14 SAMPLE MESSAGES • Don’t mom-shame ; avoid it at all costs. • Don’t be negative when you can be positive; flip a message to be positive when possible. • Don’t use spaces around em dashes ; as an example—this is our style with an em dash. • Don’t use “the” before March of Dimes. • Don’t refer to March of Dimes as a “Foundation.” • Don’t abbreviate MOD for March of Dimes. • Don’t use serial commas when listing three or more things; for example, Mary, Blake and Emily go to the store. DO DON’T • Channel the ‘champion’ persona by using strong, active and positive phrases that illustrate our goals. • Speak with a sense of belonging and involvement to encourage others to play an active role with us. • Abbreviate “United States” as “U.S.” wherever needed and appropriate. “In this country” is also an acceptable replacement. • Use the possessive March of Dimes’ wherever it’s grammatically correct • Spell out “neonatal intensive care unit” when writing for the general public and also abbreviate it as “NICU” in parenthesis the first time used; use only the abbreviation “NICU” after the first mention. • Use health care , two words. • Use preterm to describe a baby, birth or labor—for example, a preterm baby or a preterm birth. • Use mom , instead of mother or woman, when appropriate. • Use a.m. and p.m. • Write percent and pound and any other descriptive word that might otherwise be misunderstood when the symbol is used. You may use the symbol in a chart or catalogue or when specifically approved or required to meet character count. • Programs and events with registered marks/ copyright (see dimension for all legal program names) should be written with that mark the first time mentioned; after that the mark may be dropped. These marks should not be used in headlines. • Left justify copy whenever possible. • Use ALL CAP headlines and sentence case sub-headlines on the web. Use ALL CAP headlines when appropriate in print pieces. Follow our BRAND BOOK guidelines for pull- quotes and fonts. • Spell out “and” instead of an ampersand (&). • For press releases, use ALL CAP headlines and title case sub-headlines . Our approved boilerplate should be used on all releases. • For state abbreviations, follow U.S. postal code rules , e.g., NY and DC and HI. MARCH OF DIMES • BRAND BOOK • VERBAL IDENTITY