In writing something for publication, I cited a university campus as University of XXX-(campus name). My editor replaced the dash with a comma, changing it to University of XXX, (campus name). Is this change correct? In searching for a consistent way to handle this, I have noticed that there seems to be no standardization among how various universities refer to themselves (University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of California, Irvine).
Aren't editors like the proverbial customer---always right?
Seriously though, you'd think you would just go by what the campus itself uses, but it would be dumb to die on this hill
Right, just look at their website and do what they do.
My PhD university, in its infinite wisdom, paid a consultant a lot of money to do a "rebranding". Besides tweaking the design of the logo, the main outcome of this seems to have been removing the comma between University of X and the campus location. Worth every penny I'm sure.
This is not a hill to die on.
But if you have a say, I would go with what the university itself calls itself.
I do not think it is possible to make a general rule. Hence, a very quick internet search brings up:
University of California, Irvine
University of California San Diego
University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Boston
University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
This is based on how the school name is spelt on the home page. I am sure different pages have different spellings. And many schools do not go by their official usually but use some nick name or abbreviation (UIC, UCLA, UMB, UC Davis, etc).
I prefer the comma. Anything else is wrong.