1. Places
1.1. Addresses
1.1.1. Abbreviate
1.1.1.1. Streets, avenue and boulevard ONLY after numbered address E.g.: Ave. , Blvd.
1.1.1.2. Compass directions using numbered address E.g.: 102 N. Grant St.
1.1.2. Never abbreviate
1.1.2.1. Drive, highway, place, etc
1.2. States
1.2.1. Spell Out
1.2.1.1. States unless preceded by city, county or a military base name E.g.: Florida, Michigan
1.2.1.2. States like Hawaii, Alaska and states with five or fewer letters (even it is used as second reference) E.g.: She lived in Council Bluff, Iowa.
1.2.2. Abbreviate
1.2.2.1. States that are used as second reference or with more than five letters E.g.: He lived in Phoenix, AZ.
2. Time
2.1. Days and Dates
2.1.1. Use numerals in dates without using ordinal numbers
2.1.2. Avoid using 'yesterday', 'today' and 'tomorrow'
2.1.3. While writing events, use months and dates E.g.: April. 18
2.1.4. When referring to days, months and years, separate year with commas E.g.: 22 March, 2001, was a day to remember.
2.2. Months
2.2.1. Spell out the month unless used with a date
2.2.2. When used with date, abbreviate only if the month has six letters or more E.g.: 17 Sept.
2.3. Years
2.3.1. Add an 's' to first year in a decade E.g.: 1970s
2.3.2. Do not spell out years
2.4. a.m. and p.m.
2.4.1. Use figures except noon and midnight
2.4.2. Recognize "9 p.m. tonight" is unnecessary. Write 9 p.m. Tuesday.
3. Punctuation
3.1. Commas ","
3.1.1. Do not out comma before conjuction
3.1.2. Set off a person's hometown and age E.g.: Freda, Penang was linked to the case.
3.1.3. Place a comma before and after
3.1.3.1. A year E.g.: She was born on May 20 ,1999, in Malaysia
3.1.3.2. A state, if preceded by city and county name E.g.: I lived in Tulsa, Okla, on January 20.
3.1.3.3. An appositive E.g.: My teacher, Penny came in late.
3.2. Colon ":"
3.2.1. Capitalize first word after a colon only if it's a proper noun or start of a sentence. E.g.: He promised: There would not be any accidents.
3.2.2. Colons go outside quotation marks, unless part of the quotation.
3.3. Hyphen "-"
3.3.1. For compound adjectives before noun E.g.: well-known actor
3.3.2. Don't use after verb
3.4. Period "."
3.4.1. Use a single space after period at end of sentence.
4. Numbers
4.1. Spell Out
4.1.1. Whole numbers below 10
4.1.2. Numerals that start a sentence E.g.: Five people survived the crash.
4.2. Use figures
4.2.1. For 10 and above
4.2.2. Percentages and ages
5. Titles
5.1. Compositions
5.1.1. Capitalize first and last letter
5.1.2. Do not capitalize "a", "an" and "the" or conjunctions or prepositions (unless more that four letters)
5.1.3. Capitalize "the" if that is the way publication prefers to be known E.g.: The Colors of the Wind
5.2. People
5.2.1. Capitalize all titles before names E.g.: President Obama
5.3. Places
5.3.1. General compass directions should be lowercase
5.3.2. Capitalize regions
5.4. Ethnic Groups
5.4.1. Each races should be capitalized. E.g.: The Malays called for a meeting.