Walmart? Wal-Mart?

Here is something from a CNBC web post about Wal-Mart versus Walmart:

What's in a name? Apparently, a lot of complications.

Wal-Mart employees are known for spelling out the company's name in a famous cheer: "Give me a W! Give me an A! Give me an L? Give me a squiggly! M-A-R-T!"

Well, forget the "squiggly".

There's a new rule book of sorts on how to spell the name of the world's largest retailer. Media outlets are being notified by 'Walmart' (Wal-Mart? Wal*Mart?) via an editor's note at the end of news releases.

"Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the legal trade name of the corporation," the note says. "The name 'Walmart,' expressed as one word and without punctuation, is a trademark of the company and is used analogously to describe the company and its stores. Use the trade name when it is necessary to identify the legal entity, such as when reporting financial results, litigation or corporate governance."

Um, what?

Gallery Q or Q Gallery

Watch out when you receive a story about the Gallery Q Artists Cooperative in Stevens Point. Whoever submits the copy always gets the name of the gallery wrong.

Area codes

A story on the Daily Herald Web site says state telecommuniation regulators want phone customers in the 715 area code to begin dialing the area code for all local calls because of the upcoming 534 area code overlay. When should our four newspapers start including the 715 area code for all phone numbers listed in our stories?

PBS

Just a friendly reminder that PBS stands for Public Broadcasting Service. A story I edited today referred to PBS as Public Broadcasting System.
Which reminds me, CBS used to stand for Columbia Broadcasting System. It now just stands for CBS.

It's not easy being "green"

Going "green" is such a hot topic lately: green building, green energy, green jobs. Often in headlines and on first reference, we put quotation marks around the word "green." But I don't think we're 100 percent consistent. So perhaps we need a ruling on how this should be done. Is it necessary and beneficial to use quotation marks around the word "green" in headlines and on first reference?

I searched AP's Ask the Editor archive, and I found this: "AP doesn't put green in quotes on the assumption that it has become virtually a synonym for environmentally friendly policies."

Is there any reason not to follow the AP approach?

-Elizabeth

Station ID

While editing a story, Liz and I discussed how to identify the WSAW weather channel. The story identified it as channel 7.3. Since many of the television sets I see label it with a hyphen, we decided to identify it as 7-3.

Hossein in the membrane

I've noticed lately a recurring problem with Associated Press photos of the protests in Iran, in that the name of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has been repeatedly misspelled "Hossien" in the cutlines on DC 5.  It's not the fault of any of our copy editors here, but it's something we need to be vigilant for when reading stories about the situation in Iran.  It's "Hossein" just like Saddam Hussein, just with an O, not a U.

Also, apparently I've read enough Iran stories now to recognize Mousavi's full name on sight.