New Identity Magazine House Style
Please familiarize yourself with our House Style Guide. This guide is used as a minimal reference guide while writing and is not meant to be all encompassing. Please follow the Chicago Manual of Style with further editing and sourcing questions.
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, 57) for all the numerals.
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. 3:1).
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 21:21).
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 as a whole), when mentioning a scripture it should be lower-case
the Bible
the Church of England or the United Methodist Church (when used to refer to the formal name of a denomination)
Heaven/Hell
Do not capitalize:
Do not 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.
the church (when used to refer to Christianity as an institution and/or the body of Christ). 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)
The four seasons are lower-cased (winter, spring, summer, fall)
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.