Some Guide sections are edited through the next-guide.wisc.edu tool by approved Guide Editors for each academic program. The Office of the Registrar announces when ”Next-Guide” is open for editing, usually starting around November 1.
Nongoverned content doesn’t require the same kind of complex approvals as governed content edited in Lumen. These sections are more narrative, giving context, background, and other descriptive text for a program.
Nongoverned content is:
- Program image
- Contact Information section
- Overview section and parent-level overview
- Advising and Careers section
- Resources and Scholarships section (optional)
- Wisconsin Experience section (optional)
Your audience
Students are an important audience of the Undergraduate Guide. Write text for the nongoverned sections of the Guide for their perspective. This includes prospective students who are considering coming to UW–Madison.
Guide Coordinator for
L&S Undergraduate Nongoverned Content
Meg Hamel
meg.hamel@wisc.edu
chat on Teams
Advisors across campus rely on this material. Make it easy for advisors to understand your program so they can accurately explain it to students. Consider using Plain Language techniques; here is one of the many quick summaries of Plain Language concepts.
Edit the BA page
For BA/BS majors, edit nongoverned content on the major’s BA page. The BS page is configured to automatically load that text from the BA page so they match. Only the Contact Information is separately edited on both the BA and BS pages.
Share the joy
What do your instructors love about this field? Why is it fun, interesting, and satisfying as a focus of learning? Show that enthusiasm in your writing so students know why this field is appealing.
Capitalize the titles of majors and certificates
When referring to the proper name of the faculty-approved program, use capitalization (e.g., Journalism; Political Science; Integrative Design of Built and Natural Environments). The general field of study can use lower case (“trends in American journalism”).
Acronyms, initialisms, and informal names
The L&S Undergraduate Guide does not use informal shortenings of degree, major, certificate, department, or unit names (CDIS, ALS, HatH, CLS, GWS…). Exceptions are for official short versions of course subject areas when used with a course number (Sociology = SOC) and official initialisms (Bachelor of Science, Applied Mathematics, Engineering, and Physics = BS AMEP).
Department faculty and staff may commonly use short names for programs but that doesn’t mean it’s clear to everyone else. Students and their family/support people, advisors elsewhere on campus, new employees, and others may not know these shortcuts for departments, course subject areas, and other academic entities. This can make your text hard to understand and be discouraging to prospective or new students.
L&S vs Letters & Science
“Letters & Science” is preferred for most written uses in the Guide (“explore the certificates in Letters & Science”). “L&S” is useful as an adjective (“L&S faculty and staff”).
Use the full “College of Letters & Science” when referring to the conferral of degrees, graduation, when distinguishing policy from other schools/colleges, and when emphasizing the College as the main entity.
An ampersand (&) is always used: never “Letters and Science.”
UW–Madison
An en-dash is the correct punctuation in UW–Madison, not a hyphen. “University of Wisconsin–Madison” is given as an example in the Chicago Manual of Style!
- Mac: press
Option + Minus (-) - Windows: press
Alt + 0150on the numeric keypad
“Majors” are academic programs, not people
It’s a hard habit to break, but in the Guide use “major” to refer to the academic program, not the student who has declared that program (e.g., not “our majors receive excellent academic advising”).
“Top-rated,” “highest ranked,” “most respected”
Avoid statements like “world-class faculty” or “among the highest rated programs” unless you can point to the source of the ranking to give it factual weight and context.
Check all your links
Do they lead to pages that are current and accurate? Check for broken links on your website, too. Update where needed. Meg can run a broken-link checker on your website if your website manager does not regularly do this.
Add links to your Guide pages, wherever practical, including links to your website, to other Guide sections, other campus places/services, etc. When linking to other Guide sections, use only the path starting with the “/undergraduate”: /undergraduate/letters-science/mathematics/mathematics-ba/index.html#requirementstext.