Language Guidelines

Consistency is critical for clear and effective communication.

Language guidelines represent a set of rules meant to maintain consistency in spelling and style for official documents and reports within ISTA and any texts used in external communication.

General Guidance

Dates + Times

Inclusive Language

Institute References

Titles + Headings

General Guidance

ISTA primarily utilizes US English style in English writing, most often aligning with Chicago, APA, and MLA. For example, ISTA uses the Oxford Comma in lists of three or more items.

Reach out to the ISTA Communications Team if you need more in-depth guidance. For internal users, there are additional guidelines available on the Intranet.

Dates + Times

ISTA follows the US format, therefore dates should be written with the month first. For example:

September 15, 2025
Monday, September 15, 2025
Sept. 15, 2025
9/15/2025

Additionally, times should be written using in the 12-hour clock format, with “am” or “pm” included (and without dots). For example:

2 pm
2 am
1:47 pm

Do not use “noon” or “midnight”, but rather “12 pm” or “12 am”, respectively.

Inclusive Language

Inclusive language takes special care to address and include everyone with the goal to create a sense of belonging for all. It avoids language that expresses stereotypes, bias, and any form of overt or covert discrimination across all dimensions of diversity.

Included here is a simple checklist for using inclusive language in your writing. For more detailed explanations and examples, EDI’s inclusive language guidelines are an excellent and thorough resource.

Tip

ISTA’s convention for gendered nouns in German uses a colon (e.g. Wissenschafter:innen).

Inclusive Language Checklist

As you review your writing, ask yourself the following questions:

Have you used “man” or “men” or words containing them to refer to people who may not be men?
Have you used “he,” “him,” “his,” or “himself” to refer to people who may not be men?
If you have mentioned someone’s sex, gender, age or ethnicity, was it necessary to do so?
Did you use any occupational (or other) stereotypes?
Did you provide the same kinds of information and descriptions when writing about people of different groups (gender, age-groups, nationalities, etc.)?

Institute References

The full name of the Institute reads as “Institute of Science and Technology Austria”. It is abbreviated as “ISTA”.

Institute Name

On first reference, use “Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)”. You should then use “ISTA” or “the Institute” to reference the Institute in the same text. When using “the Institute,” the letter “I” should be capitalized in the word “institute”.

Do not use “IST Austria” or “ISTA Austria“.
Do not translate the name to German or another language when speaking or writing.

Institute Address

The correct address of the Institute is:

Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria

Do not use Gugging, Maria Gugging, or Vienna as part of the address or affiliation.

Institute Affiliation in Publications

Please include ISTA as your affiliation in your publications with the Institute’s full name in parentheses [e.g. Mato Lagator, ISTA (Institute of Science and Technology Austria)].

The address should be delegated to a footnote, if possible.

Do not include your research area, research group, or scientific service unit in the affiliation, as they are not integrated into the Institute’s name.

Titles + Headings

ISTA generally follows the Chicago Manual of Style 17^th Edition capitalization rules for titles and headings (e.g. Simulating the Machinery of Life).

Capitalize the first and the last word.
Capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs (including phrasal verbs such as “play with”), adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions.
Lowercase articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions (regardless of length).
Lowercase the second word after a hyphenated prefix (e.g. Mid-, Anti-, Super-, etc.) in compound modifiers (e.g. Mid-year, Anti-hero, etc.).
Lowercase the ‘to’ in an infinitive (e.g. I Want to Play Guitar).

For subheadings, use sentence case, capitalizing only the first word, names, etc. (e.g. Simulating the machinery of life).

Tip

There is additional information regarding titles and headings on the Typography page.