Below are the style guidelines for diocesan communications. In general, follow guidelines found in the Associated Press Stylebook.

• Use lowercase wherever possible
• the bishop (but Bishop Marc)
• the cathedral
• the church (the Church is okay for the global church)
• the diocese (but the Diocese of California)
• the rector or vicar
• the vestry
• Do not capitalize pronouns referring to God (e.g., not He or Him). Avoid using gendered pronouns for God.
• Capitalize titles when the precede a name (e.g., President Barack Obama)
• Lowercase titles when they are offset by a comma (e.g., the Rev. John Smith, rector of St. Paul’s)

• Spell out state names
• The Bishop’s Ranch
• Bible
• Baptismal Covenant
• email
• online

• Use colons before subtitles in headlines
• Where quotes are appropriate in headlines, use single quotes
• Use em-dashes rather than hyphens in sentences (— em-dash in Windows: ctrl+alt+numeric hyphen; in OS X: option+shift+hyphen)
• Include spaces around em-dashes
• Use a serial (Oxford) comma (e.g., apples, pears, and oranges)
• Use italics for book titles; all other composition titles (movies, lecture series, etc.) use quotes
• Remove double spaces at the ends of sentences (Search for double spaces and replace with single spaces; repeat until none found)

• Use a.m. and p.m.
• Omit :00 (e.g., 6 p.m.; not 6:00 p.m.)
• Use “to” for a time range rather than a hyphen (e.g., 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.)
• Add the day of the week before the date (e.g., Tuesday, May 1)

• For reference to churches, always include the city on first mention (e.g., Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; second reference Grace Cathedral)
• Do not use “Episcopal” or “Church” in the title unless it is part of the name of the church. (e.g., St. Luke’s; not St. Luke’s Episcopal Church)

• For reference to clergy, always use “the Rev.” followed by the person’s name (e.g., the Rev. Joe Smith)
• Capitalize “The Rev.” if it is at the beginning of a sentence
• Do not include academic titles, but if necessary you can add Ph.D. after the clergy person’s name (e.g., the Rev. Joe Smith, Ph.D.)
• Do not refer to clergy as Father, Mother, Reverend, or Rev’d
• On second reference use last name only (Smith; not Rev. Smith)
• In quotations, it is okay to use the reference used by the speaker. Columnists may refer to people however they like (e.g., She said “Bishop Marc…” vs. She said Andrus “…”)

Observe the following:

• the Rt. Rev. Marc Andrus or the Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus (second reference Andrus)
• the Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, dean of Grace Cathedral
• the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry (second reference is Curry)
• the Ven. Margaret Dyer-Chamberlain, archdeacon