The Harvard Crimson Style Guide: 2015 Supplement

We at The Harvard Crimson acknowledge the evolving nature of language, and as such we recognise the necessity of updating our comprehensive Style Guide to accommodate questions that have arisen over the past few years. This supplement should be seen as The Harvard Crimson’s official position on all matters of grammar, and it must be utilised by all throughout the building.

Pronouns: In this evolving world, two singular pronouns simply are not enough. To obviate all potential confusion, we have elected to anticipate the rise of various new words to describe various identities and will henceforth refer to every human mentioned in a Crimson article by the gender-neutral pronoun ze. All instances of “he” and “she” will be diligently Ctrl-R’ed by the managing editor.

Spelling: In response to confusion regarding the correct spelling of “theatre,” The Harvard Crimson has decided that we will from this point utilise only the British spelling in all of our published material. “Color” is now “colour,” “center” is “centre,” and, of course, we never, never, ever write “theater.” I think I lost a bit of class just typing that.

Vernacular: Words commonly used in modern parlance are frequently inappropriate for our hallowed pages, but there has been significant confusion in the past about which words fall into this category. Compiling a list of such words would be a great deal of work however; fortunately, Time Magazine has anticipated our need and conveniently published a “Which Word Should Be Banned in 2015” poll. No Crimson editor may henceforth ever use any word on this list in any writing whatsoever. No longer shall our newspaper be tarnished by slang like “basic,” “kale,” and, of course, “feminist.”

Apostrophes: Every time a writer utilises a forward single quotation mark instead of a proper apostrophe before an abbreviated year, the managing editor loses as little bit more of zer soul. We at The Harvard Crimson all know better than Microsoft Word, now and forever.

Opinion pieces: Some readers have noted an apparent incongruity between the opinion pieces that The Crimson Staff publishes and the ostensible views of several thousand highly educated young adults living in Cambridge, Mass. In order to achieve the highest possible consistency in our editorials, we have therefore abolished the practice of inviting all Crimson editors to Editorial meetings and determining the staff opinion based on the votes of the four people who actually show up. Instead, we will just ask Alan M. Dershowitz what ze thinks.

Italics: The Harvard Crimson never uses italics. We just don’t like them. If Arts needs to make the title of a film, book, album, or theatre show possessive, they can go fuck themselves.