Monday, Monday

I'd like to post a few props for those people working Monday night. Even with 2 people on vacation , and someone having to leave an hour after arriving, we managed to get 4 papers out well before deadline. In fact, we had all 4 papers' A/News pages out before Wausau's deadline. To me, that speaks to our efficiency and teamwork skills.

Extra special thanks to Mark Multer for proofing pages for us and Rob Johnson for staying much later than he intended.

--Kristy

Sunday's edition

Thanks to everyone who posted components of our Person of the Year package for Sunday.

Your efforts made the creation of a related eyepiece (that strip across the top of our homepage) easy.

Eyepiece creation may be the topic for my next video training session. Have you checked out the four sessions I've already recorded? If not, please find a few minutes to check them out. They are saved on CWNG-EDIT under WEB TRAINING and offer something for everyone, I think.

Thanks,

— Brian O.

New newshole

From what I can tell, Sunday went rather smooth with are new newshole configurations. The only significant glitch was when our photo server went down for a while in the afternoon. The managing editors had their plans in place no later than Friday afternoon, and I think that helped a lot.

Newshole cuts

Just a brief note of thanks for the close attention I suspect all the copy desk members have been paying to the changes coming down the pike next week.

Getting the final details right will depend on our last line of defense, the copy desk.

That's why Mark B. has paid special attention to trying to keep you informed.

Any questions at all, please ask.

— Mark T.

Another critique

As promised, I'm back with a quick critique on our how we're doing at promoting/linking items in print for online.

We had a pair of videos to promote on 1A today and I think what the page designer did worked fine. I may work up a more abbreviated sig we can use when we need a second reference to video on a page (maybe just adding "video online" would work), but given the options at hand, I thought was fine.

Had we desired (or had the space) we could have referred to our special section on the economy in the Christmas tree story. We could have referred to it on 6A in the Marshfield "exchange" story, as well. Unfortunately, neither of these stories were included in the "Economy in Trouble" special section, either. We could even refer to it in an economy story on a wire page like 7A. or our Nation/World page from GNS.

We didn't have the gallery up for the Judd performance until late this morning, so it was good that we didn't promo the gallery in print.

The Marathon Cup story could have included a sig referring to the earlier gallery or Varsity.

On a side note, I'd like to applaud whomever created the promos for today's WDH 1A. It included a well-placed cutout, varying (but not clashing) headlines (in color, font and size) and looked nice.

You all work hard to help connect all the different components online and in print and I appreciate it. It's tough to keep things that are a couple of weeks old (the economy special section) top of mind. If you have ideas on how to keep these weeks old items fresh in your workflow, we can keep them fresh for our readers.

Thanks,

Brian O.

Dates and phone numbers

I've been thinking for a while about dates in our papers. Since we post so much to the Web, would it make more sense to use the date rather than the day of the week? I've even almost slipped up and printed briefs after the fact if the date was stripped in an earlier edit.
Today, Jon and I were discussing 715 in relationship to phone numbers for MNH. Style for MNH is to include the area code when it would be long distance for Marshfield callers. However, I can't remember all of the communities for which you dial it. Not all readers are in Marshfield, either, so the area code might come in handy. (Who knows where Web-based readers are located?) Looking ahead a few years when we overlay another area code, the 715 will become necessary for callers.
Would it make sense to be proactive and add the area code?
What do others think?

Mystique

Thanks, Jeff

Jeff Williams at Wisconsin Rapids sent us an e-mail Sunday listing the Rapids budget, just as he does Monday through Friday. Thanks, Jeff. That helped us know when the budget was ready for us.

proof paradox

I've noticed lately, and will admit to be guilty sometimes myself, of proofs being handed off that sit, gathering dust, for sometimes hours. (This is directed at night desk only, I know day desk has its own problem with proofs).

On night desk, we need to change this procedure. Unless you are working on a page with a looming deadline, try to get any proofs that are handed to you back to the paginator within 30 minutes. Some members of the desk are already doing this, and that's great. Now it's time for the rest of us to get with it.

Also, big thanks to Cathy Emerson for helping out night desk on Monday after Rob called in sick. We really appreciate the help!

--Kristy

This Bach or that Bach?

A story running in Rapids' and Point's GO! sections referred to a composition by Bach. The question is: Which Bach? The Bach family had many members who were composers in the 1700. The famous one is J. S. Bach, whose children W.F. Bach, C.P.E. Bach and J.C.F. Bach were composers. There also is a great uncle: J.C. Bach, whose brother, J.M. Bach, and son, J.N. Bach, were composers. There are more composers in this family tree, but listing them would be overkill.
Also: there is a composer-comedian out there today who lampoons all these Bachs. The comedian is "Professor" Peter Schickele, whose routine is finding the "lost" works of P.D.Q. Bach.
The answer to the question that started this all was J.S. Bach.

Pushing buttons

We ran the "We've got coupons" button on the covers for Thursday's Thanksgiving issues after the button was unfortunately neglected last Sunday, but I ran into a problem this past Sunday when working on the Wausau and Central Wisconsin covers: no dollar amounts. I did not have them in my e-mail (nor did Amy Kimmes, the weekend editor, when I asked her), and looking back, I didn't have them last weekend either, when the button was also supposed to run. (But we did have a specific dollar amount to run for the Thanksgiving issues.) So we ran a generic button instead with no dollar amount.

What is the status of this button initiative? Should I look to have specific dollar amounts in the future (I work almost every Saturday from now through the end of the year, so you can count on me doing the Sunday covers those days), or should I just stick with the generic button from here on out? Is somebody else getting e-mails with the dollar amounts and I'm just not getting them by mistake?

What I'm thankful for

A very big thanks to Kristy, Elizabeth and Tim for working ahead on Wednesday night to get pages started for Thursday. Big props as well to Elizabeth, Andrew and Sirena for all of their hard work paginating on Thanksgiving Day. It made for a very smooth day and we couldn't have done it without the efforts of each and every one of you.

Critique, week two

As promised, here is a quick critique on how we did today promoting our "only online" content today:

On one hand:
1A: Video icon on hunting story was included. Perfect.
1B: A Varsity refer in the rail was a must on this football championship day.

On the other:
4A: The story on the shooting in Point has a gallery (although a couple of days old). Despite the fact that this gallery has been posted for a bit, we could promote to it as coverage of the shooting continues (see my note about the new furniture piece below).
3A: We missed an opportunity to promote a video interview with the winner of the Altrusa award. This wasn't on the multimedia plan part of our online budget, but was included in the budget line for the story. The good news is we did include an embedded link to the video in the online story, and kudos to whomever added it.
GO! page 4: Ann Liebmann's columns and tips are collected in a special section on our site. We should refer to this special section and her blog using the new furniture each time she writes for us (along with the reference in her column tagline).
GO! page 6&7: We missed an opportunity to include an icon promoting a gallery of photos from a 'Nickel and Dimed' rehearsal.

Finally:
1A: The Edgar football story is a good example of a place where the newly created online furniture could be used (I've dropped a copy on everyone's desk). This furniture (glorified factbox/referbox) could point readers towards the existing galleries, planned updates, user gallery or any number of additional "online only" elements.

The 3A feature obit is another good example. We have a somewhat neglected Remembrance special section online. Let's plan to use the new furniture each time we publish a feature obit and promote to obits online and the special section. See the example above.

The question is, how do we communicate what online components we want to promo to each day?

It isn't reasonable to believe that the desk will have, in their heads, a catalog of every video, gallery or extra available online. Is the answer a comprehensive online plan portion of the budget? Is the answer more detailed story budgets that include ties to as many online components as possible? We don't need to refer to, for instance, the Point shooting gallery with every related story, every day. So maybe members of the desk spend fifteen minutes digging for one item to link to on each of their section fronts on the sites each day? Maybe I need to look over the final budget each evening and make suggestions. I'm not sure.

Let me know what you think.

Print promotion for online

We've slipped a bit in print in our promotion to online "extras" like multimedia, story comments, galleries, etc.

A quick look at today's Wausau edition shows the good and the bad:

The ones we hit:
A reference to Everyday Choices online with the Everyday Choices story on our Community page.
A reference to Get Published (without much explanation) on the Life cover.

The ones we missed:
Sinz story on 1A - no refer to Varsity.
Pete's column - no refer to the story online (there was a little conversation on the original update).
Walking club on 3A- no refer to a gallery shot earlier in the week.
Sports - not a single reference to Varsity, anywhere, in the section (which featured a couple of nice prep sports stories).




I can't point to these missed opportunities as a concrete reason our online numbers have dipped in recent months, but these omissions in print certainly do not help.

What can we do? Maybe you have ideas. Post them here.

I think we could communicate more thoroughly through our budgets. We should try to keep all the different layers of our site top of mind. And, on my own to-do list, create a new furniture piece that allows us to promote more specifically to online elements (for example, a piece that could have been used with Pete's column to drive people to the Local News page of our site so they could find the entire story with comments). And I'll be back here, in this blog, with a critique of our efforts, good and bad.

It's Northpoint Drive

After seeing it go back and forth and back again, I asked Linda Taylor how we should identify this certain street in Point. She said Northpoint Drive. Northpoint. One word.

Boxers or Briefs

Okay, fine, the title was a bit of a bait and switch. Nothing underwear related here.

Here is my question to the copy desk as a whole:

How difficult would it be to post briefs (I'm thinking especially local briefs here) as individual stories in Saxotech, rather than one "local briefs" story? I ask because these are often among the juiciest items of the day and often we're dissecting the briefs file and turning them into separate stories online anyhow.

Let me know if logistically you think this could happen. Then we'll proceed. Or not.

— Brian O.

Obit glitch

Although we need to be extremely careful when editing an obituary, we still need to make corrections when necessary. An obituary set to run in Monday's Stevens Point Journal misspelled the name one a leading American company: Anheuser-Busch. The obit read "Anheuser Bush."

The importance ...

It pays to know some things that are quite obscure to others. Take Thursday’s GO cover for Marshfield. The story promoting “The Importance of Being Earnest” misidentifies one of the characters: Lady Bracknell is named Lady Brackington. Fortunately, I know this play well enough to know that is not right.

Rob

Brief note on elections

I sent election coverage assignments by e-mail. But I'm leaving it up to Kerry to divvy up the copy desk assignments.

I will be around with other editors to help proofread pages.

I anticipate ordering pizza for the crew.

Are there any particular questions or concerns to address from the copy desk side prior to Tuesday?

— Mark T.

Gold stars

A few more kudos to share:

* Sirena helped out the night desk Saturday by proofing wire pages even though I'm sure she would have rather been at home. A little bit of help can go a long way.

*Jeff in composing for once again proving to be a last set of eyes on a page. On Sunday night, he caught a misspelled word in a headline that made it past a paginator, proofer and the person who sent the page.

* Tim is doing a great job learning to do wire and he and I were able to get out both WDH and CWS on Saturday night before 10 p.m. That's what I call teamwork!

These are just a few highlights of the recent weeks. Feel free to mention anything you feel deserves recognition.

--Kristy

How are the Web headlines going?

It's been about a week since we started writing teaser headlines on the Web and main headlines for search-engine purposes.

It looks like some people have this down pat. Some of the main headlines, though, are a bit long, and they tend to delay using key words.

Here's an example of one that looks too long: "Friends, family gather to remember, celebrate life of Troy Schmitt, a Marshfield teacher who died Friday when a train collided with his vehicle."

That's 122 characters long, almost twice the recommended maximum of 65 characters stated in our training.

Also, if you do a Google search for news items, you'll notice that usually the stories are listed partly according to how soon in the headline your keyword appears. So taking the above example, you might figure that people interested in this story would search using "Troy Schmitt" or "Marshfield teacher" or "train crash." They probably would not search using words such as "family, friends, gather, remember, or celebrate."

This might be a better headline to make the news clear and get attention: "Funeral for Marshfield teacher killed in train crash focuses on zest for life"

That's 65 characters. Not perfect, but better.

Headlines for the Web

This week we received training in the art of writing headlines for the Web and for maximizing the potential for getting hits through search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. We learned that the teaser field under edit in Saxotech delivers that headline to our home pages, while the headline in the headline box is what search engines pick up. Please correct me if I am wrong or don't have this entirely right. The purpose of this post is to remind everyone that this is our new procedure, that we no longer simply transfer the print story wholesale to the Web, because as we've learned and know intuitively, print headlines often fall flat on the Web, without the accompanying deckheads and art that we have in print.

Reporters and front-line editors: Please start including two suggested headlines on the top of stories: one for our home pages, more of a traditional headline but with more specifics than we use for print and another with even more specifics and key words that is intended for search-engine maximization.

Copy editors: Remember to rewrite headlines for Web postings. Do not just ship the print version over to the Web.

Please weigh in with any ideas you might have on how to improve on this.

Thanks,

— Kerry

Aldest one in the book

Alderman and alderwoman, or alderperson? This is a common question of mine looking at stories about city councils.

The entry for "alderman" on the AP stylebook Web site says to use the same rules for congressman/congresswoman. So alderman and alderwoman seem to be the rule... but there are no rules set for the plural in the book or on the Web site. Is it aldermen? Aldermen and alderwomen? Alderpeople?

Stylistically speaking

A conversation in the newsroom got me thinking about AP style. There are certain rules within AP style (advisers with an e, comes to mind), that when read by the general populace (who are not, for the most part, versed in AP style) seem like errors. This same argument could be made for using 'proper English' versus using slang and what you hear on the street every day (healthy vs. healthful comes to mind here).

I'm not suggesting at all that we not follow AP style or proper usage (that would be beyond crazy). I just thought it might be interesting to have a discussion about what elements of AP style could be viewed as errors to readers, or what aspects of AP style seem like errors to editors (if there are any).

Anyone?

--Kristy

Bad breaks

I noticed in today's Journal (County budget lowers taxes, 1A, second graph) that "homeowners" hyphenated after "hom," instead of after "home," creating "hom-eowners." Blech. This is a common word for a bad break, but we've all seen others.

Is there a way to get InDesign to not hyphenate words incorrectly? I know we can choose to hyphenate or not hyphenate paragraphs, but I'm not sure about flagging individual words. Anyone know?

Mystique

More on fading photos

There have been some questions about which tools you should use in PhotoShop to "fade" a photo. Use the image here to find the gradient tool (1). Make sure the color white is the foreground color (2) and if you have the gradient setting above (3) set to white to transparent (checkered boxes), you're set.

Do you CQ?

One step that seems to help with accuracy in our newspapers is the practice of CQing proper names and figures in notes format at the top of every story. This seems to be an automatic habit for some reporters but not others. Maybe some papers require it but others do not? If you don't CQ, why not? When a reporter CQs a story, it gives copy editors confidence that proper names are spelled correctly and that figures are accurate. If, as sometimes happens, there are spelling discrepancies within the story, it helps to be able to verify the proper spelling with the CQ notes.

Editors, if a story is not CQ'd by the reporter, is the copy editor expected to make a point to CQ each name? I don't mind double-checking spellings if I have doubts, but I imagine reporters often have a better set of resources than I have -- perhaps some inside information or at least greater familiarity with the source. I am likely to check our archives and to use Google. Unfortunately, the archives are imperfect, and some of the Web sites I find might be outdated.

I appreciate that we all are striving for accuracy, but is there more we can do to help one another?

~ Elizabeth

Cut to fit

Mark Baldwin's blog and a reporter's response brought up the topic of how aggressively we edit stories, and the primary purpose of "tightening."

I don't have all the answers, but I have a question for the copy desk: If a reporter and assignment editor want to run a longer than usual story on the front page, say in the 400-word range, what can they do to ensure it isn't chopped substantially by the time it sees print? And what can they do to make sure it looks good, not like a big gray blob?

I'm looking for good, practical advice here ... constructive stuff.

Gold stars

Sometimes, in the rush to correct errors, prevent problems and improve content, workflow and the look of the paper, we get bogged down in what's WRONG in the paper every day. Pointing out weak points and errors are a vital part of improving our work, but we also need to hear about the good things being done by the desk, and there are a lot of them.

Here's just a few things:

*Liz spent a good 20 minutes Thursday night chasing down corrections for an obit in Marshfield. This included talking to the editor, the person who put the obit in the system and the funeral home (twice!).

*Benton's been getting props from all over for his cutout work on 1A refers.

*Andrew keeps us abreast of what's going on in the world and makes sure we always have an eye on what's live including Olympics (I think we saw every one of Phelps' races), convention coverage, Packers games and Bush's speech last night. He also moves effortlessly between news and sports, keeping the two departments on course with each other.

These are just a few examples of the good things being done by the desk each night. If you see something in the paper that you love (as well as any problems) don't hesitate to let someone on the desk know. I'm going to try to do a periodic 'gold stars' post, so if you're aware of something great, just let me know.

Keep up the good work, folks!

--Kristy

Skybox help

Many thanks to the A1 designers who have been following the latest mandate about using cutouts in skyboxes. I think that, on the whole, the pages have had more punch recently. I've spoken to Kerry, Benton and Kristie about "fading" cutouts and have seen them use the technique very nicely. If you would like a refresher on this process, see me.

With this change in skybox strategy, I've also been asked about providing a few more "hammer" style headings that could be used. In the interest of expanding your page design arsenal, I've assembled a few skybox designs, with various heading styles, in an InDesign file titled Skybox08.indd that you'll find under Graphics/Daily Graphics/SKYBOX ITEMS. Feel free to copy this file to your desktop to take apart and use as you wish.

Another good place to find some out of the ordinary typography is in the Old rail items folder that is in the same SKYBOX ITEMS folder. Feel free to borrow designs and type from these InDesign files as well.

Keep up the good skybox work.

— Brian

Is that your final answer?

Our online budget system, while providing many wonderful ways to stay ahead of the news, does have a problem and that is that we, the copy desk, can't tell if a budget is finalized. We have various ways of dealing with this (badgering the editors, calls, etc.) but I'm wondering if we can't create a standard that will allow editors to communicate their budgets to us.

I think the Rapids method is the best, and that is to e-mail a finalized budget to the entire desk, This tells us when the budget is final, and also ensures at the entire desk knows what is on the menu for Rapids. We can then check the other budgets to make sure any stories from the other sites aren't being held (and if they are we can contact editors early in the night). If they request wire stories (or localize wire stories) for a local page the wire editor knows about it and this helps prevent doubled stories.

In my opinion, this works best when it comes to budgets. What do others think? Is this something we can implement at the other sites or is there a better system?

--Kristy

Hyper about hyphens

Over the course of my editing and being edited yesterday, I had some hyphen-related episodes that I'd like to share:

1. AIG Travel Guard is not hyphenated, according to their own Web site. It's inconsistent across our text archives, and seeing as how this is a big story right now (especially in Point), it's important to keep it consistently correct. (Thanks to Kerry for putting my feet to the fire on this last night.)
2. The AP stylebook is a bit fuzzy in what to do with hyphenating "grade" and "grader," and you have to read between the lines of their examples a bit to know what they mean. A word like "fifth-grader" is always hyphenated. However, "fifth-grade" as an adjective is hyphenated, where "fifth grade" as a noun is not, because the adjectival form is a compound modifier. (It bears pointing out that the examples given for "fifth-grade" are only for the adjectival form, not the noun.) So you would say, "He visited the fifth-grade class," and "He is in fifth grade."

Yes, they are only hyphens, but it is our job to sweat the small stuff.

Beyond the AP Stylebook

Since we tend to follow AP style almost exclusively (can anyone list exceptions?), I find it helps to be familiar with http://www.apstylebook.com/ask_editor.php

While the site allows online subscribers to ask an editor questions, even those of us who are not online subscribers can use the site to find answers to many style questions the AP Stylebook doesn't cover.

A couple of things I have learned:

* The N in "Nativity scene" should be capitalized.
* When listing Republican, Democratic and Independent political affiliations, Independent should be capitalized.
* Even though Wal-Mart recently changed its logo to look like "Walmart," AP is sticking with Wal-Mart (based on a recent SEC filing).
* Theater is lowercase in Pacific theater.
* Items on a bulleted list should begin with a capital letter and end with a period.

Of course the site doesn't have an answer to every style question you could imagine, but a quick search often can help clear up confusion.

~ Elizabeth

Obits

We recently were instructed that paid obits were being edited too much, which can cause problems with families and credits. This is completely understandable, but my question is, how much editing should we be doing with obits? Currently, we're changing a range of things from punctuation, time/date/place arrangements, spelling corrections, grammar and other things. Should we be doing this? At the other sites, especially on weekends, we sometimes get a wide range of obit styles. How do we handle that?

I used to follow the line that if it wasn't an error in fact (6 names when there are only supposed to be 5 kids, names spelled wrong, wrong dates for wars, wrong days of the week) that I left it alone. I then was rebuffed by people who were editing the pages to correct the smaller things, too. Where do we draw the line?

I think we should have firm guidelines on how to edit obits , and how far we want to take it. I for one, am in favor of leaving them alone completely (unless there is a glaring error in fact). What does everyone else think?

--Kristy

oops

the previous post is mine.

--Kristy

Death takes a holiday

On Sunday we got a call from the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department because we had listed the wrong person as being dead on our Web site in the story about the fatal car crash in Merrill. We had the daughter/driver as dead when, in fact, the mother/passenger had died. I made the changes, which ended up being very extensive and updated the Web site (thanks to Andrew for his help on the front page of the site). The person I spoke to was very confused how we got the wrong person since he said the press release was correct.

My question is how do we, as copy editors who do not usually deal with live postings, or press releases,
answer questions like this when there are no editors or reporters in the building?

The other thing is just a reminder to make sure to look at our Web site, especially on weekends. Since we didn't see the press release, we probably wouldn't have caught the problem, except that the general public was talking about the wrong names in the comments section. If someone had been looking through the site periodically, they would have noticed the problem, although I'm not sure how much of this should fall onto the desk. It seems this would be more of a task for the editor/reporter, but regardless, the copydesk should at least be familiar with what is on the site.

Anybody have any other ideas about how to avoid this problem in the future?

Panty raid?

While editing an obit today, I found "panty" instead of "pantry" in a reference to where memorials may be made. Oops. That's one that spell check won't catch, unless you tell it to.

You can flag words in NewsEdit that are likely to make us go red in the face if they make it into print in the wrong context.

In NewsEdit, go to Utilities and drop down to "Edit Spelling Exceptions." In the space provided, type in the word you want spell check to stop on. In my list, I have "pubic" and "panty." (You can add as many as you'd like, but these are a couple I find to be problematic. Let me know if you have other handy ones that I can add.) Click Add and then close the window.

Next time you run across that word in spell check it will stop and you can determine if it's really a panty you want or a pantry.

Mystique

And in related news ...

We'd like to begin providing "Related Articles" links with stories online because it adds to readers' background information on a topic of interest, offers an extra service, builds page views and translates into additional revenue.

Thankfully, it's pretty easy to do.

If you open an article in Saxotech, click on the "Connections/Statistics tab."

Then under Internal Links, click on the "Change" button.

The pop-up window will display a search field that lets you set parameters such as category (Ex. WDH-Local), interval (Today, last week, last 3 months, etc.) and add a keyword in text, theme, taxonomy, etc.

Then you click on any articles you want to show up with the original, click on "Apply CConnections" and then close the window and then the file. Recache and voila!

I suggest experimenting with it for a while until you become accustomed, then figure out how many articles you can do this with in the evening, depending on how long it takes at first. The morning online crew will be expected to do this more thoroughly, for the time being. I'd like to shoot for at least one related article with every article we post.

— Mark T.

Weekly round-up

In an effort to be better about putting up consistent content on this blog, I'm going to start posting a "weekly round-up" every weekend, for facts you should know, highlighting good work and some constructive criticism.

Biden our time. With Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain duking it out for the presidency, and Sen. Joe Biden just announced as Obama's vice president, it's important to note that Sen. and Sens. are used as formal titles before names in regular text, but they're spelled out "Senator" and "Senators" in direct quotes. For more information, look up "legislative titles" in your AP style guide.

The tip of the Berg. Kudos to Robert Berg, whose e-mails letting us know when all the ads have been released are often inventive and delightful. One e-mail printed out a portion of the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky," replacing the first line to be about releasing ads. Keep up the good work, Robert!

Goodbye to Doug. Doug Alft, a photographer from the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, has left to pursue a new career in long-haul trucking. To see some incredible photos that Doug has shot, check out Page 8C of this week's Central Wisconsin Sunday.

Where's that page again ... We could really stand to take better care of our page bins between Kristie's desk and sports — I can't think of a time in the past week where I walked by and it didn't look like a disaster area. Stevens Point and Marshfield are often comingled together, and there's often a huge stack of pages dating back through the week at any given time. It's good to have one centralized place to find finished pages if you have questions, but it could stand to have some care.

I'll be jotting down ideas for the next round-up over the course of the week, so if there's something you want pointed out, shoot me an e-mail and I'll post it.

Great math catch

From Mark T.:

Elizabeth, I think it was, had a great catch last night on a math error on the lede story of WDH 1A. The story said the Wausau Police Department had issued 16,453 parking citations in 2007, a 28.5 percent increase from about 9,600 tickets the year before.

The percentage was way off. It was more like a 71 percent increase.

It was a reminder for editors like me to always check the math in a story.

It's also a good lesson on how to calculate percentages: You divide the difference between the original number and the new number by the original number. Confused?

In this parking ticket example:

Original number = 9,600
New number = 16,453
Difference = 6,853 (16,453 minus 9,600)
Rate of change = 71.39 percent (6,853 divided by 9,600)

From Mark T.

Just a few quick items from today's WDH that caught my attention and could provide reminders or lessons:

* Engulfed means to "swallow up, overwhelm," according to Webster's. Fully engulfed also means to "swallow up, overwhelm." When you see that phrase, as in the first sentence of the Rothschild fire story on the front page, get rid of "fully." It's a redundant word.

* "On the home's driveway," in the same front-page story, looked wrong to me. Does anyone else think it should have been "in the home's driveway"?

* Just how big are state officials? That's what I wondered after I read this sentence on the front page: "Despite their size, state officials aren't taking beetles lightly. " Strunk and White would have issued this reminder from "The Elements of Style": "A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject."

To make "beetles" the grammatical subject of this sentence, it should have been written this way: "Despite their size, the beetles are not being taken lightly by state officials." But even better: "State officials are taking the invasion seriously despite the beetles' size."

Spam, spam, spam, wonderful spam

I despise spam e-mails. I am of the opinion that the only proper response to spam is extreme prejudice: black ops teams, private unlicensed white vans, wiretaps, and secret prisons in Eastern European countries. I would like to see spam e-mailing get the same level of federal attention as the War on Drugs. The War on Spam: now that's something we can all get behind. I'd like to see whoever writes spamming programs forced to live in the deepest corners of the wilderness to avoid law enforcement attention, and I would like to see police shows where cops haul spammers out of their homes in handcuffs and "accidentally" use a little excessive force.

That said, I think some of the spam e-mails I get are pretty funny.

I tend to avoid most of the spam e-mails that seem to circulate around the office, and I suspect that's because my e-mail address is not printed in the newspaper. (Score one for anonymity.) Comparing notes with Charlie, he gets far more spam e-mails than I do, and he also gets signed up for politically motivated newsletters and some such that he never asked for. (I get plenty of phishing spam at home, though; I got one letter sent to me so many times I started to wonder if that old European lady really did need my help getting her fortune to America.)

Me, I tend to get spam about twice a week (please don't take this as an invitation to forward all of your spam to me), and it's usually the same thing: phony news alerts. I don't know about you, but I find them pretty hilarious because they're so out there. Gay rights terrorist kills 8 in bombing. James Bond to have gay lover in next film. George Bush unveils Iran invasion plan. Barack Obama picks Oprah Winfrey for vice president. All of these are actual e-mails I have received, and I'm a bit tickled how hard they try to get me to follow their links. They play on fears — homosexuality (gay terrorists!), war (George Bush is pushing us into another war!) or race (black celebrities are taking over the government!) — but they're so far-fetched that I can only sit back and laugh instead of getting annoyed.

So, spam is a horrible abomination unto all that lives (and a serious problem when working in a company where communication is essential), but does anybody have any good/funny spam stories?

A couple of reminders

For everyone that designs or corrects pages, please remember to tear off and staple to the front the quality control checklist on each page, every day.

For everyone that posts content to the Web, the three spots in the carousel each night should be made up of:

1. The top local story that has art
2. The top sports story that has art (if this story isn't local, it should be replaced by another story from any section by mid-afternoon)
3. The top features story that has art (if this story isn't local, it should be replaced by another story from any section by mid-afternoon)

Some budgets include specific carousel requests, so please take note of these requests when sending content.

Thanks,

— Brian O.

It was as though a million Wisconsinites cried out in terror... and were suddenly silenced.

Big props to Elizabeth Waggoner, Tim Langton, and Mark Multer for all of their hard work last night.  Our staffing situation wasn't ideal to begin with, and then the news came through the grapevine at about quarter to 11 that Favre was going to the Jets.  Quickly, every editor was contacted and plans were made to tear up our front pages and put Favre up there front and center.  Pages were redesigned and reproofed, and though Favre threw off the rest of the night — I myself didn't go home until 2 a.m. — we did a good job of getting things done when breaking news happens.  Good job!

What a diva

What looks kind of like an ad but contains editable content?

If you guessed the Shopping Diva feature, see me to claim your prize. (It's a coupon for a free 12 oz. Frosty, but I have only one, so act quickly.)

It seems the Diva confused her downtown Wausau icons this week. She was a little shaky on one minor difference between the name of David Jahnke (the late owner of St. Clair's Menswear) and the name of Janke Book Store. While checking PDFs, I was happy to be able to set her straight.

What I'm trying to say is that although the content is generated outside of the newsroom (I think), it is my understanding that the person who writes the copy wants us to proofread the text.

So whenever the Diva makes an appearance on a proof, please be sure to give her your full attention.

~ Elizabeth

Voodoo copy editing

A word that I had to look up today was "trickledown," to see if it was one word or two as an adjective (it's one). It seems like an apt word for what I need to talk about, because right now, I need to be strict.

It is very easy to make mistakes on the job, and nobody sees it more than the copy desk. Heck, it's our job to track down every typo and factual error and correct them. And all things considered, I think we do a good job of that.

But beyond typos and factual errors and so on and so forth, we also see a whole lot of other errors that we shouldn't have to see. In the past month or so, I've seen a masterlink not get made (and then we have to call somebody in on the weekend to make it, and costs us two hours of time we could've been paginating). I've seen run sheets not get made (and then we have to look on from other page sheets, which takes a whole lot more time, especially if things get moved around). I've seen pages get the wrong number in InDesign (and then late at night we wonder where that page is when we're checking PDFs and have to search the system). I've seen pages get misassigned as things they aren't; we don't have an editorial page on Sundays, because we have a Community Conversation section (and then we realize we have a completely open page we have to fill at deadline time). Those last two were in the span of two days.

These things trickle down to the copy desk and add to our overtime because we end up having to find the problem and fix it. And these things add an extra something to stress out about when we should be focusing on making pages and proofing pages. Especially when it's close to deadline, because nine times out of ten when these mistakes get noticed, it's close to deadline. And I'll be honest: these mistakes that trickle down to the copy desk put me, personally, in a bad, bad mood.

I have no problem owning up to my own mistakes. Heaven knows I make enough of them. But I do have a problem with paying for other people's.

So please. Be careful in your job. Check your work. Make sure it is done correctly the first time, because it might just trickle down.

Benton...

Alleged incriminator

It seems to be a common mistake to call a person who has been accused of a crime an alleged criminal. At times in headlines, we have called a certain Saratoga man an "alleged abductor." We also have been tempted to call him a "suspected abductor." Even with either modifier, we are still calling him an abductor. Because he is innocent until proven guilty, however, we should probably refer to him as an "abduction suspect" instead.

It may seem to be a subtle difference, but the AP Stylebook's "accused" entry says: "To avoid any suggestion that an individual is being judged before a trial, do not use a phrase such as 'accused slayer John Jones'; use 'John Jones, accused of the slaying.'" (And the "alleged" entry directs readers to see guidelines on the word "accused.")

For the sake of a headline, which would not have as much room as the AP example, we could probably refer to Jones as a "slaying suspect."

Does that make sense? Are there other simple ways to avoid calling someone an alleged criminal?

~ Elizabeth

Column widths and such

From Mark T.

I've noticed some funky-looking column widths lately, including on Pages 1A and 3A of today's WDH.

For the most part, we should stick to a standard column width. The shoulder story on 1A was too wide, in my opinion.

Also, a couple of the wire business stories were cut down to briefs, which is OK, of course, but they had full bylines on them. That looked odd. In that case we should just use "The Associated Press" byline title with no reporter byline name.

Thoughts?

Hey, D.C. Everest Area

Folks, I've noticed a disparity in how we define the DCE area. Here's a quick rundown on style for the district:

• D.C. Everest Area School District - official name includes "Area"
• D.C. Everest Senior High School - official name includes "Senior"
• D.C. Everest Junior High School
• D.C. Everest Middle School

For more, go to the District's Web site at: www.dce.k12.wi.us

Thanks!

Sirena

Kerning

A quick reminder to everyone that stories should be kerned between 0 and -50. We're generally pretty good about staying within these parameters, but extra care should be taken to stay within these values when handling SPJ pages.

Why? The Point press prints with less ink bleed, meaning the letters that make up a story look thinner/less bold on the SPJ press than on the Wausau press. If you don't believe me, compare an edition from Point and Wausau.

I would also warn against adding space between paragraphs to lengthen a story. Try using a pull quote, deckhed or mugshot to stretch a story.

Any other story-stretching techniques you'd like to share?

— Brian Otten

Speaking of pantries

A headline in today's life section (and brought to everyone's attention by Dan) read:

Not just pretty faces: Models get head for business

At first glance, this might appear to be fine, but take a minute and use the great advice once given the desk by Mark Treinen: Read all headlines as if you were a 13-year-old boy.

Exactly.

To me this illustrates a perfect example of why we follow that advice and also why you should read all headlines out loud.

Oh, and the headline was changed to say Models get brain for business. Nice save, Dan.

--Kristy

I've been framed!

Lately, I've been noticing that a lot of pages have been getting through the approval process with photos that are without frames. Part of the problem is in InDesign when you put a frame on a photo only to have it end up being white (or yellow or blue). What I don't understand is how people don't notice the missing frame. For me, it jumps off the page immediately because the page looks unfinished. I haven't been resending pdfs when this happens (it seems like a small thing to replate a page for considering the cost involved) but maybe we should. Regardless, please watch for this when approving PDFs. I'm sure it sticks out to the readers as well.

--Kristy

Something new

I've left a gift for each page designer at their desk today.

It's not chocolate, flowers or a balloon with a candy bar tethered to it.

It is a (somewhat) neat stack of paper slips. These slips will be used on each proof to help keep track of the new proofing process implemented last month.

You aren't asked to do anything differently from the way you are doing it now, only that you staple a Quality Control Checklist slip at the upper left of each page, and record your initials on the slip throughout the proofing process (as opposed to cluttering up the margins of the proof with initials).

If you have any questions on how these should be used, let me know.

I've also included a sheet that you can copy when you run out of slips. I'll also send you an InDesign file you can print, if you'd prefer.

Thanks,

— Brian

Kickers?

What guidelines do you follow when writing kickers for the carousel?

I usually try to avoid repeating any of the words used in the headline, but this tends to lead to vague kickers. Family fun, education, recreation, entertainment, environment and weather are among the kickers I have used more than once. I like to avoid redundancy, but maybe it's more important to be specific. One challenge is the limited space, but I have noticed some kickers that take up two or even three lines. Is this OK?

Since so many others have at least a little bit of experience writing Web kickers, I wondered if anyone would be willing to share tips or tricks. What's the best or worst kicker you've ever written or seen? Are there certain things we should keep in mind if we want our kickers to grab readers' attention?

— Elizabeth

Not sure how to address this

From Mark T.

I have to be honest. I think this is a good place to bring up an error that appeared on the front page of the Stevens Point Journal this week, but A). I don't want to offend anyone, and B). I'm really not sure if there's a procedural way to avoid such a thing.

At any rate, I'm sure a few people already know that the word "pantry" was mistyped during the corrections process in the lede sentence of a story about traffic at local food pantries.

Here's how the sentence was published: "Nationwide, many panties are feeling the pinch of fewer donations coupled with increased need for assistance."

OK, stop laughing. No, really, I mean it. It's not funny, you guys. Cut it out.

Seriously, though, there's no indication on the proofs that anyone checked the corrections after they were made, on a printed proof or by PDF. Even that's no guarantee that someone making such a quick scan would catch a missing letter, but I hope that we are doing that. I also think we ought to take extra time when it comes to front pages.

But what do the people on the firing line have to say about it?

A reminder

I think we had some problems with stories moving from NewsEdit to Publicus over the weekend and I want to applaud those that had to work around the problem to get content to the web.

Just a reminder that when sending stories manually, be sure to include only the first paragraph in the first paragraph box with the rest of the story placed in the second paragraph box.

There are a pair of reasons to do this:

1. For stories that appear in the carousel, or in other positions on our homepage, special sections and sub-pages, this prevents the summary text from cutting off mid-sentence and bumping the "More" that appears at the end.

2. For stories that appear in our e-mail updates, this prevents long, run-on paragraphs that look odd.

Thanks,

Brian

A litle problem

If the world "little" was misspelled "litle" in a headline that was 60 point or bigger, or was in a big fancy font, would you notice?

Would you be surprised to know that this was missed not once, not twice, but thrice on Monday Life covers, by different people (and then subsequently noticed on all three by Dan)?

Heaven knows I've made the same mistake — gone painstakingly through an entire page and neglected to read the headlines. But egad, man, three pages, same headline mistake on all of them.

Take your time, and be careful.

Land of 1,000 Universities

Hello all,

After much debate and a final verdict from Mr. T., we've developed a style for the University of Minnesota. For each campus, treat it like the UW schools (University of Wisconsin — Stevens Point).

Ex. University of Minnesota — Twin Cities

Happy long-dashes!

Sirena

check mate

One of the many things the copy desk does each night is to do a final check of each PDF in the A section of the paper. Ideally, we're looking for headline errors, stories that don't end or other large, type-face problems. Lately, I've been doing a lot of this, and I'm wondering if that's really the best option. The reason I bring it up is that I'm normally responsible for a larger percentage of A-section pages because of doing wire.

We all know that it is harder to spot errors on the pages you produce. You know what's it's supposed to say, so you tend to read over mistakes. While I plan to continue to look through PDFs each night, I think my role should be more of a making sure all the pages are accounted for, so we don't have a situation like last night with the missing WRT 5A.

So in terms of who's best qualified to make a final perusal of the PDFs for quality control purposes, what do we think? Should it be whoever is doing the fewest pages? Should we make a rule that you can't check PDFs of your own pages (this is only for the final look, not to approve the page initially)? Should I check lifestyle pages and someone else do night side pages? Should this task be assigned each day along with the page distribution?

This step is our last defense against errors, so how can we make it better?

--Kristy

Giving props

Today (Saturday) was one of the most difficult days I've ever seen on the copy desk.  When I came in to begin working on wire pages, I found that there was no Wausau masterlink to make pages to begin with.  I wasn't able to start doing wire pages until 4 p.m.  Over the course of the day, we also found that our inability to access the budget Web site was apparently the result of a power outage in Appleton, and we later found that none of our stories were making it from NewsEdit to the respective Web sites, and not all of the pages being released from approval were making it to the printer and the archives.

The day could've been a real disaster, but our talented staff kept its cool, buckled down and still put out a darn fine paper despite our cumulative technical difficulties.  So I have to publicly give major credit to Cathy and Jen Straub for getting a Wausau masterlink made so we could do Wausau pages, and Elizabeth and Tim for their great pagination and proofreading abilities in creating quality pages and getting them out the door in a timely manner.  Props also to Elizabeth, Tim and Dan for manually inputting all of the articles with correct photos and taxonomy into Saxotech, which is, in my opinion, one of the most irritating things in the world when articles won't send.  Kudos all around to everybody who helped us out.  Today could have been a really awful day, but thanks to everybody it was only mildly irritating.

(Incidentally, how exactly does a Wausau masterlink not get made?)

Proofreading backup

From Mark T.

Thought I would post our new proofreading protocols here in case someone loses the e-mail and can't remember what he or she was supposed to do. Here it is:

1. The page designer will visually scan all display type — headlines, captions, breakouts and refers — before putting pages out for proofreading. The designer will provide the first set of initials to signal this has been done.

2. Proofreaders must place a check mark next to each element of the page to indicate that it has been checked for accuracy. This includes separate check marks for headlines, folios, stories, breakouts, refers, taglines, captions, photos, column sigs, etc. All names in captions and breakouts will be checked against the name spellings in accompanying stories.

3. The person making corrections must review the PDF after corrections are made or ensure someone else has reviewed the PDF — to scan display type and ensure all stories, captions and breakouts end — and initial the page .

4. All proofs after corrections will be placed in the baskets between Kristy’s desk and the sports department.

5. In addition, all photo captions will be entered first in NewsEdit, where they will be cq’d and spell-checked before being copied to the DC5. Whenever possible, a reporter or editor will review the caption before it’s placed with the photo in the system.

To recap: The first version of each page will be initialed by the designer and the proofreader. Each element of the page will be checked off by the proofreader. Each second version will be initialed by the corrector and whomever double-checks the corrections.

Photo captions will be written and checked in NewsEdit before entered with the photos in the system.

Kerry Lechner will oversee this process for the four daily editions to ensure that all steps are followed consistently, on every page, every night. Sirena Mankins will continue to oversee the quality control of Everest Herald pages.

RIP George Carlin

George Carlin, the famously irreverent comedian, has just died Sunday night at 71.  His most famous stand-up routine was "The Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV."

I won't reprint the words here for propriety's sake, but in keeping with the theme, what are some things (words or otherwise) you have been surprised to see appear in a newspaper?

New format, new features

I've finally taken the time to update some of the features on this blog. As you can see, we have a new, more colorful format; Sluggy the Copy Desk Slug, Brian's creation, now graces the right side of the blog; and you can now e-mail posts to whoever you want.

I've also finally looked into how everybody can post using their own ID so they don't need to sign their name at the bottom. All you need is a Google account. Send me the name of your Google e-mail and I will add your name to the Permissions list in the blog (you'll receive an e-mail asking to confirm; you'll have to sign in using your Google e-mail) and then you can write under your own name.

(Side note: I'm having trouble now publishing new posts in Safari where I didn't before. My fonts turn into gibberish and the html gets kind of wacky, so it's probably better to post in Firefox instead now.)

On the record

It may seem obvious, but if you're proofing Wausau records and come across something odd, a good place to look first for answers would be Jan or Cathy's desk.

On Saturday, Liz noticed that Wausau had the same child being born in both Saint Clare's and Saint Joseph's. I called Saint Clare's, got transferred around, and eventually learned that the kid hadn't been born there. I called Saint Joseph's to verify, got the runaround for a bit, and then was told that the hospital wouldn't release that information to me without a written information request etc. etc. etc.

After the whole 15-minute ordeal with no perfect answer, I wandered over to Cathy's desk and found, sitting right on top of other stuff, a stack of signed consent forms from the hospitals, and in 15 seconds, I found the one I was looking for.

D'oh.

Ask them first if they're there, but their desks are a good place to go for Wausau records answers.

-Benton

High noon

Something that's come up a lot lately, especially in obits and sometimes in stories:

12 noon

According to AP, it should be noon, do not put a 12 in front of it. It's redundant.

--Kristy

Fun with homonyms

The difference between "diffuse" and "defuse" seemed to cause confusion this week — probably because these words rarely come up.

Which action would you rather have the The Marathon County Bomb Squad take with bombs?

Diffuse: to pour, spread out, or disperse in every direction; spread or scatter widely

Defuse: to remove the fuse or fuze from (a bomb or other explosive device)

(Source: Webster's New World College Dictionary)

— Elizabeth

Who moved my photos?

Brian asked me to share this. It's instructions on how to search and find toned photos. It's helpful if you need to find photos that have gone missing (imagine that!) and you need them to build or send a page.

After you log in to RTC MediaManager, on the left, next to “Enter new” is “Search existing.” When you click on it, it opens to a "search toning requests" page. You can search by site, the person who ordered a photo, image number or text. If you know who ordered the photo(s) you need, you can choose the name from the pulldown list, and you will get all of the photo orders from that person. They photos can be downloaded manually by clicking on the file(s) you want to download. When you click on the number that is underlined, it opens a page that lets you view the full slug(s) and even see the image if you mouse over the little icon that looks like a computer screen.

Photos will download to your desktop. (It can take a while if you're downloading several images.) Once completely downloaded, move them by dragging them into the appropriate folder in CWNG-EDIT.

Mystique

Who are we?

As long as I have been in Wausau (698 days), the byline title we have used for stories shared among sites in central Wisconsin has been "Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers." Although I never heard an official announcement, it seems that at some point, the name of the group changed to "Gannett Central Wisconsin Media." As a result, I have been wondering lately whether "Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers" is still appropriate, or whether we should start using "Gannett Wisconsin Media" for byline titles on shared stories. Although it probably would take awhile to adjust to such a change, would a switch be worth considering?

~Elizabeth

Grabbing the brass ring

Well, we've had the carousel up on our collective Web sites for about a month now. Personally, I like it - I think it's a cool little way to show off the top stories.

I'm a little confused, though, about the flow of information to it. Are we intending to have three fresh, new stories in the carousel every day? I look right now at the Stevens Point and Marshfield sites, for example, and there's still a story from Central Wisconsin Sunday making the rounds. (Granted, it is Monday.)

Also, what about communication between editors and copy editors about what should go in the carousel? Is it usually pretty clear? I often do Rapids' front, and Jeff's made clear to me to just put one news story on the carousel because sports will take care of one and Mystique will take care of another, but I'm fuzzy what to do with Point and Marshfield.

Finally, and this is a question I've asked most of the copy editors face to face already, what do you do when none of your news stories have art attached with them, making none of them particularly good candidates for the carousel? I've been sending the standalone center for Rapids when that happens.

Benton...

Great catches

Any great catches by copy editors to share?

Let's use this place to also celebrate some of the good stuff that happens every night, to pat yourself or your coworker on the back, or point out some funny or not-so-funny stuff that almost made it to readers.

Set it and forget it

To all those who create pages/paginate: YOU MUST SET YOUR PUBLICATION INFO on EVERY page!

I am sometimes guilty of this myself, and I'll be the first to admit that when you're doing pages where none of the content will be sent to the Web, it's not a big deal if the info isn't set, BUT it is vitally important on pages where content is sent to the Web and therefore should be done on every page no matter what.

If you don't set the publication info, anything on the page will have to be manipulated manually in NewsEdit in order to send correctly to the Web. Save yourself, and anyone who's sending for you, time by setting the publication info once on the page. Also, it makes it easier to find content when the info is set.

Obviously, you can't set it when you have multiple pages in one InDesign file, but for single pages it should be set. The first time you place a story InDesign will ask you to set it. Even if it doesn't ask you, make it part of your routine to set the publication info whenever you create a page.

Please make this a priority when creating pages and save us all some time.

Kristy

Style reminders

Here are a few style errors I've been seeing repeated lately. Most of us probably know these cold, but just to make sure:

1. Abbreviate the direction part of a street name only when it's used with a specific numbered address. (Wrong: "The car crashed on W. Grand Avenue." Right: "The car crashed on West Grand Avenue, then careened out of control for a block until it came to a stop in the front lawn of a home at 1000 N. Thomas St."

2. Put the "only" where it belongs, to be clear about the meaning. (Example: "The man was only walking his dog" could mean that the man was doing nothing else but walking his dog, or that he was walking only the dog he owned and no one else's.) Sorry, I tried to think of a more hilarious example but couldn't. Anyone?

3. People are "who" and inanimate objects are "that," as in, "He was the one who dropped the pizza, " not "He was the one that dropped the pizza."

Hello, anyone?

The posts on this blog are getting fewer and further between (thanks, Kristy, for the most recent), which means we've either addressed every conceivable writing, editing and organizational concern or people are forgetting.

I know some of our more prolific bloggers have had vacation days recently, or they've been cranking hard to cover for others' vacations.

How might we keep this conversation lively each day without relying on the same two or three people? I'd welcome some thoughts. Heck, I'd welcome a reply just to know someone's still reading this blog.

— Mark T.

It happened in Apr.

There are certain words that are never abbreviated in newspaper copy, and yet these same words seem to be creeping into stories, obits and calendars. Here are some of the ones I've noticed lately.

Road, Drive, Court. Lane

Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Texas, , Utah

April (yes, I've seen this as Apr.)

Also, please remember when you've listed an exact street address you can abbreviate Street and Avenue (800 Scott St.) but not without an address (on Scott Street).

Anyone have any others?

--Kristy

Best way to quit ever?

Reporters: When you're doing spellcheck, make sure to keep an eye on what you're correcting.

The first thing that jumped out at me in a Brian Reisinger story today when it moved to the Night Desk was that his byline read "By Brian Resigned."

As he was out on break when I caught this, there was some question about whether we knew for sure if he was coming back.

-Benton...

Simplicity vs. sensitivity

Recently, Rwandan holocaust survivor Immaculée Ilibagiza spoke in Wausau. We had three stories about her. In May 10 and May 18 editions of the Daily Herald, we printed the story with the "é." On May 21, we did not.

Typically, we do not use accent marks in our papers, but they do slip in from time to time. The word "risqué" is used in the May 18 edition of Central Wisconsin Sunday. Sometimes a "fiancée" is mentioned in an obituary.

I think the reason we do not typically use accents is that the Associated Press does not use them. The style guide says: "Do not use any diacritical or accent marks because they cause garble for some users."

So, for the sake of simplicity, should we be consistent with Associated Press style? Or are there times when we should use diacritical marks?

~ Elizabeth

*crickets*

Things are a little quiet right now. Part of it is because we're discussing ways to improve quality control in meetings this week and next week, so things we'd normally bring up here are being brought up there instead.

But rest assured, sooner or later we'll notice some strange idiosyncrasy or something will angry up our blood.

And I like the new site design. It's a little extra work to get stuff on the carousel for the four newspapers at the end of the night, but I think it's worth it.

-Benton...

Unverified

There's a story running in today's Wausau and Point papers that contained an error that is easy to miss but should be watched closely by reporter, editor and copy editor alike.

It's the story of a former SPASH student and Plover native who's been made the manager of the UW student marching band. My original headline read something like "Former SPASH student named UW band manager"; it was the suggested headline by the article's previous editor, and the byline in the budget stated that she was a former SPASH student.

In a moment of dawning comprehension, however (I get many of these after the fact), after I had sent the Wausau page containing the story to the printer, I re-read the story and realized that despite the suggested headline and despite the budget byline, nowhere in the story did it mention that the woman had ever attended SPASH. SPASH was not mentioned at all in the story.

I recalled the page from the printer and re-sent it with a new headline, "Plover native named UW band manager," and use the same headline in Stevens Point. This dimmed some of the appeal of the story for Point (being a former SPASH student being the big draw), but I wasn't willing to write her being a SPASH student into the story, as all I had to go on was a suggested headline and a budget byline, and I wasn't willing to say she was a SPASH student in the headline and then not have it in the story.

This is an easy mistake to make, but one that should be watched out for nonetheless. This article went through at least four people before I realized the mistake (and even then I had to pull back the page from composing). If you want something to be the headline, or there is something so obvious about the story that that's why it's a story, make sure it's actually in the story.

Benton...

Hard time

Something that's been bugging me for a while now:

As near as I can tell, extended supervision is not the same thing as being in prison; it is essentially parole. If someone is sentenced to, say, a year in prison and three years of extended supervision, you would not say he was sentenced to four years imprisonment.

Am I correct?

-Benton

End of the line

Lets talk deadlines.

They are one of the biggest factors we face in this industry, and recently it seems that people are disregarding them either out of ignorance or because of work flow problems. Copy editors plan their whole day around deadlines and making deadline is one of our top priorities (accuracy of course being No. 1).

Our end of the night deadlines are pretty much set. WDH color 11 p.m., black midnight. WRT color 11:30; black 12:30. SPJ color 12:30, Black 1:30, MNH color 1:30, black 2:30. On Saturdays we're expected to have everything out the door by 10 p.m. But what about deadlines during the day? Do we have them? Is everyone aware of when they are?

For example, is there a deadline for Lifestyle content to be handed to the copy desk? Go! content? Editorial content? Everest Herald content? What about dayside budgets? There should be deadlines for all of this and everyone should know when they are.

What about for nightside budgets? Or non-late breaking night-side content to be given to the desk? Obits/records? (For the record, as far as I know, the deadline for records page content to be given to the desk is 5 p.m.)

I don't think any of these have established times, although they should, and I think this is a good place to discuss and decide when these should be. If they do have deadlines, I for one, don't know about them, which indicates that others probably don't either.

Obviously, this is a business that changes minute to minute and bunny plate to bunny plate, and sometimes the best laid plans are changed in an instant. But, I think it behooves us to put some times in place to help make ourselves more efficient on those days when bridges aren't collapsing around us.

So what does everyone think? where exactly is the end of the line?

--Kristy

Style points

One thing that challenges me as a copy editor is knowing when to capitalize letters and when to use lowercase. So I took a quick look through the AP Stylebook searching for examples of capitalized terms, and I thought I would share my favorite entry from each letter. Many of these terms have tripped me up in the past, and some we have forgotten to capitalize in recent stories. Please feel free to add to the list or challenge any of the following examples. Most (but not all) of them are taken from the (slightly outdated) 2005 AP Stylebook.

Assembly - when referring to the state legislative body, with or without the state name

Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science - but the more general bachelor's degree is lowercase

Capitol - when referring to the building in Washington, or in Madison, or in any other state capital

Dumpster - a trademark for a large, metal trash bin

Election Day - only capitalize when referring to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November

Ferris wheel

Global Positioning System - also known (on second reference) as GPS

House - when referring to a specific House of Representatives

Internet

Jet Ski - a registered trademark for a type of personal watercraft (but is there a simpler way to say "personal watercraft"?)

Kitty Litter - brand name. (The AP Stylebook suggests "cat box filler" instead)

Legislature - when referring to a specific state legislature, with or without the state name

Mother Nature

National Guard, National Guardsman - also, capitalize Guard when it stands alone in reference to the National Guard (but lowercase guardsman when it stands alone)

Olympics - in all references to the international athletic contests, even Olympic-size pool

Popsicle - trademark for a brand of flavored ice

Quran - the Muslim holy book

Realtor - AP prefers "real estate agent" unless there is a reason to indicate someone is a member of the National Association of Realtors

Social Security (I also like the Styrofoam entry, but Social Security comes up more often.)

T-shirt

Upper Peninsula

Velcro - AP suggests "fabric fastener" instead of the trademark

Web - Web site, Web page (***In contrast, AP recommends webcam, webcast and webmaster.)

X-ray

Yellow Pages - to describe the business telephone directory

ZIP code - (ZIP stands for Zoning Improvement Plan)

~ Elizabeth

On text tricks in InDesign, more

In an effort to keep everyone updated on the weekly design sessions held on Tuesdays at my desk, I'll post the details of these sessions in this blog.

This week I covered specialized text treatments and transparency in the weekly design session.

If you'd like to convert a hunk of text to outlines (this would be useful if you'd like to fill the text with a photo) select the desired text and click the "Type" menu at the top of the screen and drag to "Create outlines." InDesign will lay the outlined text on top of the text in the text box, grouped. Ungroup the text and drag it into the desired location. You can now treat it as you would a picture box, adding a stroke to the border and placing a photo inside word or words.

Transparency is a very easy to use feature in InDesign. Pull up the Transparency palette and lighten up text, photos or whatever to the desired effect. Good for photo illustrations and collages or to accompany features content. A few minutes of experimenting with it and you'll be hooked, and a pro.

Finally, I covered the Multi-edit function in Publicus. This feature works great for adding content to special sections, or making a change to a group of stories. Click the box at the far right of the screen corresponding to the headlines you'd like to change. Click Multi-Edit above the story list and you can change a story's Theme, Taxonomy, Category, Date and more. Work through the options listed in the menu and click save and close when you are finished.

As always, if you have a suggestion for a design session topic, and we'll cover some online stuff weekly too, let me know.

— Brian

Begging for change

Kim in Stevens Point recently commented that the hospital there is Saint Michael's Hospital. (Ministry's Web site says the same thing.)

Considering that we spell out "Saint" in Saint Clare’s and Saint Joseph’s, is there any reason we should not break with our tradition of abbreviating Saint Michael’s?

~Elizabeth

Who's on first?

A question that came up last week:

When do we use a person's last name (after first reference) and when do we use the first name consistently? I know we use first names for children, but where do we draw the line? Do we refer to teens by first of last names? Does their age matter? Should a 13-year-old be a first but a 17-year-old be a last?

Personally, it bothers me when we use first names after first reference for anyone older than 12, but that's just me. Is there a rule on this that I'm not aware of? (If there is, no one on the desk that night knew the answer).

So tell me, who's a first and who's a last?

--Kristy

Two quick questions of usage

1) Suggested by Mr. Multer and myself - seat belt or seatbelt? I think "seat belt," our style guide doesn't disagree with me, the AP Handbook doesn't disagree with me, but the dictionary goes both ways. When I had a story being proofread tonight that was about seat belts, the copy desk was pretty much divided about whether it's one word or two.

2) When using the word "Earth," you capitalize it when referring to the planet and lower-case it when referring to soil or dirt. But I'm a little unclear about saying things like "saving the Earth" or "protecting the Earth." It looks funny capitalized (the "the" throws me off, mostly), but it also looks funny lower case in that situation. Which is it supposed to be?

-Benton

Pop quiz

I enjoyed this quick refresher on subject-verb agreement, and I hope you will, too.


The quiz was created by journalist Pam Nelson of The News & Observer (in North Carolina).

~ Elizabeth

Easy, breezy, beautiful Sunny Vale Park

The name of Sunny Vale Park on Wausau's west side is indeed three words. (Judging from our archives and from at least one street sign, there has been some confusion.) The park sign says "Sunny Vale Park." Near the main park sign, there is a street sign with an arrow pointing toward "Sunnyvale Softball Complex." However, the sign at the softball complex says "Sunny Vale." Google Maps calls the scenic spot "Sun Valley Park," but I think we can trust the Marathon County Web site's recreation page, which lists "Sunny Vale Park."

(In case you're wondering, the water feels nice on a warm, sunny day, but swim at your own risk. And please keep in mind that "glass pets" are prohibited on the beach.)

On a related note, sometimes I'm tempted to drive through Stevens Point looking for Northpoint Drive and/or North Point Drive, as we have printed each version many times. Can someone in Stevens Point clear up my confusion?

Andrew, a former Furniture & ApplianceMart employee, affirms that ApplianceMart is one word. According to company Web sites, Stora Enso is two words (despite a misleading logo), but NewPage is one word. What other names cause confusion around here?

~ Elizabeth

Recommended podcast

Since we all work on Macs, I encourage you to subscribe to this podcast in iTunes:

Apple Quick Tip of the Week

It is a short (minute or less) weekly session, detailing a Mac shortcut.

What work related podcasts do you listen to? I also enjoy Media Artist Secrets, but it is sporadic and geared towards graphic artists and illustrators.

— Brian

Text wrap, breaking news online training session

InDesign tip:

In yesterday's design session, I touched on some of the finer points of using text wrap. I ran into some trouble wrapping text around a clipped photo and, as I suspected, this was because I was dealing with an .eps file rather than a .tif file. (Seems I've been using the wrong preset in the new RTC setup, delivering .eps files to me, instead of the preferred .tifs.)

Anyhow, the middle, round shaped text wrap option is the one you'll want to use if flowing text around a clipped photo.

One of the other tips regarding text wrap I touched upon was the use of the beloved Apple-B keystroke which brings up a screen on which, among other things, you can click an "ignore text wrap" option (helpful for captions).

Finally, I pointed out that sometimes when columns of text won't line up beneath a photo, it could be a function of a lack of text wrap offset on that photo.

Publicus tip:

Rob Johnson expressed an interest in learning how to post a breaking news story (adding a headline across the very top of our homepage).

The key to adding a story to that position lies in assigning the story a keyword of "WDHBreaking". I reviewed the significance of the different colored boxes that precede a headline in the story list in Publicus.

In review: The red boxes indicate taxonomy and if you scroll over the boxes, the taxonomy will appear in a little box. Green boxes indicate a keyword has been added. This is likely a "WDHBreaking" keyword to place a headline in the uppermost part of our homepage or a "WDHMultimedia" keyword used to place a headline in the Multimedia content well of our homepage. Yellow boxes indicate a story has been added to a special section (a theme has been added to the story).

If you have other Publicus questions that you can't find an answer to, consult this part of our Gannett Intranet.

— Brian

Slugs, anyone? 'E' at a glance

What's with this gun-toting gastropod? It all started here.

Or maybe you missed a chance to discuss what the future holds for copy editors. Check out Liz's post here.

Or want to read something shocking? Or is it electrifying? Either way, click here.

Slugging it out

I've been noticing, for the past few months, that there seems to be some confusion about the correct way to slug stories in NewsEdit.

The correct way is: Publication (WDH, SPJ, WRT, MNH) Date (0426) slug (Biofuel)

Things to keep in mind: If you don't put spaces between the publication and the date, the story will not send to the Web correctly. If you put more than 1 space between publication and date and slug, the story will not send to the Web. If you put a space AFTER the slug, the story will not send to the Web. If you make your slug more than one word using a space between them (i.e. Tax Day or Obit Smith) the story will not send to the Web. The use of commas, quotes, dashes, etc. means the story will not send to the Web. A story NEEDS to be slugged publication, date, slug (one word).

Fact boxes should have identical slug names to the story they go with (including capitalization) and then have _aa after the slug (without a space between).

We spend a lot of time correcting slugs so things can be sent to the Web correctly. If everyone would just slug things correctly, it would save us a lot of time and probably make things easier on reporters, too. Just something to keep in mind.

--Kristy

In the news, about the news

Noted Madison newspaper to print final daily

This story first appeared in our state news section about 2 months ago when the announcement was first made: The Madison Capital Times is going to a purely online format, with two weekly tabloids (one about entertainment, one being a news magazine) still being published.

Being journalists and seeing as how we're focusing so much on our online content ourselves, I'm curious to see what our opinion of this is. It looks like the Capital Times has been hurting for a long time — that current circulation of 17,000 is really low for a city of Madison's size — so it's not a big surprise.

-Benton

Placing your dates and times

I've noticed with increasing frequency one common error that must tediously be changed each night.

It has to do with coming events. I've seen them listed in all manner of ways, but only one is correct and its proper use will save the copy desk precious time.

When listing a coming event in a story, AP style is time, date, then place. For example: The show will be at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the theater.

Time ranges also are often entered incorrectly. If the event involves a time range, that should include the a.m. or p.m. with both times and be separated by the word "to." For example: The meeting will be from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The most common reason for this to be incorrect, I'm guessing, is that these items often come from news releases via e-mail that are just copied and pasted into the NewsEdit file. Many of these releases do not conform to AP style, so a little extra care should be taken after they have been copied.

So in the future, please remember to take a little time to get the date placed properly.

-- Andrew

Diagnosis incorrect

Something I've noticed lately, and which happens to be a pet peeve of mine, is the incorrect use of the word diagnosis. You cannot diagnose a person. You can only diagnose a disease. A doctor can give a diagnosis of, say, mono, but a person cannot be diagnosed with mono. However, a person can receive a diagnosis of mono.

I bring this up for two reasons. 1. to make sure I have it right since I've been changing it on proofs lately. And 2. if I am right, as a friendly reminder to editors and reporters. If I'm not right, someone please let me know asap.

Any other pet peeves anyone has they'd like to bring up?

Killed to death

An item posted on the WDH Web site last night:

Electrocution reported

Wausau Daily Herald

Emergency personnel are responding to a report of an 11-year-old girl who was electrocuted, according to a Marathon County Sheriff’s Department emergency dispatch.

A call came in at about 7:30 p.m. from a residence on Chicago Avenue in Wausau. The girl was breathing and trying but unable to speak, according to the dispatch.

***********

If you're electrocuted, you are not breathing and you are not trying to talk. Sorry, but you are dead.

Same thing if you drown or are hanged.

We meant to write that the girl received an electrical shock.

(I am aware that this Web post did not go through the copy desk before publication. Hoping that reporters and front-line editors read this, too.)

— Mark T.

Relaxing the rules

In today's design session, I discussed several rules that we operate under that can be relaxed a bit when we get stuck with a design problem on a page.

The upper-most page was our best attempt using what we were given for copy (the page only had about 900 words, at least 300 words short of our preferred minimum count) and photos (we were asked to run the photo of the jug large enough that the label was legible, probably two columns).

Working on the page under these rules resulted in a page design that was pancaked (all stories arranged horizontally) and with a pair of photos that ran at nearly the same size.

I took a crack at redesigning the page throwing out these two rules and adjusting another:

1. Pages should be built using the six column grid: The use of "bastard" measure can open up new design avenues and can be explored when working on the six column grid isn't working. The second example from the top using bastard column widths on the top two stories.

2. Photos can be cropped, if necessity dictates: As often as possible, photos should run using the crop provided by the photographer. In the case of this page, one or both of the photos needed to be cropped to create a photo hierarchy on the page. I'm not sure how well the jug would've reproduced at the size I worked with, but I think it would have been ok.

3. A 1A page designer can rearrange the promos to better fit your page design: What made the page above so difficult to design? Two things. A lack of essentially one story and a main photo that is horizontally oriented. When you are dealing with a lack of copy (three stories) on a page and a horizontal photo as main art, pancaking will probably occur. Because you will want to run the horizontal photo as wide as possible, there will be no shoulder story and you'll be forced to play one story above and one below. Switching from skybox promos to a rail would ad a vertical element to the page, see the bottom example.

In an effort to avoid pages that will pose design problems like this one, I am revising my initial 44" request to editors to encourage editors to shoot for four stories at an average length of about 300 words each. Based on conversations with Kerry, I think this will be better than our too much/too little dilemna since the conversion.

What do you think?

— Brian

Old records

Apparently, on Sunday, records from 2007 (I believe) appeared on page 2A. I wasn't here, so I don't know who did this page, but I do know this is an easy error to make (I've done it before myself). The only way to tell that records are old is to look at the time/date stamp on the lower corner of the file. At least, that's the only way I know to tell.

Since this has happened before, it makes sense that we should figure out a way to prevent it from happening again. I've gone through and deleted all the files in public records that are older than a couple of months, but as far as I know, there's no way to make Newsedit delete old files for us.

How to do we make sure the records we are posting are current? We tried a records budget before, but it fell away. (also using a records budget didn't prevent old files from being published in other papers).

So what's the answer? Anyone have any ideas?

--Kristy

Does it work?

How useful is the checklist box that was added to our templates a couple of months ago? It was added to ensure (among other things) that the UPCs on our covers were accurate.

I'll acknowledge that it is a bit of a pain to remember to remove the checklist before a pdf is created (although there may be a way to make it a non-printing item).

So, does it work for us? I ask because if it isn't useful, let's get rid of it. If it isn't being used, let's discuss why. If it isn't being used because it isn't useful, let's replace it with something that does the job.

— Brian

Where are we?

Do we cover central Wisconsin, or Central Wisconsin?

I really am not sure what the answer ought to be, so I thought I would ask the experts to help us come to a decision and be consistent from there. Some editors in the Central Wisconsin Group have been capitalizing the "C" in central, and others (including me) have stuck with the longstanding practice of lowercasing the "c."

The AP Stylebook bounces around the issue under the "directions and regions" listing, but notes, "If in doubt, use lowercase." If you read the entire entry and you are not left "in doubt," you are either a genius or an idiot.

Good arguments can be made for Central as our local style, however. It is a distinct region of the state that we consider to be "our" coverage area, so we should claim it and make it a proper name. Also, it is the formal name of one of our Sunday print editions, "Central Wisconsin Sunday," so should we not give "Central" the same treatment throughout our news content?

Anyway, I'm undecided. What do others think?

— Mark T.

Something funny

I know these posters have been around for a few years, but I stumbled on this link and many of them cracked me up:

http://www.despair.com/viewall.html

I'm especially fond of the dysfunction one.

Enjoy.

— Brian

P.S. Does anybody know how to make a link like the one above a "hot link" in a post?

What do you like?

Document of the Day made its debut last week.

The concept was simple and implemented quickly and, I think, gives us another local item in our paper.

I'm guessing we're not the first paper to use this idea.

Are there other items like Document of the Day or design techniques or content ideas or contests or whatever that you have seen in other papers that would be fun/useful for us to include in our editions?

And on a side note, what papers (outside of the four in our group) do you like to look at?

I'll answer the second item myself. I like the San Antonio Express-News and always get a kick out of some of the Spanish-language tabloids that I find when I'm visiting my in-laws.

— Brian

Apostrophe abuse

Earlier this year, I was reading a major metropolitan paper, and I was shocked to find an apostrophe error on the front page of the life section. ("Glacier's decapitated the city's hilltops.") Apostrophe abuse doesn't seem to be a common problem among professional reporters and copy editors, but sometimes we slip.

For example, the difference between it's and its seems so minor that an error can be easy to create or overlook if we're not paying close attention. Another common apostrophe mistake (and one that I've seen in a local paper recently) is the tendency to add an apostrophe when adding an s to make a proper noun plural. (Mr. and Mrs. Wilson and their son Jacob = the Wilsons, not the Wilson's, right?)

I think when we were in elementary school, our apostrophe use probably was perfect. But after that, when we were forced to move at a quicker pace, we became a little less careful. In fact, apostrophe abuse has become so rampant that it can be amusing and confusing. Check out an entire site dedicated to documenting the problem.

Look around you, and I feel confident you will spot an apostrophe error in the next couple of days. (I only hope it's not in a newspaper.) Could any punctuation mark be more abused? With an increased apostrophe awareness, I hope we can eliminate errors.

~ Elizabeth