Event and News Posting Best Practices

• Our name is the “CUNY Graduate Center” or “the Graduate Center”
• Use comma before “and” in a series: the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
• Titles capitalized before name, not after: Vice President for Student Affairs Albert Smith; Albert Smith, vice president for student affairs.
• Punctuation matches font of surrounding paragraph: An authority on Moby-Dick, the professor…
• Degrees: Ph.D.; D.M.A., B.A., CUNY B.A./B.S.
• Spell out whole numbers from one through nine and round multiples of those numbers.
• Events must be sponsored or co-sponsored by an official GC office, department, center, or organization in order to be submitted to the GC calendar.
• For more details, view the Editorial Style Guide. 

When writing your title, make sure it can stand alone and people will get an understanding of what the news or event is, if only the title is displayed.  Keep event titles to a maximum of 100 characters. Some versions of the calendar will display only the title without the description.

• Good example: M.S. in Data Science Open House
• Poor example: Open House – No context about what program the open house is related to.

Put the most important information near the top, and concentrate on why people will want to come to your event or why people should care about this news. Most people will skim and scan the text, so use clear headings and break up text with bulleted lists and short chunks of content.
 
Do:

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short and easy to scan.
• Double check your spelling.
• Include all the information a person will need to attend your event.
• Spell out acronyms that may be unfamiliar to most audiences.
• Indicate if RSVP is required.
• If you would like your event/news to appear on other programs/departments' pages, please contact the program directly for permission before assigning it to additional programs/departments.
  • To do this, when creating your event/news, under Settings, add Programs and Departments as appropriate.
• For news items:
  • Use a short sentence for the Summary field (300 characters or less) summarizing your news item.
  • Use three sentences or more for the Body field, and include details of your news and why it is important.

Don’t:

• Use ALL-CAPS in the title or description (except for acronyms)
• Underline important words, instead use bold or italics
• Say “Click here,” instead link descriptive words
  • Example: “Click here to learn more about the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality” rewrite to say “Learn more about the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality.”
• Paste raw URLs, instead link descriptive words
  • Example: Instead of “Visit https://stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu,” rewrite to say "Visit the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality"

You can add an image (jpg, png, gif) to event and news items:

• For events: 
  • Add an image file using the "Image" field (found under Settings).
  • Event images should be 2130 pixels by 1200 pixels tall, high resolution with clear focus.
• For news:
  • Add an image file under Settings, "Image" field (found under Settings).
  • News images should be 2560 pixels by 1440 pixels tall, high resolution with clear focus.
• Images can also be added to the body of event or news as inline images.
• Images must always have alt text.

Make sure you have all of the rights and permissions to use the image. Images pulled from Google images or from news sources should not be used unless you have explicit written permission.
 
Avoid uploading banners containing hardcoded information about your news item or event. Instead, upload a photograph accompanied by a short/long description and fill out all the other relevant fields (start date, website, registration deadlines, etc). This will allow people who use screen readers or other devices to browse the web, to access your content without any problems.

If you’re submitting news or events with a description in a language other than English, make sure to accompany it with the appropriate English translation.