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Chapter 2

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Exercises

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Editing 2.0 Exercises: The book on style

Module 2.1

Questions

  1. How do you decide what belongs in your style guide? What principles should govern what is included, realizing that no one stylebook can address every problem?
  2. Most editors have pet peeves—things they hate to see in print. Unnecessary exclamation points. Air quotes. Its/it’s mistakes. “U.S.” when referring to the United States as a noun. What are yours? Create a short list of those usages that drive you up the wall.

Activities

Using this short list, create an entry (or group of entries) governing how each of these should be presented.

  1. Write up an entry for your news organization’s stylebook to govern the presentation of the following companies:
    • eBay
    • YouTube
    • amazon.com
    • eHarmony.com
    • abc carpet & home
  2. Compose another stylebook entry addressing how your organization will refer to Facebook “likes,” “re-tweets” and text messages (or texting). You can group these together in an entry on social media messaging, or write up separate entries for each.
  3. Your style guide should make clear how to present:
    • Headings (and how they are capitalized)
    • Lists (whether they are capitalized and how they are punctuated)
    • Numbers (when they should be spelled in full)

Quiz

Editor’s Bookshelf—Additional Reading Suggestions

Chapter 2: Focus on news judgment: The editor’s attitude

Person, Kim. A conversation with David Mindich about getting people to tune back into the news by a professor at the College of New Jersey prompted by publication of Mindich’s book Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News, Oxford University Press, 2004. <http://professorkim.blogspot.com/2006/01/conversation-with-david-mindich-about.html>

 

Rieder, Rem. Reporting to conclusions: Journalists shouldn’t shrink from making judgments about factual disputes. American Journalism Review, June/July 2011. Rem Rieder is editor and senior vice president of AJR, a national magazine based at the Merrill College that covers digital, print and broadcast journalism. <http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=5010>