Style Guide

Using this guide

Every piece published under the NU Nexus name should read like it came from the same publication. Not the same person. The same publication. Your voice is yours!

Read parts one through four before you write your first piece. Parts five and six are reference sections. Look things up as you need them instead of trying to memorize them.

Editors are expected to know all of it.

The short version

• Have a point. Make it early. Support it.
• Cite anything a reasonable person could dispute. Hyperlink the source.
• Write for a smart reader who does not share your major.
• Cut every word that is not doing work.
• When the guide and good writing disagree, tell an editor. The guide can change.

Voice

NU Nexus sounds like a well-read student who has done the reporting and is not afraid to say what they found. Not a wire service, not an academic journal. Between them.

Direct

Say the thing. Do not warm up to it across three sentences. If a paragraph could lose its first sentence without losing meaning, that sentence was a throat-clearer and it goes.

As submitted: It is important to note that the vast majority of AI coursework in higher education remains housed in computer science departments.

As edited: Across higher education, most AI coursework still lives in computer science and engineering departments.

Positioned

Even our reported pieces argue something. Coverage of an event is not a transcript of the event. Ask what the story means and be willing to say it, then earn it with evidence rather than adjectives.

This does not license opinion dressed as reporting. In a reported piece the argument emerges from what you found. In an op-ed the argument is the premise. Know which one you are writing.

Grounded

Abstraction is the default failure mode of technology-policy writing. Anchor claims in specific people, specific numbers, specific consequences. A reader should be able to picture what you are describing.

Vague: AI is reshaping the landscape of the modern educational system in significant ways.

Grounded: Fifty-four students are enrolled across both courses, or 2.5% of the college.

Point of view

First person is allowed and sometimes required. Use it when you were in the room, when you conducted the interview, or when the argument is explicitly yours. Do not use it as filler.

• Use it: "I asked her what stands in the way of her work."
• Cut it: "I think this policy is flawed." The reader already knows the assertion is yours.

Use "we" for the publication and for the generational stakes we write about. Do not use "we" to mean humanity in general when you mean something narrower.

Humor is allowed in small doses, when it lands. A joke that needs explaining is not a joke. Never make one at the expense of a source or a subject.

What we never sound like

• Arrogant. We can be confident and still take the other side seriously.
• Alarmist. Stakes come from evidence, not adjectives.
• Academic. If a sentence would only appear in a seminar paper, rewrite it.
• Condescending. Never assume the reader has not heard of something obvious, and never assume they have read the paper you are citing.
• Promotional. We write about the university. We do not do public relations for it.

What we publish

Three sections. Every piece belongs to one of them. If you cannot tell which, the piece is not focused yet.

Interviews & Profiles

Target length: 1,200 to 2,000 words. Conversations with faculty, researchers, practitioners, and students working at the tech-policy intersection. These are narrative pieces built around quotes, not question-and-answer transcripts.

Structure them thematically. Group the conversation into two to five sections with their own subheads, each carrying one idea forward. Open with what makes the subject worth the reader's time and close with something that resonates rather than summarizes.

Op-Eds & Commentary

Target length: 700 to 1,200 words. Arguments. The thesis should be unmistakable by the end of the third paragraph. Opinion writing is held to the same sourcing standard as everything else. An argument without evidence is a post, not a piece.

Acknowledge the strongest version of the counterargument, not a convenient weak one. Readers who disagree with you should still finish the piece.

Research & Analysis

Target length: 1,200 to 2,500 words. Rigorously sourced explanation of a policy development, a technical shift, or a body of evidence, plus what it means. The reporting burden here is highest. Assume a reader who will click your links.

Explain mechanisms, not just outcomes. If a reader finishes and cannot describe how the thing works, the piece did not do its job.

Length rules

• Nothing under 700 words unless an editor approves it in advance.
• No hard ceiling, but length must be earned. A long piece that drifts gets cut, not indulged.
• Word counts exclude the headline, deck, byline, and contributor bio.

What we do not run

• Straight breaking-news coverage. Northeastern Global News already does it and does it faster. We cover what a development means.
• Press releases, event announcements, or repackaged university communications.
• Anonymous sourcing without prior approval from the Editor-in-Chief.
• Pieces about NU Nexus itself, or about an organization the writer leads, without a disclosure line.
• Coursework submitted unrevised. A term paper is not an article.

The craft

Anatomy of a piece

Headlines and bios

A good headline makes a claim or names a tension. A bad one describes a topic.

Topic: Northeastern and Artificial Intelligence Coursework

Claim: Northeastern's First AI Courses in the Social Sciences Are Here

Headlines use title case. Decks use sentence case. Neither ends in a period. 

Contributor bios are third person, present tense, no more than three sentences. Include year, college or majors, and any role at NU Nexus.

Format: Matthew Graves is the founder and editor-in-chief of NU Nexus. He is a third-year student studying Criminal Justice and Political Science with minors in Interdisciplinary AI, International Affairs, and Law & Public Policy.

Openings and closings

You have two sentences to earn the third. What works: a specific scene or moment, a number that reframes the subject, or a flat statement of the argument.

What does not: dictionary definitions, "since the dawn of," rhetorical questions you immediately answer, and any sentence that could open a piece on a different subject.

A conclusion should give the reader something they did not have at the start. Restating your thesis in different words is not a conclusion. Strong endings return to an image from the opening, hand the last word to a source who says it better than you can, or state the stakes plainly and stop. Do not end with a call for "further conversation." Say what should happen.

Paragraphs and sentences

• Paragraphs over roughly 120 words are usually two paragraphs.
• Sentences over roughly 40 words are usually two sentences.
• Vary the length deliberately. A short sentence after three long ones lands hard. Use that.
• One idea per paragraph. If you cannot summarize a paragraph in a phrase, it holds more than one idea.
• Prefer active voice. Passive is fine when the actor is genuinely unknown or genuinely irrelevant.
• Prefer the present tense where both work.

Words and constructions to cut

Throat-clearers. These carry no meaning. Delete them and the sentence improves: it is important to note that, it should be noted that, it is clear that, needless to say, the fact that, in order to, at the end of the day, when it comes to.

Vague nouns. Landscape, space, ecosystem, framework, paradigm, realm, sphere, and system are almost always hiding a more specific noun. Find it. "The AI landscape" usually means AI companies, AI regulation, or AI research, and those are three different subjects.

Stacked qualifiers. Say how sure you are once. "May potentially," "could possibly," and "seems to suggest that perhaps" each hedge twice. Pick one hedge or drop it.

Drained by overuse in AI writing. Use only when you mean them precisely: revolutionize, transform, disrupt, unprecedented, game-changing, seismic, delve, tapestry, navigate the complexities, at the forefront of, in an era of.

Explaining technical material

Our readers span computer science and philosophy. Write so both finish the piece.

• Define a technical term the first time you use it, in the same sentence or the next one, in plain language.
• One analogy per concept. Two competing analogies confuse more than they clarify.
• Explain what a system does before you name it.
• Do not fake precision. If you do not understand the mechanism well enough to explain it, ask a source or leave it out.

Sourcing, Quotes, and integrity

What requires a citation

Cite any factual claim a reasonable reader could dispute, and any number, study, poll, law, or event you did not personally witness. Your own reasoning, interpretation, and argument do not need citations. Common knowledge does not need one. When you are unsure, cite it.

How we cite

Hyperlinks in the text. No footnotes, no endnotes, no bibliography.

• Link the specific words the source supports. Do not hyperlink an entire sentence when four words carry the claim.
• Link to the original source. If a news article describes a study, link the study. If both add something, link both.
• For paywalled or offline material, link an abstract, a summary page, or a publisher listing.
• When several consecutive facts come from one source, re-link every few sentences so the reader knows it still applies.
• Never link to a source you have not opened and read.

Source quality

• Preferred: peer-reviewed research, government and intergovernmental documents, primary legal texts, company and institutional filings, established outlets that cite their own sources.
• Acceptable with attribution in the text: think tank reports, industry research, advocacy organization data. Name who produced it and note the interest if there is one.
• Not acceptable: content farms, uncredited aggregators, AI-generated summaries, social media posts as sole evidence for a factual claim, and Wikipedia as a citation. Wikipedia is a fine place to find sources and never a source itself.

Reading a statistic correctly

The most common accuracy failure at a publication like ours is not a fabricated number. It is a real number used to support a claim it does not actually support. Before a statistic goes in, confirm all five.

1. The number measures what your sentence says it measures. "86% of students use AI in their studies" is not the same claim as "86% of students use AI to write assignments."
2. The population is the one you are describing. National data does not describe Northeastern. Survey data on faculty does not describe students.
3. The date is current enough to matter. Anything in AI older than two years needs a reason to be there, and the date should appear in the sentence.
4. Correlation has not quietly become causation in your phrasing.
5. The sample is large enough and the methodology is disclosed. A self-selected online poll is not a survey.

If a number is strong but does not quite support your point, change the point. Do not stretch the number.

Quotes

Quote a source when they say it better than you could, when the exact wording matters, or when their voice is part of the story. Paraphrase everything else. A piece built from long block quotes reads as a transcript.

Accuracy.

• Quotes are verbatim. You may remove filler words and false starts and fix an obvious verbal stumble. You may not improve someone's phrasing.
• Use an ellipsis for material removed from the middle of a quote. Never use one to compress two separate statements into one.
• Square brackets for a word added for clarity, used sparingly. Heavy bracketing means you should paraphrase.
• If a quote could be read as damaging or is likely to be contested, read it back to the source before publication.

Attribution.

• "Said" is the default and almost always the right verb. "Explained," "argued," "noted," and "added" are fine when accurate. Avoid "claimed," which implies doubt, unless you mean to imply doubt.
• Attribution goes at the end of the first sentence of a multi-sentence quote, not after the whole thing.
• Name and identify a source fully on first reference.

Conducting interviews

1. Confirm on the record before you start. State that you are with NU Nexus and that the conversation is for publication.
2. Ask permission before recording. Every time.
3. Send questions in advance only if the source requires it, and never treat the written answers as the whole interview.
4. Do not grant quote approval. You may read back a specific quote for accuracy. You may not hand over the draft.
5. Keep your recording and transcript until the piece has been published for 30 days.
6. If a source asks to go off the record mid-conversation, that applies going forward, not retroactively. Say so in the moment.

Our AI policy

We write about artificial intelligence. That makes our own use of it a matter of public credibility, and we hold ourselves to a stricter standard than we would ask of anyone else.

Conflicts of interest

• Disclose in the piece any organization you belong to, work for, or are paid by that appears in it.
• Do not write about a course you are enrolled in, a professor who is grading you, or a club you lead, unless an editor approves it and the piece discloses it.
• Tell your editor before you start, not after they notice.

Corrections

We correct openly. Typographical and formatting fixes can be made silently. Anything that changes meaning cannot.

• Add a correction note at the foot of the piece with the date and what changed.
• Never quietly delete or rewrite a published factual claim.
• Corrections go through the Managing Editor and the Editor-in-Chief.

Format: Correction, March 4, 2026: An earlier version of this piece stated that 54 students were enrolled in POLS 4580. That figure is the combined enrollment across both courses.

Mechanics

NU Nexus follows Associated Press style, with the house exceptions below. Where this guide is silent, use AP. Where AP is silent, which happens often with technology vocabulary, use the conventions here.

House exceptions to AP

Numbers

• Spell out one through nine. Numerals for 10 and above.
• Always numerals for ages, percentages, money, course numbers, page numbers, and years.
• Spell out any number that opens a sentence, except a year. Better still, rewrite so it does not open the sentence.
• Percentages take the symbol and a numeral: 62%, 2.5%, 81%. At the start of a sentence, spell it out: "Sixty-two percent of adults…"
• Large round numbers combine numerals and words: 19,000 students, $3 billion, 1.2 million users.
• Use a decimal only when the precision matters. 2.5% earns its decimal. 62.0% does not.
• Class year is spelled out and hyphenated as a modifier: a third-year student, a fourth-year studying political science.

Punctuation

Serial comma. Always. A deliberate break from AP. It removes ambiguity and matches how we already write.

Em dashes. Allowed, sparingly. One per paragraph is the ceiling and most paragraphs should have none. Set them with a space on each side, following AP. An em dash should do something a comma cannot: create a hard break, insert a genuine aside, or deliver a snap ending. If a comma or a period would work, use the comma or the period.

En dashes. Shorter than an em dash, meaning "to" or "through." Set closed, no spaces.

• Ranges: the 2024–2026 sessions, pages 14–22
• Relationships and conflicts: U.S.–China competition, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
• Never after "from" or "between." Write "from 2024 to 2026," not "from 2024–2026."

Hyphens.

• Hyphenate compound modifiers before a noun: tech-policy intersection, AI-related legislation, decision-making system, third-year student.
• Do not hyphenate after an adverb ending in -ly: a rapidly growing field.
• Do not hyphenate a compound that follows the noun: the field is fast moving.
• Do not hyphenate racial or ethnic identifiers used as adjectives: African American students.

Colons, ellipses, quotation marks.

• Colons introduce a list or appear in a formal title. Avoid the mid-sentence dramatic colon, which reads better as a period or an em dash.
• Ellipses are three spaced periods with a space on either side, marking omitted material inside a quote. Never trail off for effect.
• Periods and commas go inside the closing quotation mark. Colons and semicolons go outside.
• Question marks and exclamation points go inside if they belong to the quoted material, outside if they belong to your sentence.
• Do not use quotation marks for emphasis or irony. If you mean it skeptically, say so.
• Reserve quotes for actual, full quotations. If you are not reproducing someone’s exact words, avoid decorating with quotation marks. 

Capitalization

• Capitalize a formal title before a name, lowercase after: President Joseph Aoun; Joseph Aoun, president of Northeastern.
• Capitalize official names of colleges, schools, and centers. Lowercase informal references: the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, but the college; the political science department.
• Capitalize Black when it refers to people. Lowercase white. This follows AP.
• Lowercase internet, web, website, email, online.
• AI is always capitalized. Artificial intelligence, spelled out, is not.
• Federal is lowercase except in a formal name: federal regulators, but the Federal Trade Commission.

Names, titles, and identification

• Full name plus identifying detail on first reference.
• Faculty and staff keep the honorific on later references: Professor Garcia said. Never abbreviate to "Prof."
• Students get full name, year, and program on first reference, then last name alone: "Geneva Palmer, a fourth-year pre-law student," then "Palmer."
• Everyone else takes last name alone after first reference.
• Courses take the code and the title: POLS 4580: AI, Politics, and the Economy. Use "and" rather than an ampersand in running text, even when the catalog uses one.

Abbreviations and acronyms.

• Spell out on first reference with the acronym in parentheses, but only if you use it again. If it appears once, do not introduce an acronym at all.
• No periods in most acronyms: NATO, FBI, OECD, EU, NSF, EPA.
• U.S. and U.N. take periods in text.
• Do not introduce an acronym everyone knows. AI, FBI, and NASA need no expansion.
• In a long piece, respell an unfamiliar acronym once in the later half as a reminder.

Technology vocabulary

AP has not settled much of this. These are house standards.

Two things to avoid: "the algorithm" as a vague singular, which usually hides a specific system worth naming, and "AI" as the subject of a sentence describing something a company chose to do. Companies make decisions. Models do not.

Northeastern references

Northeastern Global News and the Huntington News are separate publications with their own missions. When we cover the same subject, name them and link to them like all other major organizations

How a piece gets published

The path

1. Pitch. Fill out the form embedded on the website. Pitches are approved, revised, or declined within a week. Pre-written pieces are submitted using the same form.
2. Assignment. The approved piece is logged in the work tracker. Every assigned piece has a named editor and deadline from this moment forward.
3. Reporting and drafting. If applicable, check in with your editor if the piece changes shape or the timeline slips. 
4. Managing Editor. Clarity, consistency, and source verification. Every hyperlink is opened and checked against the claim it supports. 
5. Copy Desk. Grammar, spelling, and style compliance against this guide. 
6. Editor-in-Chief. Final editorial judgment, headline and deck approval, publication decision.
7. Publication. The piece is published to nunexus.org with proper tags, section, and lead image. 

Before you send it up

Writers run this before submitting. Editors run it before passing a piece to the next tier.

• Headline, deck, byline, and contributor bio are present and correctly formatted.
• The central claim is clear within the first three paragraphs.
• Every disputable fact is hyperlinked to a source you opened.
• Every statistic passes the five tests in part four.
• Every name is spelled correctly and every title is verified.
• Every quote has been checked against the recording or transcript.
• Acronyms are introduced on first use, and only when used again.
• Numbers, dates, and percentages follow part five.
• Serial commas are in. Stray em dashes are out.
• A lead image is attached, high resolution, credited, and hyperlinked.
• Any conflict of interest is disclosed in the piece.
• The piece has been read aloud once, start to finish.

*This guide is a living document. Proposed changes go to the Managing Editor and are decided by the Editor-in-Chief.