A style guide is simply a reference guide that ensures all Memorial website users are consistently using the same set of grammar and style rules.

For example, both of these sentences are technically grammatically correct:

She earned her biology degree on 11 May, 2021.
She earned her Biology degree on May 11, 2021.

The decision to capitalize academic subjects, or how to write dates, is arbitrary, but it is important for Memorial's website to be consistent about these decisions. So we have created a style guide to dictate how to handle these sorts of decisions. 

Some of the most important style guide rules to follow as Memorial website users are the following:

• Your page titles, menu item titles, and headers should only capitalize the first word (and any proper nouns in the title). For example: Contact us not Contact Us.
• Use lower case for academic subjects and departments, like psychology or folklore. But note the exception if the subject is a proper noun, like English.
• When writing a date, the order should always be: day, month, date, year, as in Saturday, July 11, 2021. Never 11 July. And you can abbreviate any month with more than 5 letters.

When in doubt about proper style and grammar usage:

• Refer to Memorial’s style guide