New England Province Jesuits
Name & title: Rev. Richard H. Roos, S.J., Director of Communications
Institution & publication: New England Province, Companions
Type of publication: Province News Magazine
Readership audience: New England Province Jesuits
Number of pages: 20 - 28
Frequency of publication: Quarterly
Circulation: 220 printed/ 280 online
Color: b & w
Basic style manual: institution
Reason for using the manual: A tradition inherited; makes life easier for editor.
Dictionary: Webster's New World College, 4th Edition
Reason for using dictionary: Up-to-date ("gigaflops," "spam"); thorough etymologies; synonyms; biographical, geographical, and almanac-type entries.
Other resources: J.I.Rodale, "The Synonym Finder" (Warner Books, 1986)
Items on our house style sheet not covered in our manual:
- Whenever a Jesuit’s full name (first and last) appears, it is in bold. This applies even when the same Jesuit is mentioned more than once in the same community report, but under different topics.
- Do not use titles (Fr., Rev., V. Rev.) before Jesuits’ names and do not use initials (S.J., Ph.D.) after them, except in special cases in which you judge that the context demands it.
- Ordinarily Companions uses familiar names rather than formal names for all New England Jesuits and for other Jesuits living and working in the Province, e.g. “Dick Roos” rather than “Richard Roos.”
- Jesuits of other provinces, even if living and working in the New England Province and applied to it, are identified by the standard three-letter abbreviations of their home provinces. These abbreviations are found on the inside front cover of the U.S. Assistancy Catalog. In Companions these abbreviations appear after the men’s names, in parentheses, all caps, but are not bold, e.g. Jack Izzo (CFN).
Items on our house stylesheet that override our manual: We do not use a published style manual. I think our style is probably closest to the N.Y.Times manual. I'm not aware of our consistently overriding it except possibly in the following two areas:
- Within the text of your articles, titles of major works such as books, periodicals, movies, plays, and epic poems are in italics (not underlined, not bold, not all caps, not in quotation marks). Titles of minor works such as periodical articles and short poems are in normal type in quotation marks.
- If you wish to emphasize something, put it in italics (not underlined, not bold, not all caps).
Unresolved issues: I recently had the case of a movie title contained in book title and part of the movie title was in a foreign language. It was difficult to show in print where one started and the other stopped because of the toggling italics. What to do?
Has the subjunctive mood in English been abandoned altogether nowadays? "How will I find the way unless someone guides (subjunctive = guide) me?"
In compound objects of verbs and prepositions, has the subjective case of pronouns displaced the objective case in common usage today? "The waitress asked John, George, and I if we wanted separate checks." (Correct: "...asked John, George, and me...")
When a pronoun is the subject of the verb in a subordinate clause, and when that subordinate clause is the object of a verb or a preposition, the case of the pronoun is subjective. "Please give my symphony ticket to whomever is most likely to recognize me when I arrive." (Correct: "whoever") Has that rule been abandoned in common usage today? rroos@sjnen.org