This section provides style guidelines for company names that align with the ASU brand in addition to the latest AP style updates.
Consult a company’s website for the official representation of its name. Click on the News or About tabs to find a press release from the company containing its official name.
- Generally, follow an organization’s convention for capitalization, punctuation and abbreviation of the organization’s suffix — Company, Corporation, Incorporated, Limited. Do not use a comma before the suffix, even if one is included in the formal name.
- ✅ Do: Intel Corp
- ✅ Do: UnitedHealth Group Inc.
- ✅ Do: Translational Genomics Research Institute on first reference, TGen thereafter
- Only use an ampersand if it is part of a company’s official name, such as:
- ✅ Do: AT&T
- ✅ Do: U.S. News & World Report
- Do not capitalize an article such as “the” unless it is part of the company’s official name.
- ✅ Do: The Kroger Co.
- ✅ Do: The Arizona Republic
- ✅ Do: The New York Times
- Do not use all-uppercase unless the letters are individually pronounced.
- ✅ Do: BMW
- ✅ Do: USA Today, 🚫 Don't: USA TODAY
- ✅ Do: Ikea, 🚫 Don't: Not IKEA
- Always capitalize the first letter if it begins a sentence.
- EBay is an online auction site, but: The item is listed on eBay.
- EdX partners with ASU, but: ASU partners with edX.
Exception: adidas is always lowercase, even at the beginning of a sentence.
- Do not use symbols such as exclamation points, plus signs or asterisks that form contrived spellings that might distract or confuse a reader, even if one is included in the formal name or logo:
- ✅ Do: Yahoo, 🚫 Don't: Yahoo!