Religious terms

COMMUNION: Uppercase when referring to the Sacrament; lowercase such things as the communion table; uppercase the Lord’s Supper.

NAMES OF GOD: Uppercase God. Uppercase alternative names of God, including Redeemer, Savior, Son of God, Holy Spirit, etc. Lowercase godly, godlike, godliness, godsend.

Lowercase prounouns referring to God (he, his, her, hers, they, theirs, you, yours, etc.) unless necessary for clarity. Note that female, male and gender neutral pronouns may be used for God at the writer’s discretion. Writers may choose to use “God’s” in lieu of a gendered pronoun. Ex. God completed God’s work; God looked at God’s creation and saw that it was good.

THE BIBLE: Uppercase Bible, the Gospels (ex. Gospel of John), Scripture, Apocrypha, Old Testament, New Testament. Lowercase the word biblical.

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES: Do not put scripture references (the reference or the body text itself) in quotation marks. Use Arabic numerals for books of the Bible instead of Roman numerals. Ex. 1 Timothy 2:18; 2 Corinthians. Do not abbreviate books of the Bible (ex. use Timothy and Corinthians instead of Tim. and Cor.).  All references are assumed to be taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) unless otherwise noted; it is not necessary to list the Bible version unless it is a version other than the NRSV.

Composition titles

Lowercase a, an, and, as, at, but, by, if, in, of, on, or, the, to when in the names of books, sermons, songs, etc. (unless they are the first or last words of a title). Uppercase prepositions and conjunctions if they have four or more letters. Ex. “The Lord of the Rings”; “For Zion’s Sake”; “Jenny From Kentucky.”

Personal titles/degrees

Abbreviate Rev. and Dr. (do not spell out, ex. Reverend or Doctor).
Lowercase titles (pastor, minister, moderator) unless they precede the person’s name. Ex. John Doe, pastor of youth ministry; Pastor John Doe.

M.B.A., but master’s degree.

Punctuation

Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks; colons and semicolons outside. Question marks, exclamation points and dashes go inside when they apply to the quotation — outside when they apply to the entire sentence.

Use Oxford commas. Ex. I hate Bart, Ted, and Brian.

Use exclamation points sparingly. A good general rule is no more than one per paragraph.

Leave a space before and after an ellipsis or an em dash; no spaces when using an en dash (which stands for “up to and including”), such as Monday–Friday or Matthew 2:1–6. Never use an ellipsis at the beginning or end of a direct quote.

After a colon, capitalize the first word if the phrase is a complete sentence.

Do not use periods to separate letters in acronymns such as UMKC, KU, KJV, NRSV, US. Do not use periods in OK.

Numerals

Spell out numbers up to eight. Ex. “I used to have seven sheep”; “I used to have 98 sheep.” Ages of people and animals are an exception; use numerals. Ex. “My daughter is 5 years old.”

Spell out numbers and hyphenate grade, grader. Ex. fifth-grade, second-grader.

Rooms

Uppercase when referring to the specific name of a room in the church (Sanctuary, Chapel, Friendship Hall), but not the general terms; same for departments and offices (Business Office, Youth Ministry). Uppercase the word “Room” when used with room numbers (Room 218).

Locations

Spell out the names of states and countries when they appear in body copy (ex. New York, California, United States). Names of states and countries may be abbreviated when listed in an address (as on an envelope to be mailed or on on letterhead).