Style guide wiki now up for online copy editors

After calling for a universal style guide in a recent post, well, here it is:

Style guide for online sub-editors 

Thanks to journalism.co.uk for the set-up. It’s editable for your learning pleasure and is full of tips, links and explanations for print subs moving over to online. Would be great to hear the input and suggestions of subs and copy editors, or go to the wiki and add your tuppence worth there.

There’s loads of things I haven’t covered, or haven’t covered enough. Please help and make this work-in-progress a useful resource.

Not so hot sub-editing from The Star

Subs, get your woolly bras and panties on. The Daily Star appears to have been concentrating a little too hard on the snow-covered mounds of their busty Santa lady pic today for they have the UK facing a ‘Day After Tomorrow’ weather catastrophe:

BRITS should brrrrace themselves for a big chill in the New Year with weathermen warning temperatures could plunge as low as minus 130C.

Don’t worry though, they’ve then given us a tropical heatwave by day with ‘maximum daytime temperatures… between 20C and 40C’.

Positively balmy. Thanks to @bobbiejohnson for the Twitter tip-off.

Extra zeroes anyone? Subs? Anyone?

PS The degree symbol is under ‘insert symbol’ in Word on PC and something like shift alt 9 on Macs.

Confessions of a Twitterer

Writer Matt Hill posted this a couple of days ago on microblogging service, Twitter:

So I wrote ‘little bastard’ instead of ‘child’ on some web copy; mainly for the amusement of a proofreader. Who missed it. I’m in trouble.

Funny but I am well and truly shocked. Are there really proofreaders on the web?

Let’s create a universal style guide for web subs

Get your red pen out, or should that be grey mouse? The first steps towards a style guide for subs and copy editors working online are being taken by Martin Stabe, online editor at Retail Week. Huzzah!

This follows The Times finally changing its style for Bombay to Mumbai. Because even though the city officially changed its name in 1995, the recent attacks have zoomed Mumbai up the Google search rankings, so much so that it has now become the preferred search term of UK users. It seems The Times is playing the SEO game – and rightly so.

Martin says he’ll be posting a public Google Docs soon for subs to contribute to. But I wonder if a wiki might allow for a wider take on this, encompassing a central place to house preferred search terms across a multitude of topics. Think of all the online women’s sites, for example, that would like to know that ‘lose weight’ is the search term to write in over ‘diet’ (according to Google Trends).

Anyone up for it?

Also, since ‘fall’ scores higher than ‘autumn’ and ‘copy editors’ beats ’subs’, should we also start brushing up on our American English?

Amplified08: UK’s network of networks?

Ach, it’s been a week already since Amplified08, which took place a short walk from the ghost town of print media, London’s Fleet Street, and I’m only just getting round to posting some feedback. But my pop music course taught me never to start with an apology so stuff it.

I attended #amp08 for two main reasons – partly to put a face to my Twitter contacts, who’ve helped me greatly since I started blogging four months ago, and partly because I don’t want to miss out on the social media trends that are happening now.

Brief aside for sub-editors wondering what all this has to do with copy editing – I did attend a discussion topic called ‘Mainstream media and citizen journalism’ aka #amp08#21. The good news is that the quality and accuracy of information is forecast to become more important. Readers will expect different levels of conversation – not just ‘Wild West opinion’ but also ‘moderated BBC content’ types, so trust and reputation will remain a brand indicator. The bad news is that, atm, this seems dependent on the brand being actually able to afford the staff.

But sub-editing wasn’t the point, or journalism, or any of the short topic sessions around which we all gathered, submitting, in some of the Barleyesque pods, to being live-streamed.

Get yourself connected
Amplified08 mainly offered an opportunity to get connected. Nesta invited the UK’s 40 most active social media networks to essentially hook up in the sexy new social media-style format of an ‘unconference’ – where the organisation and content is left to the attendees and a wiki to decide.

The big event in 2010
Feedback from #amp08 – to explain, hashtags are collected post-event to collect outcomes – will inform #amp09 leading, hopefully, to a super-connected conference in 2010, and fulfilling Nesta’s ‘modest ambition to make the UK the most connected place on the planet’. Because apparently 99.9% of us still don’t get ‘it’ – the new connectivity, that is. And I’d add that even the ones that kind of do get it are still boradcasting (Freudian slip typo there!) as a default because they’re just not used to readers and customers talking back.

I think, for all its faults, ultimately the medium of #amp08 was the message – how we are now coming together, organising ourselves without hierarchy, sharing ideas, making new contacts, learning through conversation rather than presentation, trying out the fun stuff such as table wikis, live Twittering on screen and ‘what I learned’ Tweets after each session.

How could Amplified do better?
More feedback to come but, for now, here’s my 3 ideas for #amp09:

• more visible hashtags so I can catch up on all the sessions I wanted to see
• more soundproofed conversation areas so I don’t have to bring my ear trumpet
• more introductions and insights into the attendees and a meet-up slot – perhaps profiles of contacts up on site well beforehand and opportunities to arrange a meet. Maybe a little ning to go with the wiki? Cos I’m sure I was inches away from meeting my perfect compadre in a ‘million dollar homepage’ type scam, sorry, I mean ’social enterprise’ start-up.

Quick unthought-out thought

Would online subbing or copy-editing stand as a separate operation or service? One that produces story-specific facts checked by a team of online sub-editors who check back to the source, cite them, note the current level of verification and update online in real time. One that also offers a paid-for, story-by-story service to news organisations who’ve sacked their subs or need top-up help?

Not sure but ended up blurbing on about it anyway in my response to Chris Cramer of Reuters on editorial integrity in the new world.

So you think you’re a good sub?

Would you have checked the Sarah ‘Africa is a country’ Palin story? Turns out this top tale is a hoax anecdote by a fake advisor to McCain, name of Martin Eisenstadt – allegedly checkable with a bit of surfing around the online joint. The wind-up perps, real names Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish, blame sloppy work by traditional news media and by bloggers:

“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish.

Maybe just mention this story if any web types tell you that checks and edits are a ‘nice to have’.

It actually got me feeling sorry for the hockey mom. More on the story at the NY Times…

PS I can see a potential future of disclaimers – ‘Status for this story: unverified’. For copy editors, perhaps the line is: if the story sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

PPS Status of this post: unverified and slung up as soon as I heard the news from BhamPostJoanna on Twitter. Cheers Jo G

Would you sub the Welsh?

With more redundancies announced today at the Evening Standard and the Independent, perhaps there’s a burgeoning career for someone copy checking road signs?

The Welsh apparently reads, “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.” It all went wrong following an automated email response – full story here.

Top 10 checks – a starter kit for online copy editors

The Web may be creating a publish-then-filter environment but when you’re looking after your publication or brand’s reputation, traditional pre-publication copy editing checks still stand. And you need to get to the info quickly and get it from a reliable source… or at least find a fast trail to one.

Here’s an off-the-shelf starter kit.

1. For general enquiries, it’s gotta be Google. Blackle is a cute ‘energy-saving’ alternative – and it acts like a mirror on your screen for checking you still look damn good.
2. For a subject-specific starter, Wikipedia is hard to beat, despite its detractors. Well-visited pages tend to get more accurate over time (for various reasons), but it’s wise to skip to the external source refs at the bottom of the page to double-check the ever-editable posted info.
3. Bookmark your own set of reputable resources, eg, for the travel sector, your local Foreign Office site (this is the UK one) and the CIA World Factbook are sterling reference points.
4. Bookmark an e-dictionary – try Dictionary.com, Your Dictionary and Hyperdictionary. Many don’t differentiate between British and American English spellings – though with a global readership this may not be an issue. Merriam-Webster does but it has pop-ups
5. For celebrity names, it’s gotta be IMDb.
6. Crowdcheck spellings on Google – type in each name variant and see if there’s a big difference in volume of references. Think of it as an ‘Ask the audience’ for when you can’t find the answer yourself.
7. Check trademarks – this is the UK Intellectual Property Office right here.
8. Convert currency at XE.com.
9. Convert measurements/weights at OnlineConversion.com. Or just type your amounts into Google, eg, 10m into cm, 50g into oz, and the answer miraculously appears.
10. Find statistics at UK Statistics Authority and YouGov.

Okay, so this list is a touch UK-centric and possibly more mag/brand-oriented than hardcore news so open to adds. Probably missed some lovely check spots, too. Any others?

I’ve been flamed!

Came back from Turkey trip to find a simple journalistic request soliciting advice on solo travel on a travel forum drew more than 20 replies in just 24 hours. Fantasic! This is what the internet is all about, I thought: multiple viewpoints and multiple empathy; a conversation as opposed to a lecture; not just the advice and rantings of me, myself and I as a solo travel addict… But no. When I clicked through, what popped up was a flaming frenzy, with posters:

a) asking why the the hell they should share their travel tips with a journalist (er, because it’s an advice forum and I was requesting advice…)

b) implying I was there to nick their ideas (if anyone had posted anything useful I’d have emailed them offlist to request a name check or further info)

c) suggesting I was being ”bloody patronising” saying that the idea of the feature was to encourage more people to go it alone: “We are going thanks very much!”

d) using the slagging off the original poster as a vehicle for wit (which admittedly one or two were) or for flirting (fer krissakes, get a room!)

e) just killing time and being purposely unhelpful - judging by the 3am timings of the posts.

I was left thinking this feels like revenge from the days of ‘journalism as lecture’. Now that anyone can respond to online journalists, it’s a bit like a mob mentality. I’ve seen other journalists flamed for posting feature requests online but it is nevertheless a useful tool of the trade – though in this case it was more a complete waste of time. Perhaps sites would be better off having a media requests section – or perhaps I should have played dumb and posted as a sockpuppet who encourages responders to feel superior and sorry for me by pretending I was a scared little girl and please would somebody help me.

Now THAT would be underhand and unethical.

Fortunately I posted exactly the same question on a forum for older travellers who were all very helpful. As for the flame thread, I batted back all the sour replies – but still no actual tips arrived. I suppose whenever and wherever flaming occurs, you can say goodbye to free speech because posters will fear getting on the wrong side of the mob. It’s certainly made me reluctant to post honestly in future. Anyone else come under fire on forums for being a journalist? I’d love to know!

PS Here’s a discussion on journalists and message board etiquette.