Advance Reports

Style Manual

 

The Advance Report for your Committee will help the Yearly Meeting understand your efforts for the past year. Printed in the Yearbook, it will be a record that may be reviewed in future years. To help the office prepare the report for the Annual Sessions and then the Yearbook, please keep these guidelines in mind. If possible, submit the report in electronic format. You may email it to the office or send it on a CD or diskette.

Your reports should be two pages in length. If you need to make a more extensive report, please arrange for this with the office in advance. The report should cover the previous calendar year. If possible, the report should have the approval of the Committee. Reports are due the first Monday in June.

The Yearly Meeting has a Style Manual. The purpose is to have a uniform look through the Yearbook and from year to year. Some of this involves issues about common terms that could be handled in more than one way. It would save time if the Advance Reports reflected this style. Here are how various terms are handled:

 

The following terms should be capitalized, whether referring to a specific Meeting or to them generally:

• Monthly Meeting

• Preparative Meeting

• Indulged Meeting

• Worship Group

• Quarterly Meeting

• Half-Yearly Meeting

• Half-Year’s Meeting

• Interim Meeting

• Yearly Meeting

• Meeting for Business

• Minute of Concern

• Memorial Minute

• Minute of Appreciation

 

Please capitalize as indicated:

Meeting, when referring to above types of Meeting: “He visited several Meetings during the year.” It is not capitalized for other groups or mixtures of groups:  “The committees held several meetings.”

Named Committee or reference to this Committee: “After the Publications Committee was formed, the Committee met frequently.”  It is not capitalized for a committee in general: “Many committees meet on Yearly Meeting Day.”

First Day School (not First-Day or Firstday)

Meeting House (not Meetinghouse)

Clerk, Secretary, Treasurer, General Secretary, Religious Education Coordinator, and other officers and employees as formal titles, but not a committee clerk, Meeting treasurer, staff member, etc., in general: e.g., the Presiding Clerk of BYM, the Treasurer of Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting, the Clerk of the Ministry and Oversight Committee of Herndon Monthly Meeting, but Meeting clerks and committee clerks

Inner Light

Light Within

Spirit when referring to a specific Higher Power, but not “the spirit of the Meeting.”

 

Query, Queries, Advices from formal lists, but query, queries, advices not having “official status”: “The third Query from Faith and Practice was read.”  “The Meeting responded to the queries from the Peace Committee.”

Specific BYM projects: “Simple Meal”

“Friends” as a term for Quakers.  Do not capitalize the terms “members” or “attenders.”

 

Commas:

 

For a sentence containing three or more words in a series, use the comma before the final coordinating conjunction. (Avoid “eats, shoots and leaves.”)

 

Abbreviations:

Place names are not to be abbreviated: “Baltimore, Maryland”

Monthly Meeting names should not be abbreviated in a report.

Normally, numbers ten or below are to be written out.  Digits are to be used for 11 or above, except when numbers are used at the beginning of a sentence, or when mixing is confusing: “Thirty members attended, and 15 sent regrets.”  “The package contained six apples, seventeen oranges, and five pears.”