This appendix provides USAWC formatting specifications for written products in USAWC academic programs. Consult The Chicago Manual of Style, USAWC's official style guide, for additional guidance on punctuation, grammar, and usage not described below.
All student papers should be in English and must conform to the following:
Spell out United States as a noun. US is used for the adjective form only.
The currency of the United States is the US dollar.Spell out acronyms the first time it appears in the paper, and follow immediately with the acronym in parentheses behind it.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 with collective defense a key cornerstone of the alliance. Enshrined in Article 5, an attack on one NATO member is considered an attack on all NATO members.Block quotes are for quotes greater than four lines of text. Students should single-space, indent, and left-justify block quotations. Indention occurs on the right side of a block quotation as well. Position a citation number at the end of the last line quoted. Block quotations do not use quotation marks. USAWC Templates have pre-formatted style for block quotes (under the Home tab). NOTE: The DDE discourages the use of block quotations, due to the abbreviated length of the paper; the DDE encourages focusing on analysis of the subject rather than lengthy quoted support.
As Ike Skelton observed:The constancy with which the United States carried out its global responsibilities over the long course of the Cold War is a great testimony to the character of the American people and to the quality of the leaders who guided the Nation through often trying times. In spite of the cost, in the face of great uncertainties and despite grave distractions, our nation showed the ability to persevere. In doing so, we answered the great question that Winston Churchill once famously posed: "Will America stay the course?" The answer is, we did.1
Capitalize civil, military, religious, and professional titles when they immediately precede a personal name as part of the name. Titles are normally lowercase when following a name or used in place of name.
General Ulysses S. Grant was a military general while President Lincoln was the president.
Capitalize the full names of legislative and deliberative bodies, departments, bureaus, and offices. Adjectives derived from them are usually in lowercase.
A footnote number appears at the end of a sentence or at the end of a clause following punctuation. A footnote number normally follows a quotation mark.
Identify military units by official designation/titles only.
10th Mountain Division
Identify individuals/units first by their full names and titles and then with the shortened form.
Major General David Hill is the commandant of the US Army War College (USAWC). MG Hill sets the direction for USAWC to develop strategic leaders and advance knowledge.The use of headings is not typically encouraged in USAWC writing. For example: Never include an unnecessary heading labeled "Introduction" at the start of the paper.
Some USAWC courses may assign a paper which includes essay responses to multiple questions. In this case, headings help identify which essay goes with which question. Therefore, if your paper consists of separate essay responses to multiple questions, you should include a heading in bold before the essay for each question.
Paper Title
Question #1:
An essay responding to the first question of this paper. The first line of this text should be indented, as in any normal paragraph. When you have finished answering Question #1, you should include a heading for Question #2.
Question #2:
An essay responding to the second question of this paper. Be aware that not all papers should have headings.
Write out words for zero through nine and all numbers that appear as the first or last word in a sentence. Within sentences, use numeric digits for numbers 10 and higher.
Twelve Army officers each ran one mile on 25 different occasions. The total number of miles for each officer was twenty-five.Write out the word percent rather than using the symbol %.
Operations and maintenance accounted for about 40 percent of military spending in FY2021.Word count does not include footnotes, endnotes, or front matter (e.g., titles, abstracts, forms). Generally speaking, student work can be +/-10 percent of the stated word length.