at all possible, do not use there to start a sentence.
Use the pronoun who when referring to people. Remember that it refers to a singular item such as a band or a group, while their indicates plural possessive.
Use among to describe interactions with three or more people. Between indicates a relationship between two people.
Fewer refers to something that can be counted such as people or things, while less is used for the quantity or amount of one thing such as rain or the liquid in a jar.
Use B.C. and A.D. when referring to Bible dates. B.C. goes after the year number (700 B.C.), while A.D. should be placed before the year (A.D. 70).

Formatting

Use only one space between sentences.

Please use the em dash (—), not the en dash (-), with a space on either side to set off phrases or words. Google docs won’t do this naturally as other programs will (where two hyphens create an em dash). So, please use the option + shift + hyphen keys to create your em dash. I believe it’s slightly different if you’re using Windows. If you can’t quite get this figure out, no worries because the copyeditor will make the necessary corrections.

Use single commas to separate three or more items in a series. Examples: I spent the weekend in Bible study, in prayer, and in fasting.

Avoid the use of semicolons.

Keep punctuation such as commas and periods inside quote marks.

Avoid indenting and extra spacing to help with online formatting. All of this will be done as needed by the layout editor.

When quoting directly from the biblical text, follow the punctuation style of the text even if it contradicts this or another style guide.

attribution

Limit direct quotes to a few sentences and include the source. Here are a couple ways to do this:

Option 1: “Maybe grieving over plans changed is part of the plan to change us,” Ann Voskamp wrote in The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life.

Option 2: Corrie ten Boom once asked, “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?”

Option 3 (If the quote is your introduction or will be inset into your text by the editor): Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden. — Corrie ten Boom

If you want to include a Bible reference but are not quoting the text directly, use this style:

Jesus said He is the Good Shepherd, laying down His life for His sheep (John 10:11).

Translations: At ufcwomen.blog, we primarily use the English Standard Version when quoting Scripture. If you choose to use a different translation, or a paragraph, please indicate it in this way: