Spring 2006 Copy Workshop Greg Hanneman February 23, 2006 1 Dots - PDF document

Spring 2006 Copy Workshop Greg Hanneman February 23, 2006 1 Dots and Dashes 1.1 Hyphens The Tartan likes hyphens for compound adjectives. We use more hyphens that most current newspapers and magazines. Second-place finishers included junior Nick Bannister in the 55-meter dash. Even really long compounds get hyphenated. In “hierarchical” constructions, one of the hyphens turns into an en dash. a use-it-or-lose-it budget the student-activity-fee–funded radio station Notice the difference in usage, and therefore in hyphenation, between the following: The phone has a built-in function. The function is built in on most models. 1.2 En Dashes This medium-length dash is used between numbers or numerical elements. The Tartans went on a 12–3 run to close the gap to 35–34. See pages B3–B6. It is also the separator between a Congressman’s political party and the state he or she represents. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D–Ohio) and Sen. John Kerry (D–Mass.) ran in the primaries in 2004. You can type an en dash with Option-dash on a Mac. On a Windows machine, it’s Control plus the minus sign on the keypad. 1.3 Em Dashes Long dashes are used in The Tartan like you usually see them in prose. We do, however, put spaces on each side of the dash. One use is to mark off appositives that need something stronger than commas; they also mark off complicated appositivies that already have commas in them. Matta’s shot — his first of nine in the half — gave the Tartans the lead. Em dashes are also used to incidate a sudden break or turn in the sentence. In some cases, the dash can be replaced with a colon or semicolon. 1

Carbon nanotubes are only a few nanometers wide — they span the width of a molecule of DNA. To type an em dash on a Mac, use Shift-Option-dash. On Windows, type Control, Alt, and the minus sign on the keypad. 2 Count ’Em Up 2.1 Base Rules for Numbers Single-digit numbers are spelled out in words. There were four teams at the meet. Numbers 10 and above are written in figures. There were 10 players on each side. Four-digit numbers have no comma; this is a departure from AP style. A crowd of 4266 watched the game. We do use commas for five digits and above. The population of my hometown in northeastern Ohio is 17,006. The same rules apply to ordinals and before the word “percent.” The Tartan’s “percent” rule is another deviation from AP style. He gave presentations at the ninth and 17th annual conferences. Tuition increased by eight percent. Textbook prices increased by 12 percent. 2.2 Deviant Cases After a dollar sign, always use figures, even for single-digit numbers. The project cost $5 million. Admission for students is $4. Ages also use figures: Andrew Hahn, 7, of Shadyside, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. But note: Andrew Hahn is seven years old. Figures are also used for scores — again, including when all the numbers are single digits. After the seventh inning, the score was 5–2 in favor of the Tartans. 2.3 At the Beginning of a Sentence We can’t start a sentence or a headline with figures. Sentence-initial numbers must be spelled out, but they are frequently awkward to read. Nine hundred and eighty-six students were admitted in 2001. 2

One fix is to round off the number and introduce an approximation word. In this case, the sentence loses a bit of information. Nearly 1000 students were admitted in 2001. The best option is to completely re-cast the sentence. In the current example, this also has the benefit of replacing passive with active voice, which some editors prefer. The university admitted 986 students in 2001. 3 Words, Words, Words 3.1 Simplicity “I just love my job,” she smiled. How do you smile a statement? “I just love my job,” she exclaimed. This is more technically correct, but you should avoid fancy words in newspaper writing. There’s an inter- esting difference between writing you might do for your English class and writing you do for The Tartan. Though you might be able to score points in creative writing for a large vocabulary and complex sentence structure, in news writing the emphasis is on being understood. Some people have suggested that a news- paper should be written at a seventh-grade reading level. That would be rather out of place on a college campus, but the point remains: Keep the vocabulary simple and the sentences clear. “I just love my job,” she says. This gives the impression that your interviewee goes around repeatedly saying she loves her job, like it’s a motto or tagline. That’s probably not what you wanted to say. Even in Pillbox, avoid the present tense for speech tags except for general-purpose statements like “feels” or “believes.” “I just love my job,” she said. Much better! You don’t want to draw attention to your speech tags; the quote is the important part. “Said” is short and unobtrusive, allowing your readers to quickly move on to the next sentence in your artcle. If you conduct an interview over e-mail, your source didn’t technically say anything, so the use of “said” would be incorrect. You could use “stated,” but be aware that this introduces a somewhat formal feel into your writing and makes your quotes sound more like a transcript. A better choice might be “wrote in an e-mail,” which is clear and precise. 3.2 Wordiness Here’s an actual example from The Tartan: The chemicals accumulate in your brain after you eat a big meal and cause you to get the feeling of being full. This sentence has 22 words — which isn’t overly long — but the syntax tree of the verb phrase has 26 nodes. It’s really complicated and difficult to read. Trim the fat: The chemicals accumulate in your brain after you eat a big meal and cause you to feel full. It’s only four words shorter, but the verb phrase’s syntax tree has 14 nodes — about half as many as before. This is much clearer, and it lets you use more of your character count on content instead of redundancy. 3

3.3 Editoralizing Editorializing is inserting your own opinions into a non-Forum article, and should always be avoided. Overt editorializing is easy to catch; just cut it out and use your character count for real content. The incredible research being done at the Language Technologies Institute is absolutely mind-boggling! Be careful about the words you use when describing something. Replace loaded adjectives with more neutral words. A huge crowd came to Breed Hall on Thursday to watch one of the year’s most exciting presentations. 4 Pushing Quotes Around 4.1 Smooth Speech Tags Readability and flow are also major copy editing concerns, especially when it comes down to introducing and working with quotes. It’s important that you integrate quotes into your article as smoothly as possible. According to Biegler, “He came to visit over the summer and told me about his work.” The introduction of this quote is a little clunky. “According to” is better for simple factual sentences that don’t have quotes. As in many sentences, the best fix for this one is to use the default speech tag: “He came to visit over the summer and told me about his work,” Biegler said. Another example of awkward wording: Critics say that the film does not present a real alternative because, according to Whitty, “How far off is Willmott’s scenario anyway?” The trouble is that the construction “because” expects a declarative statement or noun phrase (compare with “because, according to Whitty, Spike Lee is an awful director”), but in this sentence it gets a quoted question. Again, a standard fix works: Critics say that the film does not present a real alternative. “How far off is Willmott’s scenario anyway,” Whitty asked. 4.2 Who’s Speaking, Please? “Instead of people learning to work around a disability and never regaining control, this device will help them to regain functionality. Their recovery would be sped up by a safe, passive robot that could guide them,” Wegh said. As you read this quote, you have no idea who’s speaking and why he or she is important. Is it a doctor? A patient? The inventor of the device? A possible solution is to break the quote in half and put the speech tag in the middle — this is often helpful in long quotations. “Instead of people learning to work around a disability and never regaining control, this device will help them to regain functionality,” Wegh said. “Their recovery would be sped up by a safe, passive robot that could guide them.” The first part of the quote is still pretty long, so in an article that quotes many different sources this fix may not have been enough. Another idea is to give the purpose or context of the quote with a short introductory sentence. 4