Editing and Writing

The IMC communications team provides comprehensive writing, copyediting, and proofreading expertise for all flagship publications of Pepperdine University, such as Pepperdine Magazine, the President's Report, and print and online versions of major publications of the various graduate schools.

IMC writing and editorial services take part in creating content for major pieces that support University recruitment, fundraising, and brand initiatives, such as school viewbooks, degree program offerings, national and regional display advertising, and special event collateral materials.

Editorial Style Guide

The University has adopted a unified editorial style for print and digital media based principally on the Chicago Manual of Style. In the Pepperdine Editorial Style Guide, rules, guidelines, and examples are organized into chapters and appendices, in a PDF file format accessible below. Specific style questions can be addressed directly to Amanda Pisani, University copy editor, at extension 1447 or by email at amanda.pisani@pepperdine.edu.

Style Resources for Writers, Editors, Marketers, and Other Content Producers

• Pepperdine Editorial Style Guide - An exhaustive guide for writers on capitalization, italics, punctuation, standard reference formats, numerals, and other writing conventions
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - Answers to writing conundrums submitted to IMC over the years
• Pepperdine Editorial Style Sheet - A brief, handy writing resource for the most asked-about style treatments
• Pepperdine Correspondence Protocol Sheet - Do you need to address a letter and envelope to the lieutenant governor, a marine admiral, or jointly to a supreme court justice and her law professor spouse with different surname? This is your guide.
  
  

What is Style?

Style describes writing conventions on which educated minds differ (e.g. always place a comma prior to "and/or" in series of three or more items, spell out "zero" through "nine" except in measurements, scores, and ages, spell all numbers at the beginning of a sentence, etc.). The University's Editorial Style Guide states our institutional preference in order to maintain University-wide consistency of expression and allow writers to concentrate on content and meaning rather than form.

Yes, there are rules of grammar, but they are more generally agreed upon than "standard." Writers know that in a language as dynamic as English, even a rule as sacrosanct as "subject and verb must agree in number" sometimes has to be bent on occasion.