New Mexico Bureau of Geology Editorial Style Guide
Capitalization & Punctuation

Capitalize the name of a biological phylum, class, order, family, or genus, but not species, subspecies, or variety (for example, Foraminifera, Arecaceae, Tyrannosaurus rex, Homo sapiens, Prunus virginiana var. demissa).

Capitalize the words figure, table, appendix, and chapter when they’re given in the text to refer readers to a subsequent item (for example, the features in Figure 1 illustrate, refer to Chapter 2).

When calling out to another chapter in the same publication, use the same numbering convention as the chapter itself, that is, if the chapters are numbered in Roman numerals, use Roman numerals in the callouts.

If another author’s figure, table, appendix, or chapter is being called out, use lowercase (for example, At its reference section in the Rio Salado Valley (Hook et al., 1983, table 3), the formation is divided into three members.).

See figure callouts.

The names of elements and molecules are not capitalized in text. When using chemical symbols (see abbreviations and acronyms), use the capitalization style on the periodic table.

Use lowercase for compass directions when written out (for example, north, south, northwest, north-northwest) and for descriptive terms that denote direction or position (for example, southeastern New Mexico). Abbreviations for compass directions should be capitalized (for example, N, S, E, W, NE, SW, NNE).

Capitalize directions only when they designate regions:

• Indianapolis is northwest of Lexington.
• Earthquakes are more common on the West Coast.
• Southerners eat more fried foods than Northerners.
• The climate is wet in the Northwest.

Proper geographic names are capitalized (for example, Monument Valley, Wasatch Range, Great Salt Lake). Names that are not recognized as formal may be capitalized in some cases, for example, if they are the subject of a publication. This guide contains individual entries for some geographic names whose capitalizations differs from these rules due to common usage. For terms not listed here, authors should refer to the U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to determine if a geographic name is formal and should be capitalized.

More specifics:

• Areas of indefinite extent are lowercase (for example, Salt Lake City area, Bonneville basin).
• Mining districts, oil fields, gas fields, fields, mines, smelters, and other terms related to mineral or hydrocarbon extraction and processing are not capitalized when included as part of a proper name (for example, City Creek mining district, Grassy Trail Creek oil field, Wasatch Plateau coalfield, Bingham Canyon mine, Black Rock smelter).
• Structural geologic terms are not capitalized when included as part of a geologic name (for example, Sulphur Creek anticline, Wasatch fault zone). Even when used with a proper name, lowercase is preferred for anticline, arch, area, basalt flow, batholith, claim, coal bed, coalfield, coal seam, cone, cyclothem, deposit, dome, embayment, escarpment, facies, fault, fault zone, homocline, mill, mine, mining district, monocline, oil field, pluton, principal meridian, prospect, quadrangle, region, rift, sag, syncline, uplift, well, and zone.

See geographic names.

Capitalize the names of eons, eras, periods, epochs, ages, eonothems, erathems, systems, series, and stages.

The geochronologic terms early, middle, and late and the chronostratigraphic terms lower, middle, and upper are capitalized only as part of a formal geologic time or rock series name (for example, Early Jurassic, Upper Devonian). They are lowercase for informal designations (for example, early Holocene, middle Eocene). For geochronologic use, authors are encouraged to follow the Geological Society of America’s Geologic Time Scale. For chronostratigraphic use, authors are encouraged to follow the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s International Chronostratigraphic Chart.

Geochronologic (time)

• Capitalize the names of geologic eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages.
• All subdivisions of ages are informal (for example, early Maastrichtian, late Albian).
• Capitalize early, middle, and late when used with Jurassic, Triassic, Pennsylvanian, Mississippian, Devonian, and Ordovician. Capitalize early and late with Cretaceous (no middle).
• Lowercase early, middle, and late when used with Quaternary, Neogene, Paleogene, Permian, and Silurian.

Chronostratigraphic (position)

• Capitalize the names of geologic eonothems, erathems, systems, series, and stages.
• All subdivisions of stages are informal (for example, lower Maastrichtian, upper Albian).
• Capitalize lower, middle, and upper when used with Jurassic, Triassic, Pennsylvanian, Mississippian, Devonian, and Ordovician. Capitalize lower and upper with Cretaceous (no middle).
• Lowercase lower, middle, and upper when used with Quaternary, Neogene, Paleogene, Permian, and Silurian.

The names of formal geologic units are proper nouns and are capitalized (for example, Chinle Formation, Navajo Draw Member of Arroyo Ojito Formation of Santa Fe Group). Authors should consult the U.S. Geological Society National Geologic Map Database (aka Geolex) to determine if a unit is formally recognized.

In the names of informal geologic units, don’t capitalize unit terms for lithology or formation (for example, Huckleberry Ridge ash bed, Left Creek quartzite, formation of Aurora).

For more, see geologic names/geologic units.

Use title case capitalization for headings, that is, capitalize all words except for minor words (articles [for example, a, an, the, etc.], prepositions [for example, on, for, after, etc.], and short conjunctions [for example, and, but, or, etc.]) that are not the first or last word of the title.

The full names of legislative, administrative, and judicial bodies, departments, bureaus, and offices are capitalized (for example, U.S. Department of Energy). Abbreviated names are not (for example, the energy department [in relation to the U.S. Department of Energy]).

Mineral names are not capitalized unless they begin a sentence; see minerals.

Capitalize professional titles only when they come before a person’s name (for example, Pat Jones is the state geologist, State Geologist Pat Jones is president of the Association of American State Geologists).

Always capitalize proper nouns, including hyphenated words in titles and headings (for example, Pat Jones, Open-File Report 88-546).

Don’t capitalize conjunctions, short prepositions (for example, of, for, from), or articles (for example, the, a, an) in long proper names (for example, New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources).

In the report text, capitalize all important words in the titles of books, journal articles, and reports (for example, Geologic History of Utah by Lehi F. Hintze; see title case); for capitalization of reference entries, see references.

Singular nouns used to replace proper nouns are not capitalized (for example, Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, but the monument; Zion National Park, but the park).

Don’t capitalize spring, summer, fall, autumn, or winter unless part of a formal name (for example, sampling was carried out in spring and winter, the program was held in the fall, the New Mexico Geological Society Fall Field Conference was in October).

Use title case capitalization for titles in the main text of a publication, that is, capitalize all words except for minor words (articles [for example, a, an, the, etc.], prepositions [for example, on, for, after, etc.], and short conjunctions [for example, and, but, or, etc.]) that are not the first or last word of the title.

Apostrophes have two primary uses: to indicate possession and to make contractions.

To indicate possession:

• Add ’s to a singular noun to make it possessive (for example, the layer’s thickness).
• Add only an apostrophe to plural nouns ending in s (for example, the layers’ thicknesses).
• Add ’s to singular nouns ending in s (for example, Dr. Jones’s research). This is an exception to some style guides, but it indicates the correct pronunciation.
• Don’t use an apostrophe with possessive pronouns: ours, yours, his, hers, its, theirs, whose.
• Don’t use an apostrophe with a word ending in s when its use is descriptive rather than possessive (for example, Masters swimming, Beatles music, Titans game).
• Don’t use an apostrophe in place names unless it is part of the formal name (for example, Pikes Peak, Tates Creek, Martha’s Vineyard).

To make contractions:

• Use an apostrophe to form contractions and to indicate omitted letters or numerals (for example, don’t, won’t, can’t, rock ’n’ roll, class of ’74).
• Avoid contractions in technical writing, but use them sensibly for a general audience to prevent the prose from being overly formal.
• Don’t use ’s to pluralize numerals or multiple-letter combinations (for example, 1890s, not 1890’s; ABCs, not ABC’s).
• Don’t use an apostrophe as a substitute for the prime symbol (′ – Alt + 8242).
• Don’t use an apostrophe as an abbreviation for feet (for example, 6 ft, not 6’).

Brackets serve the same function as parentheses—to enclose incidental information or explanatory material—but they’re restricted to situations where it’s necessary to enclose information within an existing set of parentheses:

• ...or thin dolomitic beds (note, however, that Bauch [1982, p. 42] included salt-cast-bearing gray siltstones in the upper Abo Formation).

Brackets are also used in equations and formulas, and to insert brief editorial comments or corrections into quoted material (see quotations).

Use a colon (not a semicolon) to introduce lists, long quotations, and for emphasis:

• These are the three classes of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.
• Vanderbilt coach Bryce Drew said: “I’m really proud of our effort tonight. We could have ducked our heads when we got 10 points down, but we didn’t. We came back and became the aggressor late in the second half. That turned the game around for us.”
• Malik Monk: All he does is win.

Don’t capitalize the first word after a colon unless it’s a proper noun or the beginning of a complete sentence:

• The best songwriting team ever: Lennon and McCartney.
• The worst thing that can happen: defeat.
• You can count on one thing: The replay booth will rule against Vanderbilt.

Colons are also used after salutations in a formal letter (for example, Dear Dr. Jones:), to separate hours from minutes (for example, 3:45 p.m.), to separate the two halves of a ratio (for example, 4:1), and in reference entries to separate the title of a source from its publisher (see references).

For help with structuring lists with colons, see lists.

Commas have many uses.

To delineate items in a series:

• John, Paul, George, and Ringo are the Beatles.
• In lists of three items or more in technical publications, use a serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma) before the last item and its conjunction. In the above example, this is the comma after George.

Before and after a state name when a city is given:

• Nashville, Tennessee, is my hometown.

To separate adjectives that are equal in rank (adjectives that can switch locations in the sentence with one another such that the sentence will still make sense):

• tan, brown to reddish-brown, well-sorted silt and sand

No comma is needed before the last adjective if it’s critical to the meaning:

• a stretched-out, transparent team swimsuit (not just any suit, but the suit designated for team members)

To set off introductory phrases:

• When we arrived at the pool, we were overcome by chlorine fumes.

To set off two phrases joined by a conjunction when each phrase could stand alone as a sentence:

• She came to Savannah to score points, but the highest she placed was the dreaded 11th place.

To introduce short quotations:

• Phelps said, “I’m pleased with my time.”

In numbers greater than three digits (but not after a decimal):

• The attendance was 12,060
• The first 10 digits of pi are 3.141592653 (not 3.141,592,653)

To identify month, date, and year:

• On September 5, 1893, the New Mexico School of Mines opened.

Don’t use a comma to separate months and years:

• October 1956 (not October, 1956)

Don’t use a comma with Inc.:

• Pendant Publishing Inc. (not Pendant Publishing, Inc.)

Don’t use a comma with Jr. and Sr.:

• Garland Dever Jr. (not Garland Dever, Jr.)

There are two types of dashes: en dashes (–) and em dashes (—).

An en dash (so called because it’s the width of the letter n) is used to connect inclusive words and numbers such as dates, page ranges, and ranges of values when given as equivalent units of measure in parentheses:

• I usually swim 2,000–3,000 yards in a workout.
• 1945–1978
• p. 312–327
• 20 to 30 ft (6–9 m)
• cross section A–A’
• snowpack–runoff relationship
• north–south trajectory

As a test for when an en dash is appropriate over a hyphen, substitute the words to, through, or up to and including between the items.

An em dash (so called because it’s the width of the letter m) is used to set off extra information, such as examples, explanatory or descriptive phrases, or supplemental facts:

• One can piece together from different locales—particularly the Caballo Mountains and Sierra de las Uvas—a seemingly conformable sequence of these rock units.
• In central New Mexico, most now regard the Glorieta as a distinct formation—a practice followed in this study.

Don’t put spaces before or after either dash.

Don’t use a hyphen where a dash would be the correct choice and vice versa.

In reference list entries, use an em dash to replace a colon that appears within the document title to avoid possible confusion with the colon that is used to mark the end of the document title (see references):

• Basins of the Rio Grande Rift—Structure, Stratigraphy, and Tectonic Setting: Geological Society of America Special Paper 291

Don’t use en dashes to substitute for the words to or and when used with from or between, respectively, to indicate a range of values. Don’t use an en dash when the two items in the range are hyphenated.

• Nitrate concentration ranges from 2.6 to 9.3 mg/L. (not from 2.6–9.3 mg/L)
• Fine-grained sediments accumulated in a shallow lake between 45 and 40 million years ago. (not between 45–40 million years ago)
• We measured several 31- to 66-m-long profiles. (not 31–66-m-long)

PC/Mac controls for en dash:

• PC: Alt + 0150 (Note: This method works only for keyboards that include a 10-key numeric pad; use a double hyphen [--] if the alt code doesn’t work.)
• Mac: Option + Dash (-)

PC/Mac controls for em dash:

• PC: Alt + 0151 (Note: This method works only for keyboards that include a 10-key numeric pad; use a triple hyphen [---] if the alt code doesn’t work.)
• Mac: Shift + Option + Dash (-)

An ellipsis indicates that one or more words have been omitted from quoted material:

• A previous author wrote, “We will examine the development of Brough’s Tunnel … within Clifty Falls State Park.”

Ellipses are formed by typing three periods in a row. Include a space before the first period and after the last period.

Ellipses are not used before the first word of a quotation, even if the beginning of the original sentence is omitted, or after the last word of a quotation, even if the end of the original sentence is omitted.

Ellipses are not meant to indicate a break in thought; don’t use them instead of an em dash.

A hyphen joins two or more words that work together to modify a subsequent noun:

• a well-defined aquifer
• pale-green shale
• reddish-brown sandstone
• light-gray limestone
• 60-meter-wide graben
• fine-grained sandstone
• fine- to coarse-grained sandstone
• 1/2-inch crystals
• northwest-trending fault
• east-central New Mexico

Don’t use a hyphen when the noun comes first:

• an aquifer that is well defined
• shale of pale green color
• a graben that is 60 m wide
• the sandstone is fine grained
• sandstone that is fine to coarse grained
• crystals of 1/2 inch
• a fault trending northwest

Don’t use a hyphen with very or adverbs ending in ly:

• a very porous layer
• a finely crystalline rock

Don’t use a hyphen when the modifying words do not function as one unit and could be separated by a comma:

• a small, blue mineral
• a large, dry riverbed

Use a hyphen to prevent doubled vowels and tripled consonants:

• anti-intellectual
• well-liked

When describing rock units in stratigraphic sections, well logs, and other lists, compound modifiers following a rock name are traditionally hyphenated in the geologic literature:

• Sandstone: blue-gray, thinly bedded, coarse-grained
• Welded tuff: reddish-brown, flow-banded

A number of compound nouns exist in geological vocabulary. Some are hyphenated (acre-foot, cross-bed, cross-stratification, meta-arkose), and others are not (cross section, dip angle, dike swarm, solution banding). Consult the Glossary of Geology for the proper forms of compound nouns.

Compound numbers between twenty-one and ninety-nine and fractions are hyphenated when written out:

• thirty-three
• four-fifths
• one-third

Use a hyphen to separate noninclusive numbers, such as telephone numbers and serial numbers:

• 801-537-3300
• no. 14558-789-D
• NMBGMR Miscellaneous Publication 03-7

Use a hyphen where numbers and units of measure form a compound modifier:

• A 4-foot-thick fossiliferous limestone bed is at the top of the interval.

See prefixes and suffixes for more on the use of hyphens.

Parentheses enclose incidental information or explanatory material and are the most common type of punctuation found in scientific reports after commas and periods. Parentheses are used in the following ways.

To enclose abbreviations the first time they appear:

• Differences in the timing of the most recent event (MRE) along a fault zone are used to define fault segments.

For in-text citations (see brackets):

• Wilpolt and Wanek (1951) were the first to map the geology of the Quebradas region.
• Terranes accreted to the southern margin of Laurentia during the Proterozoic (Karlstrom et al., 2004).

To provide alternative units of measurement:

• Deposition was rapid during the Pennsylvanian and Permian, resulting in a total accumulation of 25,000 to 30,000 ft (7,600–9,100 m) of marine sediments.

To call out figures, tables, chapters, and appendices:

• In the Blackington Hills, the tuff is 90–150 m thick (Fig. 63).

To provide additional information:

• The Emery high (or Piute platform as it is now called) and the Kaibab uplift (a poorly defined band of uplifts) have been identified by the thinning or absence of Pennsylvanian formations.

To enumerate points in a list:

• Much of the unit is (1) red, pink, or gray, (2) medium to coarse grained, and (3) equigranular or slightly porphyritic.

Don’t use back-to-back parentheses; use a semicolon to separate items, for example, (Fig. 2; Hook, 1983), or rewrite to avoid back-to-back parentheses or ambiguity.

Quotation marks set off direct speech and material quoted verbatim from other sources (see quotations):

• Hook and Cobban (2015, p. 27) defined it as “that portion of the Mancos Shale lying between the undifferentiated or main body of the Dakota Sandstone and the Tres Hermanos Formation.”

In text (but not reference entries), quotation marks enclose the titles of journal articles, book chapters, and newspaper articles and editorials. Italics are used for the names of the larger works these items are published in (see italics):

• “The House Range, Western Utah—Cambrian Mecca” by Hintze and Robison (1987) in Rocky Mountain Section of the Geological Society of America Centennial Field Guide, Volume 2 provides a succinct description of an important fossil locality in Utah.

Quotation marks also enclose words used in a special way:

• “Caliche” usually refers to an indurated layer of calcium carbonate accumulation in a soil; “hardpan” is a more general term that refers to any indurated soil layer resulting from the precipitation of soluble materials in the soil profile.

Commas and periods are always placed inside closing quotation marks; colons and semicolons are always placed outside closing quotation marks. All other punctuation marks are placed inside quotation marks only if they are part of the quoted material.

Don’t use a quotation mark as a substitute for the double-prime symbol (″) (i.e., seconds of angle; see prime symbol).

Don’t use a quotation mark as an abbreviation for inches (for example, 6 in., not 6”).

A semicolon indicates a pronounced separation between grammatical units. It’s stronger than a comma and almost as full as a period, but it implies a closer relationship between the thoughts than a period would. A semicolon separates two or more complete thoughts (independent clauses) within a single sentence:

• These bentonites range in thickness from 0.6 to 35.6 cm; most are white but weather orange.

When a semicolon is used to link complete thoughts, it doesn’t require a conjunction (and, but, or, if, so, etc.); however, a semicolon is necessary when an adverbial conjunction (accordingly, besides, consequently, furthermore, hence, however, instead, moreover, nevertheless, otherwise, still, therefore, thus) connects the thoughts:

• The full extent of the Escalante silver vein was known only after extensive exploration; consequently, a number of smaller ore deposits in the district were overlooked for many years.

Don’t use a semicolon with the simple coordinating conjunctions and, or, for, nor, yet, so, and but. Instead use a comma.

Semicolons are also used to separate items in a series when one or more of the items requires a comma (see lists).

Slashes are used to signify alternatives (for example, and/or, his/hers), in abbreviations (for example, m/s, acre-ft/yr), or in fractions (for example, 1/3, 1/4).