Q. I work for a journal at a government agency. The departments and committees and journals within the agency all have varying styles, especially for hyphenation and compounds, which resulted in the following really ugly title: Influenza Vaccination of Health-Care Personnel: Recommendations of the Healthcare Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). It looked even worse in big, bold type. What should we have done?
A. Names of persons or departments or committees should not be changed in editing, and there’s no shame in their inconsistency with text. In creating a title, however, folks should get their act together. Since the committee name cannot be changed, Health-Care in the title should have been changed to Healthcare.