Tech Times is Tennessee Tech’s internal communications email newsletter. Tech Times is a forum for sharing relevant information with the university community. The email distributes both official university communication and submitted content from students, faculty and staff.
If you have any questions about the regulations or the submission process, contact us at techtimes@tntech.edu.
Reader Submission Regulations
Content submitted by readers is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily reflect the views, positions, or values of Tennessee Tech University, nor does it imply the university’s endorsement. Contributors are responsible for ensuring the accuracy and relevance of their submissions.
Reader submissions to Tech times must fall within one of the following categories:
- Event Announcements: Announce university-sanctioned events and gatherings.
- Personnel Announcements: Announce news about new hires, open positions, promotions, committee updates, and employee achievements.
- University Research: Announce grant acquisitions, publish research findings, and invite participation in surveys.
- Professional Development: Inform the community about available workshops, seminars, internships, and training sessions hosted by or in partnership with the university.
- Campus Services and Programming: Update campus on new or existing services and programming details. Please note, announcements promoting academic courses are not allowed.
- New Organizations and Groups: Announce the formation of new student organizations, clubs, or athletic groups recognized by the university.
- Departmental Updates: Convey important updates directly related to the functions or activities of university divisions, colleges, schools, or academic departments.
- Fundraising Initiatives: Submit announcements related to fundraising efforts for the university or registered student organizations, supporting their goals and activities.
These regulations are designed to maintain the integrity and effectiveness of university communications through Tech Times. We appreciate your cooperation in adhering to these to ensure that our content remains relevant and beneficial to the entire campus community.
- Eligibility: Submissions must be related to the university and may only be made on behalf of Tennessee Tech departments, offices, chartered student organizations, or Tech Auxiliaries. Advertisements for unaffiliated organizations are not accepted. Only submissions from Tech faculty, staff, and students are accepted.
- Submission Deadline: Email editions are assembled the business day prior to distribution. All posts must be submitted by noon that day in order to be included in the email edition. Only posts approved and published by the time the Tech Times email edition is compiled will be included.
- Timely Submissions: Posts must be submitted in time for announcements to appear on or before the event date in the email. Posts not timely for the event will be denied.
- One-time Appearance: Each announcement (not just an individual submission) is eligible to run only once in the email editions. Duplicate announcements within a semester are prohibited.
- Amendments: Additional posts on the same subject are permissible only if they involve updates such as cancellations or changes in time and location.
- Legal Responsibility: Campus community members who submit content to Tech Times are responsible for ensuring the legality, accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of their submissions. This includes adherence to copyright laws in both text and image content.
- University Notices: Posts are classified as University Notices if they originate from a university department (not an individual) and detail departmental changes affecting the campus at large or contain critical announcements necessary for the audience.
Content Guidelines
To ensure the relevance and quality of content shared with the Tennessee Tech community through Tech Times, please adhere to the following submission requirements:
- Content Limitations: Submission content is limited to 500 characters, including spaces, new lines, and code.
- Contact Information: Each submission should include a contact method for readers seeking more details.
- Event Details: Submissions for events should provide the name of the sponsoring/hosting organization, date, time, location, contact information, and a concise description.
- Image Specifications: Submissions may include feature images in JPG or PNG format, with dimensions ranging from 500 to 1500 pixels on any given side. Square and vertical images are preferred.
- Accessibility: Submissions must comply with accessibility standards. Posts failing to meet basic accessibility protocols may be rejected.
- Image Content: No essential information should be provided in the image alone; all critical content must also be present in the text.
Scheduling Submissions for Email Editions
The Tech Times email edition goes out on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 a.m., except in the case that campus is closed. The email edition is built the previous business day at 1:00 p.m., except in the case that campus is closed.
Campus Closures
If campus is closed the day an email edition would normally be sent, there will not be an email edition that day.
If campus is closed the day an email edition would normally be built, it will be built the business day prior instead. If campus was closed without prior warning, such as a for a weather-related emergency, there will be no Tech Times edition built and Tech Times will resume its normal schedule when campus reopens.
What do you mean by “business day”?
A business day, in regard to Tech Times, is Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 4:30 PM, barring campus closures (planned or otherwise).
Submitting Your Post
If you wish submit a post for the next email edition, it must be received no later than noon the previous business day to be included. It will be published to the blog that day, so avoid any titles such as “Party on the quad today!” Instead, be date-specific: “Party on the quad on Nov. 6!”
Posts can be scheduled ahead of time for future email editions. In the submission form, be sure to specify which email edition you would like your post to run in. Check the calendar to see which edition will work best for you. Your post will then be scheduled to publish to the blog the business day prior to the email edition you selected, barring campus closures (see above).
Why does my post need to be published in order for it to go into the email edition? Tech Times announcements are archived on the web and may appear to users before an email edition is sent.
Example 1: Submitting a Post for the Next Email Edition
It’s Thursday afternoon, and you have a post that needs to be published in the Monday Tech Times. If you submit your post any time between now and noon on Friday, it’ll be published to the blog on Friday and will be included in Monday’s email edition.
Example 2: Scheduling a Post for a Future Email Edition
In a few weeks, your office is putting on event. The event is scheduled for Friday, December 18. You know that there isn’t a Tech Times edition that day, but you’d still like a reminder to go out as close as possible before the event. The next closest email edition would be the Thursday edition. You submit a Tech Times post and indicate that you’d like it to go in the Thursday edition on December 17, the day prior to your event. Your post is received and scheduled to be posted to the blog on Wednesday, December 16, so that it is published to the blog in time for the Thursday edition to be built.
Style Guide
When composing your Tech Times posts, it’s important to always review your post for correct spelling and grammar. It’s also important to keep in mind the standard Tennessee Tech style guide to keep communications clean, consistent, and professional.
Date and Time
- Events: For events that have a specific date, time, and place, follow this example: “The lecture is at 11 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 17, in Clement Hall 111.”
- Dates: Don’t use ordinal endings such as “st,” “nd,” “rd,” or “th.”
- Time: Always use “a.m.” and “p.m.” and place a space between the number and the abbreviation (i.e. 12 a.m.). If your time ends with “00”, omit the end: 8 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 9 a.m., etc. You should always use numbers instead of words to indicate time except in the case of “noon” and “midnight” (never “12 noon” or “12 midnight”).
- Months: Use the AP rule for whether a month should be abbreviated or not: Jan., Feb., March, April, May, June, July, Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.
Tennessee Tech and Buildings
- Always use Tennessee Tech University, Tennessee Tech, or Tech. Never use TN Tech outside of social media usernames or URLs; and absolutely never use TTU.
- Building names: Always place building names ahead of room numbers and use the full, official name for the building. Don’t use abbreviations or colloquialisms.
- Room numbers: Room numbers always follow the name of the building and should be written thus: “Clement Hall 212” Do not use the word “room”. If the room has an official name, use that in place of the number: “Roaden University Center Multipurpose Room”.
Punctuation and Capitalization
- Comma in a series: Use commas to separate elements in a series, but do not put a comma before the conjunction in most simple series: “The flag is red, white and blue.”
- Include a final comma in a simple series if omitting it could make the meaning unclear. “The governor convened his most trusted advisers, economist Olivia Schneider and polling expert Carlton Torres.” (If Schneider and Torres are his most trusted advisers, don’t use the final comma.) “The governor convened his most trusted advisers, economist Olivia Schneider, and polling expert Carlton Torres.” (If the governor is convening unidentified advisers plus Schneider and Torres, the final comma is needed.)
- Put a comma before the concluding conjunction in a series if an integral element of the series requires a conjunction: “I had orange juice, toast, and ham and eggs for breakfast.”
- Use a comma also before the concluding conjunction in a complex series of phrases: “The main points to consider are whether the athletes are skillful enough to compete, whether they have the stamina to endure the training, and whether they have the proper mental attitude.”
- Capitalization: Only proper nouns are capitalized. Words like “university,” “college,” “center” or “department” are capitalized only when using the official proper name (Tennessee Tech University, College of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Oakley STEM Center). All other uses are lowercase (except at beginning of a sentence or bullet point).
- Title Capitalization: When capitalizing the title of a post, or the title of an event or so on, capitalize all words except for “minor” words unless they are the first or last word of the title. Nouns are always capitalized. For example, “The Pit and the Pendulum”.
- Personal Titles: Capitalize a person’s title only if the title immediately precedes a person’s name (President Phil Oldham, Professor Jane Smith). When following a name, don’t capitalize (Phil Oldham, president of Tennessee Tech; Jane Smith, professor of mechanical engineering). “Dr.” is not allowed in front of a person’s name. To refer to someone’s terminal degree, place it after their name (Jane Doe, Ph.D.; John Miller, Ed.D.; Pat Smith, M.F.A.). Do not use non-terminal degree abbreviations with names.