New Identity Magazine House Style

Numbers
Spell out numerals from zero to one hundred.
If there is a combination of numbers in a sentence, and one or more of the numbers is greater than one hundred, use numbers (i.e. 1, 3, 57e. 1, 3, 57
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
Christ Brings Spiritual Blessings ³ Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for the spiritual blessings that Christ has brought us from heaven!

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Punctuation
Periods and commas always come before closing quotation marks. Except when it’s a direct scripture quotation (see below).

Scripture References
When quoting Scripture, place the period after the parentheses containing the reference.
ex: “Finally, my brother, rejoice in the Lord” (Phil. 3:1Phil. 3:1
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
Being Acceptable to God ^{3 1} Finally, my dear friends, be glad that you belong to the Lord. It doesn't bother me to write the same things to you that I have written before. In fact, it is for your own good.

WP-Bible plugin).

If the quotation ends in a question or exclamation point, place it with the text and place a period after the last parenthesis.
ex: “‘If I want him to remain until I come,’ Jesus answered, ‘what is that to you?’” (John 21:21John 21:21
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
21 When Peter saw that disciple, he asked Jesus, “Lord, what about him?”

WP-Bible plugin).

Resources:
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Little Style Guide to Great Christian Writing and Publishing by Leonard Goss and Carolyn Stanford Goss
The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style by Robert Hudson

Capitalization
Always capitalized:
God (and names referring to one supreme God, such as Abba, Jehovah, etc.)
Scripture (when referring to the Bible)
the Bible
the Church of England or the United Methodist Church (when used to refer to the formal name of a denomination)

Do not capitalize:
heaven
hell
hades
the church (when used to refer to Christianity as an institution and/or the body of Christ)
The four seasons are lower-cased (winter, spring, summer, fall)
Do no capitalize “he” or “him” when referring to God or Jesus.
Capitalize the word Bible when you’re talking about the Bible. Do not capitalize bible when it’s descriptive, like an adjective, referring to something like bible study.
Do not capitalize the word “church” to refer to Christianity. Capitalize the word church when it is used to reference a denomination that has the word church in its formal name (e.g. United Methodist Church)

Christian terms:
Unpack (define in your own words) Christian “jargon” the first time you use it. You may not at first notice you are even using Christian jargon, but it’s a good habit to get into thinking in terms of someone new to knowledge of Christianity – what terms might be confusing to them. Words such as:

accept Christ
anointed
blessing
blood of Christ
born again
break your heart for
called
convicted
disciple
dwell
faith
favor, found
found the Lord
glorify God
glory
God’s time
gospel
grace
holy spirit
kingdom of god
lost, the
new birth
on fire for the Lord, fired up
praise
prayer
press in
rebuke
redemption, redeemed
repentance, repent
sacrifice
salvation
sanctified
saved, save
savior
sin
spiritually, spiritual
testimony
trials and tribulations
walk with God
witness
worship
When you must use Christian jargon, please find an alternate way of explaining the term. At least explain it during the first time you use it.

Abbreviations
In text, spell out references to books of the Bible.
ex: The opening chapters of Ephesians…

You may abbreviate biblical references when you enclose them in parentheses.

Please limit the translations to either NIV, The Message, AMP, ESV, NLT, or NKJV and give proper attribution on all quotes. The reason is – we can’t actually fit the copyright credit information of every single translation available out there on our Masthead. It’s best to use just a core selection both for continuity and to lessen confusion.