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