Lake DuBay

From Mark T:

Here it is said, and from henceforth it shall be:

Lake DuBay (DuBay is one word, Lake first, capital B).

Source: Marathon County Historical Society website, confirmed by historian Gary Gisselman via phone.

Background: Lake DuBay is named after John Baptiste DuBay, a fascinating character who is now buried in the town of Knowlton.

Read more here

K-tech or K-Tech

Mark Treinen came to me with a question: Is the company's name K-Tech or K-tech? So I checked. It turns out we have no consistency. Even within a single story we switch from K-tech to K-Tech and back again. According to the company Web site, it's "K-tech", so let's use that in the future.

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