Editorial/Style Question (Capitalization)

Stumped on this one, and don't have access to a style sheet like AP or Chicago. Is it:

1) He attended Rutgers and Yale universities; or

2) He attended Rutgers and Yale Universities

3) Yes, I realize I can delete "universities" or just write "Rutgers University and Yale University" but would prefer #1 or #2. Thanks!

I would vote for 1, with the idea that you're answering the question "Which universities did he attend?"

By not naming each university distinctly, the names Rutgers and Yale become adjectives that qualify the noun "universities".

The stylebook I use (neither AP nor Chicago) says "Omit College or University freely in a mention of a well-known institution: She graduated from Purdue."

And you didn't ask but to my ear, "attended" suggests that the person did not graduate. In case that's relevant. (I would list degrees earned.)

Since their proper titles are (name) University in each case, you can capitalise as in your second example. However, as I write that it makes me wonder if it suggests they are somehow linked into one entity, so I'd go with the first example (depending on the document).

I have noticed a recent marked tendency, which is alarming, to not use caps when they should be used, for example in acronyms and further mentions of second/multiple words in corporate titles. This may be a modern practical trend as a result of autocorrect and device-matching (and sloppiness) or to minimise injuries in rapid typing/keying. We saw similar stylistic changes when keying took over from oldfashioned typewriters.

(I'm basing my advice on the Australian govt printer style manual, which turned into Macquarie Style Guide, which runs with Chicago, for Australia. And decades as an editor and proofreader, not that you can tell from my posts)

apple44, I believe that #2 is the correct usage. See 8.67 on page 416 of the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

No. 2. is AP and NYT style.

Neither. I know you would PREFER to use one of those examples, but neither one is right to my ear or to the style book I use.

I like any of these:

He attended Rutgers and Yale.

He attended university at Rutgers and Yale.

He began his undergraduate studies at Rutgers, but graduated from Yale.

He attended Rutgers for two years before transferring to Yale.

Thanks, I don't disagree but I'm actually listing a number of universities, some with geographic names, and a few overseas, so the absence of "Universities" will be confusing.

Appreciate all of the input, will go with #2 - and likely no one will notice anyway.

"jasper" style outvoted by the CMS/AP/NYT trifecta. Humph. ; - )

My vote was based on joanne's concern: "... it makes me wonder if it suggests they are somehow linked into one entity..."; I still think there's some validity to that.

Two other arguments:

• If, in the mix of schools listed, some were colleges and some were universities, you would say: "... attended Brooklyn, Rutgers, and Yale colleges/universities", though I agree that is an awful construction (especially since there is only college in my sample list) and you'd be much better off going with one of shoshannah's alternative suggestions.

• If one of the schools didn't have the word "University" in its name, even though it was considered a "university", such as MIT, it would be odd to say "... attended Rutgers and MIT Universities".

Okay, I know I lost the vote anyway, but I had to come up to bat one last time before the game ended.

If more than two universities are being listed, what about rephrasing this way? He attended the following universities: Rutgers, Yale, (list others here).

DaveSchmidt said:
No. 2. is AP and NYT style.

Pretty sure No. 1 is AP style.

Taken from something onlne, which confirms with my colloquial sense of AP style:

The AP Stylebook uses what’s known as downstyle; that is, words are lowercased
unless a rule says to capitalize them. If you can’t find a rule for
capitalizing a word in the stylebook, use it in lowercase. Most of the
capitalization rules should be familiar to you.

Capitalize
common nouns such as party, river and street when they are part of a
proper name for place, person or thing: the Libertarian Party, the Ohio
River. But lowercase these common nouns when they stand alone or in
subsequent references: “The party did not have a candidate for president,”
“She nearly drowned in the river.” Lowercase all plural uses of common
nouns: the Libertarian and Green parties, the Monongahela and Ohio rivers.

bluepool said:
apple44, I believe that #2 is the correct usage. See 8.67 on page 416 of the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Chicago is an academic style. Avoid unless that is the right for the occasion.

joanne said:
I have noticed a recent marked tendency, which is alarming, to not use caps when they should be used, for example in acronyms and further mentions of second/multiple words in corporate titles. This may be a modern practical trend as a result of autocorrect and device-matching (and sloppiness) or to minimise injuries in rapid typing/keying. We saw similar stylistic changes when keying took over from oldfashioned typewriters.

Outside of the general discussion, I've definitely noticed this in British journalism over the past 10 years or so, most prominently in the name for the United Kingdom Independence Party, known as "Ukip", as a word, rather than acronym. Also, UNESCO became Unesco, as mentioned in this article: http://blog.amamanualofstyle.com/2012/06/06/acronym-morph-whats-an-editor-to-do/

Roland said:

DaveSchmidt said:
No. 2. is AP and NYT style.

Pretty sure No. 1 is AP style.

Whoops. My mistake about AP style; been too long since I've relied on it. Thanks for the correction.

jasper said:

Okay, I know I lost the vote anyway, but I had to come up to bat one last time before the game ended.

Having swallowed my humble pie, however, I'll part with my friend jasper on this point. To my way of thinking, "college" and "university" no longer function as parts of proper nouns in those examples; they become akin to "the 280 and 78 interstates I drive most often," as opposed to "I drive Interstates 280 and 78 most often."

ridski said:

joanne said:
I have noticed a recent marked tendency, which is alarming, to not use caps when they should be used, for example in acronyms and further mentions of second/multiple words in corporate titles. This may be a modern practical trend as a result of autocorrect and device-matching (and sloppiness) or to minimise injuries in rapid typing/keying. We saw similar stylistic changes when keying took over from oldfashioned typewriters.

Outside of the general discussion, I've definitely noticed this in British journalism over the past 10 years or so, most prominently in the name for the United Kingdom Independence Party, known as "Ukip", as a word, rather than acronym. Also, UNESCO became Unesco, as mentioned in this article: http://blog.amamanualofstyle.com/2012/06/06/acronym-morph-whats-an-editor-to-do/

On second thought, my AP style reference wasn't a mistake. It was a snafu.

@jasper, I'm with you on this one! But then, I'm a downstyle kind of girl.

ridski said:

joanne said:
I have noticed a recent marked tendency, which is alarming, to not use caps when they should be used, for example in acronyms and further mentions of second/multiple words in corporate titles. This may be a modern practical trend as a result of autocorrect and device-matching (and sloppiness) or to minimise injuries in rapid typing/keying. We saw similar stylistic changes when keying took over from oldfashioned typewriters.

Outside of the general discussion, I've definitely noticed this in British journalism over the past 10 years or so, most prominently in the name for the United Kingdom Independence Party, known as "Ukip", as a word, rather than acronym. Also, UNESCO became Unesco, as mentioned in this article: http://blog.amamanualofstyle.com/2012/06/06/acronym-morph-whats-an-editor-to-do/

The New York Times stopped capitalizing acronyms over four letters to avoid distraction. I'd assume others have since followed suit. (I know Ukip is only four letters, but from that I can only assume the English are more easily distracted.) Here is their explanation:

Why Nascar, Not NASCAR?

Auto racing fans chafe at our rules on acronyms. Here they are, from our stylebook:
acronyms. An acronym is a word formed from the first letter (or letters) of each word in a series: NATO fromNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization; radar from radiodetection and ranging. (Unless pronounced as a word, an abbreviation is not an acronym.) When an acronym serves as a proper name and exceeds four letters, capitalize only the first letter: Unesco; Unicef.
We limit the uppercasing to four letters because longer strings of capitals are distracting and tend to jump off the page.

Funnily, Nato was the first instance I noticed of this on a BBC report.

DaveSchmidt said:

jasper said:

Okay, I know I lost the vote anyway, but I had to come up to bat one last time before the game ended.

Having swallowed my humble pie, however, I'll part with my friend jasper on this point. ...

Did you mean to say "part"? It sounds like you're siding with me after all. : - )

And thanks, @zucca.

Roland said:

bluepool said:
apple44, I believe that #2 is the correct usage. See 8.67 on page 416 of the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Chicago is an academic style. Avoid unless that is the right for the occasion.

I disagree. Many editors and proofreaders outside of the academic arena use Chicago. There are many style questions that come up that are just not answered by AP or anywhere else.

jasper said:

DaveSchmidt said:

jasper said:

Okay, I know I lost the vote anyway, but I had to come up to bat one last time before the game ended.

Having swallowed my humble pie, however, I'll part with my friend jasper on this point. ...

Did you mean to say "part"? It sounds like you're siding with me after all. : - )
And thanks, @zucca.

I may have unwittingly parted with standard usage and lost myself in the thickets of idiom.

DaveSchmidt said:

jasper said:

DaveSchmidt said:

jasper said:

Okay, I know I lost the vote anyway, but I had to come up to bat one last time before the game ended.

Having swallowed my humble pie, however, I'll part with my friend jasper on this point. ...

Did you mean to say "part"? It sounds like you're siding with me after all. : - )
...

I may have unwittingly parted with standard usage and lost myself in the thickets of idiom.

Oh, persnickety words, you can confuse us people at times.

bluepool said:

Roland said:

bluepool said:
apple44, I believe that #2 is the correct usage. See 8.67 on page 416 of the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Chicago is an academic style. Avoid unless that is the right for the occasion.

I disagree. Many editors and proofreaders outside of the academic arena use Chicago. There are many style questions that come up that are just not answered by AP or anywhere else.

I cannot think of a common style question that I have needed to rely on Chicago for an answer. I am also in favor of the serial comma, so it's not like I never rely on Chicago. I just don't think it should be the go-to style guide for most people.

jasper said:

Oh, persnickety words, you can confuse us people at times.

Is that you, Wittgenstein?

DaveSchmidt said:

jasper said:

Oh, persnickety words, you can confuse us people at times.

Is that you, Wittgenstein?

Well, the name sounds familiar, but I had to look him up, and now I've fallen down a new rabbit hole. I'm not sure I would have the fortitude to work through his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, so I will simply end with this:

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Good morning, all! How delightful to wake incredibly early and discover a lively discussion on these points! Quite makes me yearn 'for the old days' of my former career...

My major discomfort with not listing each name and placing the word 'university' (either capped or or not) afterwards lies in the full and correct name of each institution, not in their common names. For example, I attended and graduated from Melbourne Uni, however its correct name is the University of Melbourne. Because University occurs first in the name, it doesn't sound right listed in a string thus: Deakin, LaTrobe, Monash and Melbourne universities. The string sounds even uglier when the university Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology is added, unless the rephrasing is along Shoshanna's lines (...graduating from the following universities: Deakin, LaTrobe, Melbourne, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.).

Thanks, OP, for the chance to wrap our collective brains around such esoterica.

joanne said:
Good morning, all! How delightful to wake incredibly early and discover a lively discussion on these points! Quite makes me yearn 'for the old days' of my former career...
My major discomfort with not listing each name and placing the word 'university' (either capped or or not) afterwards lies in the full and correct name of each institution, not in their common names. For example, I attended and graduated from Melbourne Uni, however its correct name is the University of Melbourne. Because University occurs first in the name, it doesn't sound right listed in a string thus: Deakin, LaTrobe, Monash and Melbourne universities. The string sounds even uglier when the university Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology is added, unless the rephrasing is along Shoshanna's lines (...graduating from the following universities: Deakin, LaTrobe, Melbourne, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.).
Thanks, OP, for the chance to wrap our collective brains around such esoterica. " src="//static.wwstf.com/common/plugins/redactor/emoticons/1.0/images/1.gif" unselectable="on">

If you didn't use the University of _______ and _________ University here, you'd have some awful big brawls. College football and basketball is HUGE and mixing up names like that is bad, bad, bad. Like Michigan, Illinois, Mississippi... Usually, the ________ Universities are "State" though.