Style Guide

Voices in the Dust will undergo periodic review by the Repair Lab to maintain a consistent style throughout the archive. This page details several stylistic conventions across the Voices in the Dust.

Resources and Materials

For all resources and materials, when there are multiple authors, list only the first followed by "et al." The title should be in title case, meaning all words except propositions are capitalized. Link the document through its title.

Newspaper Articles: Author Last Name, Title, Newspaper, Date

Date should be in the form of month day, year, for example, January 1, 2026.

Academic Articles: Author Last Name, Title, Journal, Volume, Issue, DOI, Page Range, Year

Write out the full journal title without abbreviations.

Press Release:

Law: Title, Chapter or Section Number, Location, Date (if available)

Sources

Numerical citations are placed outside of punctuation.

Uploads

Where possible, we have opted not to change the document title when it is uploaded to the archive. This decision was based on the thought that useful information may be present in the file title, especially those documents received from agencies and offices through requests under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA).

The Destination Filename will be generated by Mediawiki from the file name. In the Summary Box, write: [Document Title]. [Date].

This is the title of the document, not the file. The document title should use title case capitalization, and the date should be in the form of month day, year, for example, January 1, 2026. If there is no day, report January 2026. If there is no day or month, report 2026 only.

Photographs

• Citations/links to outside websites should be archived using archive.org (also called the Wayback Machine). For a guide on how to do this, see: Hertz, J. Archiving Websites and Preventing Broken Links. October 17, 2025.
• For process uploading new documents and adding citations see: Hertz, J. Documents and Citations on Media Wiki. October 17, 2025.

Linking Documents and References

Examples with varying levels of information available:

• Name. Title. Source. Article number. Issue number. Pages. Date.
  • Doe, J. Example Paper Title. Fictional Journal. Article 3. Issue 9. Pages 40-55. January 1, 2000.

• Name. Title. Date.
  • Doe, J. Example Paper Title. January 1, 2000.

• Title. Date.
  • Example Paper Title. January 1, 2000.

Documents

• Hertz, J. Archiving Websites and Preventing Broken Links. October 17, 2025.
• Hertz, J. Documents and Citations on Media Wiki. October 17, 2025.