Every media outlet uses a stylebook to ensure consistency from sentence to
sentence and from article to article. Like most new outlets, The Insider uses “The
Associated Press Stylebook” for general style guidelines. Since our readership
primarily is limited to the Pitt-Greensburg community, we have some campus-
specific styles you should be aware of. These are some of the basic style issues that
regularly confront The Insider staff. If you aren’t sure of how a word should be
spelled, capitalized or punctuated, check the stylebook and dictionary.
And:
Journalists drop the comma before “and” in a series. Ex: Our flag is red,
white and blue.
Attribution:
Very rarely will you need to use anything other than “said” for attribution. You might be tempted to jazz things up with more descriptive or active attribution verbs. Don’t. It’s bad writing to claim that your sources laugh, smirk,
smile their words. Spend your extra time coming up with powerful, effective non-
attribution verbs. That said, “asked,” is, obviously, fine for attribution.
Active/Passive construction:
In fiction, an argument can been made for the artistic use of passive sentence construction. In journalism, there is no argument. Especially not for beginners. Stick to the active voice with your writing. Have your subjects do something instead of having something done to them.
Contractions:
Some publications encourage contractions while others never use them. The Insider encourages the use of contractions.
Dates & Times:
We drop “:00” from times at the top of the hour — it’s 3 p.m., not 3:00 p.m. Also, if we list a group of times that do not pass noon or midnight, we only use the a.m./p.m. designation once, after the last one listed. Ex. She has classes
at 8, 9 and 10 a.m. He has class from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m. If a p.m. time were added to
her list of classes, it would look like this: She has classes at 8, 9 and 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
It’s essential that you also check out the time element, times, midnight, noon and a.m. p.m. entries in your “AP Stylebook.”
Descriptions in general:
Try to avoid descriptor overkill. Don’t bombard readers will all the detail all at once. The best way to do this is to scatter the descriptors among the source’s first few references in your article.
For example, let’s say it’s essential to inform readers that Jane Doe is 43, a
resident of Mt. Pleasant, a mother of two and a history professor.
Sure, you could introduce her to readers like this: Jane Doe of Mt. Pleasant, 43,
a history professor and mother of two, agrees with the students.
But c’mon, you’re writing a story, not a resume. Why should the reader have
to wade through all of that descriptors to discover the action of the sentence?
Instead, make your sentences a little more artful with this sort of approach:
History professor Jane Doe agrees with the students. Doe, a 43-year-old mother of two,said she would expect her children to stand up for their rights like the Pitt-Greensburg protestors.
“This is what we want from students — to look at this information with a
critical eye and decide for themselves,” said Doe, of Mt. Pleasant.
Also, when a title or descriptor exceeds two words, place it after the name
and offset it with commas.
Wrong: Senior secondary education major Sarah Peterson said she was excited
to …
Right: Sarah Peterson, a senior secondary education major, said she was
excited to ...
Also right: Senior Sarah Peterson, a secondary education major, said she was
excited to …
Hyphen or dash?
§ This “-“ is a hyphen. This “—“ is a dash.
§ A hyphen connects words. A dash can be used in place of a comma.
§ Dashes are especially useful when you have a series in a phrase that
would be offset by commas. Ex. The limited selection of colors — they had only yellow, brown and purple cars — prompted her to buy elsewhere.
§ Some word processors automatically convert two side-by-side hyphens into dashes. If it doesn’t and you don’t know how to create one, just leave two dashes without a space between them.
§ Both hyphens and dashes are explained in the punctuation section in the back of your stylebook. It’s only about 10 pages long, but it’ll clear up some common misunderstandings.
Identifying faculty and administration:
Never abbreviate “professor.” Don’t capitalize it. Use that title only on first
reference; on subsequent references, just use the professor’s last name.
Avoid overidentification. For most stories, it is enough to simply identify a
faculty member as an “English professor” instead of a “professor of English in
the Pitt-Greensburg writing department.”
Always lowercase titles that are offset by commas after a name.
As per AP, do not capitalize titles that essentially are job descriptions.
Read the AP stylebook’s doctor entry. It calls for reporters to include “Dr.”
before a name only for medical doctors, not academics. The exception to that
rule is if the person is being quoted in the context of their area of expertise
— for example, you’d use Dr. Tom Berg if Tom Berg has a doctorate in art
history and he’s being quoted in a story about art. Since pretty much all of
the faculty on this campus who have doctorates are teaching courses in their
area of expertise, it stands to reasons that The Insider does use this courtesy
title — but, as with all courtesy titles, it is used on first reference only.
See what AP says on the matter by checking out your stylebook’s entries for
academic titles, professor and titles.
Identifying students:
In addition to the basic AP style of listing first and last names on first reference and using only surnames on subsequent references, we want to know what year — freshman, sophomore, junior, senior — a student is. To limit the number of commas in a sentence, we prefer the class status to precede the student’s name.
Example: Sophomore Tom Ebbets agreed … instead of Tom Ebbets, a sophomore, agreed …
For general campus news and features, it isn’t necessary to identify a student’s field of study. But when it is relevant to the story — such as identifying
someone as an English writing major in a story about downsizing the writing
program — be sure to include the student’s field of study.
Numbers:
There are a lot of specialized styles concerning the use of numbers. The numerals entry (and the other stylebook entries it lists, particularly addresses, ages, course numbers, dates, decades, dimensions, fractions, monetary units, room numbers) in your stylebook is one of the most essential ones to study. A few of the very basics:
§ If a number starts a sentence, spell it out — or, better yet, restructure
the sentence so it doesn’t begin with a number. This rule supercedes
all but one other numbers-related style rule. The lone exception?
Years. It would be technically correct to publish this sentence: 1991
was a great year for music.
§ If it’s a single-digit number, spell it out. If it’s two digits or more, use
the Arabic figure.
§ Ages — regardless of if you’re talking days, moths or years — are
Arabic figures. Even single-digit ages.
§ Seriously, read the numerals entry. There’s a lot of numbers-related
rules out there.
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg/Pitt-Greensburg/UPG:
The preferred style when referring to our campus is Pitt-Greensburg. We try to avoid the full name unless it appears in a direct quote. This is because we all know what Pitt-Greensburg is and the full name is unwieldy — 11 syllables is a bit much to have to write over and over. Always use Pitt-Greensburg on first reference.
Background: A couple of years ago, campus President Sharon Smith told campus employees that the commonly used UPG wasn’t acceptable because the acronym wasn’t easily understood outside of the campus community. She directed employees to refer to the campus either by its full name or Pitt-Greensburg.
The Insider is not a university employee, so her directive does not apply to
us. Our primary audience is the Pitt-Greensburg community, and our readers
immediately understand what UPG stands for. Therefore, it is acceptable to use UPG.
We haven’t yet made it a style rule, but we’ve found that “UPG” works best as an
adjective and “Pitt-Greensburg” works best as a noun.
Spacing: There is only one space at the end of sentences.
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