CEC Style Guide
Mackenzie Savaiano, Assistant Professor,
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, msavaiano2@unl.edu
The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) has a 30-page style guide
used, "as a reference for all written materials produced by CEC, both
externally and internally". This guide is used by CEC leadership, staff, editors
and proofreaders to ensure consistency of terminology and acronym used
across CEC materials. This guide is coming up for revision this year, and we
have submitted three recommendations that will be incorporated in the new
version.
The existence of the Style Guide came to my attention when I submitted
corrections to my page proofs for an article. CEC had capitalized all instances
of the word "braille" and I submitted the correction of having "braille" in
lowercase. I also submitted the position paper on capitalization style from the
Braille Authority of North America (2006) to support my correction. The
response I received was that, "per CEC guidelines, all instances of Braille in
the article will be capitalized" (personal communication, March 9, 2016). I
followed up regarding my concern with the Style Manual and was sent a copy
and invited to share recommendations for the upcoming revision. When
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