Events Calendar submission style guide

Introduction

First and foremost, remember that the WWU Events Calendar is intended for you to advertise, not just list, your campus event. If you wish to attract visitors or participants to your event, you need to provide enough information to entice them. Conversely, don't provide so much information that readers get bored. Just answer the five basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why?

Field information

Event Title: The default calendar view gives only the title, time and location for each event, so it is essential that your title actually describe what's happening at your event. Your title also should do this succinctly. For some events, such as lectures, plays and films, the title of the presentation itself is often enough, though you may wish to add its category if doing so reduces confusion. Here are some examples of clear and informative titles in thnaese categories:

Film: ‘Citizen Kane'
Fall Business Career Fair
Women's basketball: vs. Multnomah State University
Sanford Piano Series: Sean Duggan

For meetings, workshops and other events, your title should reflect the nature of the event or the sponsoring organization, depending upon which is clearer and easier to understand. For example, a business career fair sponsored by Career Services should be titled "Fall Business Career Fair," or a general meeting of the Board of Trustees should be titled "Board of Trustees general meeting." Place the titles of books, plays and movies inside quotation marks.

Event type: From the drop-down list, choose the event type that most closely matches your event.

Contact info: In these fields, enter the name, phone number and e-mail address of the primary contact person for your event. E-mail addresses should always use lower-case letters. Example: matthew.anderson@wwu.edu.

Location: Use the Location field only for location information. Don't include things like links or contact information in the Location field; use the fields specified for that information. Click on the magnifying glass to see a list of previously entered locations. When giving the building and room number, spell out the name of the building and capitalize the word "Room." Examples: Communications Facility Room 110 or Viking Union Room 567.

Location URL: If there is a Web site with information about your event, you should include its full address—including the "http://"—here.

Event description: Here is where you can provide more detailed information about the event, including a longer description and sponsor information. Keep your descriptions short and to the point, but provide enough information to entice readers and to give them a good idea of what will happen at the event. To add an image related to the event, click the Browse button to locate the file on your hard drive. If one must pay money to attend your event, you may include that information here.

Custom fields: You may enter extra information, such as cost or driving directions, in the custom fields area. To do so, simply fill in the blanks for Field name and Description. Example: To indicate that tickets for an event cost $10, write "Cost" in the Field name area and "$10" in the Description area.

General style guidelines for all fields

Use standard capitalization style in all fields-initial capitals for sentences, capitalized proper nouns and so on. Do not enter information all in capital letters.
Spell out proper nouns on first reference. On second reference, it's OK to abbreviate provided that the abbreviations that will be meaningful to all readers. For example, avoid acronyms such as CIS or FCIS; use Center for International Studies or Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies instead.
Use the proper names for all departments and buildings. A searchable database of departments is available at https://adminweb.wwu.edu/dept_directory/. Building names and their abbreviations are listed here: https://www.piersystem.com/go/doc/1538/254038/.

This document was produced by the Office of University Communications at WWU. For a PDF version of this document, click here.

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