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| Monday 5th November 2001 Information | Powered by Yeast Logic |
The Rockall Times' Essential Style GuideUseful pointers for proto-contributors
by De Management
This is the style guide for The Rockall Times. You don't have to follow it, but then we don't have to post your story. It's a symbiosis thing. Enjoy and then prosper. Oh, we also hope to add and possibly change this guide as and when the needs arises. For example if someone finds a new and entertaining way to call a politician a liar or a TV celebrity a twat. What the hell do we need a style guide for?So that while everyone will not write in the same way, The Rockall Times will at least have some kind of uniformity to it. Otherwise it'll be more of a random newsgroup, no sense of focus or common thread. You say this might not be a bad idea – we say it is. Of course the other reason is that the vast majority of people make big grammatical errors and spelling mistakes all the time. That's fine if you are just writing a letter to your mate but it would drive you nuts if you read other people's mistakes all the time. Because we are going to have to make sure that anything that goes up on the site conforms to a common thread anyway, this style guide is to get you as far as possible to where we are so we don't have to waste endless hours making tiny little changes. You may not care [bastards] but then you should because if it takes too much effort, we'll just delete the beautifully crafted comic masterpiece that you've spent ages putting together. We have kept the grammar and spelling down to the most basic aspects in the vain hope you might actually read them. The rest of it concerns how we set about things at The Rockall Times. It does have a huge amount of flexibility in it in terms of expression, choice of words and phrases etc but there are some elements that simply help constrain expansive ideas into a recognised format – greatly increasing the chances of it being fully understood. And, of course, providing The Rockall Times with a "character". CONTENTSThis style guide consists of four basic elements.
WHAT FORMAT WE WANT STORIES IN AND HOW TO BE FUNNYThe Rockall Times is an online newspaper and as such the vast majority of pieces will be in a news format. By news format, we mean:
If you want to really help us out, you can send your story in the following format: SECTION: [choose which section it is best suited for (and, no, not "Front Page")] Now, we are not going to be anywhere as near as rigid as the printed press, plus the fact that a story doesn't have to be of a certain length online provides intrinsic freedom. However, stories will have to remain snappy – no long self-involved essays. Seeing as we are set up to provide a humorous account of the news or of society in general, these rules are further relaxed as a funny line is a funny line. Again though, any piece will have to fit into the format of a news story – the most salient point first, back up from next most relevant fact and so on. Just read a variety of stories already on the site and you'll get a general idea. It is a truism unfortunately that the less constrained writing is, the harder it is to write. A news story can afford to bore you after the third paragraph because the main points have already been covered. Your job though is to keep the reader reading hopefully until the end of the piece. Where you could finish off with a comic flourish. There's nothing more frustrating that a good comic idea that runs out of steam half way through. Don't worry about headlines and subheads – unless you want to. Headlines are probably the most important aspect of an online newspaper because people have to click it so we will tend to come up with what we reckon is the best, funniest and most eye-catching headline we can. If yours is better though it will go up in its place. Puns are good. No subject is out of bounds. If it is based on real news though it has to be timely – no witty satires on the Boer War please. Apart from that – enjoy. How to send it to usWell, email it to us here. As to what format to send it in: Please send your masterpiece as a simple text file or an oldish Word format i.e. not Word XP, 2000. Attach it to an email – don't cut and paste it into the body of the email text. Also, please no double spaces. Ever. Use a spelling guide for chrissakeEvery bit of word processing software has a pretty good spellcheck in it these days. Please, for god's sake use it before you send anything to us. We can only suggest that if you are going to send us something that you write it in Word or somesuch program and not straight into email or simple text. Pictures
We'd be delighted to receive pics to run with a story. Especially if they are relevant and/or funny. And even more so if you've knocked them up yourself. If they are rubbish though, we won't use them. Please send them as separate files — don't embed them in a Word document. Note that our maximum column width is 468 pixels. Don't send us photos bigger than that. Photos can be either gifs or jpegs. They should not have any border, and captions should be Arial, plain and centered. HTMLWe will not be happy if you put something in a story that needs HTML but haven't bothered to put the HTML in the document. But don't check out our source code and then put the tags on body copy — you're wasting your time and ours (if you don't know what this means, you're doing fine as you are). Basic HTML tags are fitted in between the pointy brackets < >. Each one is started by putting whatever code there is in between the opening and closing brackets. Then, when you want that command to end, you do the same only view a slash (/) in front. Simple tags are: <strong>for bold</strong>, <em>for italics</em> and <cite>for books, newspapers, etc</cite>. You won't need much else, but do use foreign accented characters where required, i.e. é = é. We also use a long dash — rather than short dashes in our copy. The HTML for this is —. If you want to put this in, it will save us the trouble. A full list of these is available here. To link to something you use HREF in this format: <a href="http://theaddress" target="_new">The text that is clicked to link to the site</a> WHAT IS FUNNY?Question: Qui est ce qui est dure quand sa rentre qui est ce qui est mou quand sa sort pis qui a la guedille au nez? Answer: Un biscuit tremper dans le lait. Now that is funny to a Frenchman. Well not that funny but it'll probably elicit a smile or small chuckle from him. But even if you understood French (we're presuming you're not French) then you wouldn't find it as funny as he does. Here's what a dictionary has to say about humour. "Humour: noun. Ability to say or perceive things that are amusing; situations, speech, or writings that are humorous; state of mind, mood; Obs fluid in the body. verb. Be kind or indulgent to." It's a lot easier to say what isn't funny than what is. However, that decision is also based on who the judges are, where they come from, where they've been and whether they had a sexy English teacher at the age of 14. What's our point? That funniness is largely perceptual. If you want to get something on The Rockall Times, we need to find it funny. It is a British site and we are British, so there is an immediate bias. Nothing we can do about it. Perhaps we should say what we think is NOT funny:
On the other hand, what we do find funny is:
And if that's of any help whatsoever, you're a better man (or woman) than we are. THINGS TO BEAR IN MIND WHEN WRITING A STORYThat we are BritishCause we are. We also consider Rockall as an ideal filter through which to mock our own culture – however to do that, any story will need to bear that culture in mind in the first place. Does that make sense or have these mushrooms kicked in? As such, if you aren't British try to see it from the perspective of a Briton. There should be enough comic material for you just doing that. Main news stories will probably already be coveredA member of the government is found trussed up in women's underwear with a boy scout and his mother. Believe us, we will already be there. We may even knock up a Times special and draw connections with all sorts of other stupid things just for kicks. And not forgetting the mocked-up photos. Point is: think a little leftfield if you would. Funny is one thing – funny and devastatingly original and bizarre is quite another. Use excessive flattery in preference to outright abuse.If you use strong words continually, people immediately connect you with crazy people. And they don't listen to crazy people [because they talk too much sense]. So, for example, if you were to write: "Talentess evil anorexic ginga bitch Geri Halliwell today had her picture taken..", most people would switch off. Write something along the lines off: "Highly talented and modest Sonja-replacement Geri Halliwell today had her picture taken...", then not only would you hold a reader's intention but bizarrely they would think you more intelligent as well. The other great advantage to this approach is that we don't have our arses sued. We're undecided as to whether this nice-for-nasty approach works the other way round. Fictional spokespeopleAt some point you will be tempted to introduce a fictional spokesperson. Which is fine. Except you will most likely come up with a ridiculous fake name that no matter how funny you think it is actually isn't funny at all. Coming up with a funny name is the writing equivalent of drawing a face – you either have a gift for it or have to study how's it done. But don't worry – just call them "an expert", a spokesman or spokeswoman (but not spokesperson like we've used above). Plus there is also fun to be had with "people close to sources". How close? Six feet? Could they hear from there or are they just making it up? That's for you to decide. SexSome very strict guidelines on kiss-and-tell stories. Whoever is involved they have to:
People in generalPeople in general will need to find themselves attached to an adjective which immediately throws bias into the story. If you can condense an entire human and the story into one adjective, excellent. You may well need two. Three is pushing it. For example: hero Dave Franklin, tart Denise Robertson, rotund phone operator Jeff Marshall etc. A meandering description, like "Highly talented and modest Sonja-replacement Geri Halliwell" (above) is to be used rarely. Also, comedy changes in someone's name is fine – important in fact with politicians – but will most likely need to be correct when written the first time. The cost of the storyIt doesn't matter what the story is covering, there is always some way of putting a figure on it. Quite why the media seems to think that we want to know exactly how much every fuc*king thing costs, we don't know. And so, if you feel like costing the story, please feel free – the more ridiculous the better. Example: "Daft biddie Agnes Rutherford was surprised to find her long-lost dog Mufty turn up at her house in Greensford yesterday – 64 years after she first lost her. Mufty was Agnes' childhood pet, but ran away in 1943 after the silly bitch (Agnes) forgot to close the gate to her back garden. "The dog was dead but beautifully stuffed on a mahogany display plate with a simple engraving: 'That'll teach you to piss on my petunias'. Closer inspection of the hair-based lifeform revealed that Mufty had been killed by lethal injection some time in April 1943 – the same time as Agnes lost her. "Experts have put the cost of stuffing the dog at £195 + VAT. Had Mufty not been murdered, it could have expected – at today's prices – to have cost £864 over the course of its lifetime. Agnes is estimated to have spent 10d 5s on the dog in the three years it was alive." You get the idea. BonoThrough his position of singer in a band, Bono is uniquely placed to understand and comment on just about any subject that drifts briefly into his mind – from global politics to the price of milk. That he has lived in a bubble for almost his entire life and knows almost nothing about anything (and that his lyrics have actually got worse over time), will not stop him from spouting his rubbish at any media outlet. As such, if an independent, ignorant and cliché-ridden viewpoint is what you need to complete an article, our first choice would be Bono. If Bono is on holiday, a vacuous self-publicising rich bitch in her twenties – Tara Palmer, Victoria T etc – will do. Or that ponce AA Gill. Or someone along those lines. IrreveranceIf you would, please. Swear wordsVery strict rules on this. Absolutely no mention of any grade-A swear words unless the appropriate asterisks have been included. This stands for:
See the spelling guide below for more info and stuff on black rap slang. GRAMMAR AND SPELLINGSpeech marksVery simple. Double speechmarks first off. Then single speechmarks within them. For example: Marge said: "I saw a man with 'Get out my bush' round his neck yesterday." Now, if the quote makes up the vast majority of the sentence then the speechmarks close after the full-stop (period, for our American readers). If not, they go before the full-stop. There's a bit more to them, but it just gets tedious. Colons, semi-colons, dashes etcUse a colon ":" for an important stop in a sentence but one in which whatever comes after is directly relevant. Examples: speech – "Mavis said: "Well I never." Or lists – "And this includes: Bob, Rob, Sue and Jim. Semi-colons. Use when breaking up a long sentence into several important but connected points. Dashes. Use as the means by which you go off on a tangent for a brief while. Close it with another dash. Italics, Bold, Underline etc etcUse Italics to draw emphasis to a word in the middle of a sentence. And for any foreign words not in common usage in English. Also use it for names of films, books, publications. Use Bold only to break up a story. Like in a crosshead if the story is long. Don't use underline. Unless you can think of a really good reason why you should. BracketsUse curly brackets "( and )" for some form of explanation in the middle of a sentence. Using square brackets "[ and ]" from comments coming from an outside source to the story i.e. pretending that someone else has added to your story after you've written it. NumbersThe numbers one to nine are to be written out but anything 10 and above i.e 4,302 are to written as numbers. The exceptions to this are:
You've got us on the billion thing. In the UK it used to be that a billion was a million million. Thanks to global capitalism but mostly due to inflation, a billion is now recognised as a thousand million. A trillion is a million million. Capital LettersFailure to include capital letters in an email is no problem – except if that email is coming to us and is meant to be a story for our consideration. If writing a story – with paragraphs and everything – not putting in capital letters is a royal pain in the arse and makes it very hard to read. That is why every new sentence has to begin with a capital letter. So that you know the point wasn't just a mistake but a full-stop and a new sentence has begun. Also, capitalise companies, even Microsoft. All the time. And people's names. And countries, regions, rivers, cities and towns. AmericanismsNo American spellings. Yes, yes, we know that American is closer to the original English than English is but we don't give a shi*t. This means that you are going to have to put in "u"s. Ha! So humor is spelt properly as humour, color is colour (except of course in HTML tags) and so on. Same goes for "z"s. Horrible. We want "s". For example organise not organize, theorise not theorize. And absolutely no daft super-long "isations" tacked on to simple words when there is another perfectly good word that is eight letters shorter. Exceptions are of course when quoting from George W Bush or mocking someone's speech – the same thing in this case. For example: ruggedisation is not a word we would wish on our worst enemy. Same goes with trying to get away with adding "re" or "de" to any word that comes along to suggest that it has either been repeated or removed. Orrible. Never ever use the word burglarise. Ever. Another very American trait is to put loads and loads of commas everywhere, slowing the reading down to an unbearably slow speed. They're just not needed. Only put a comma in when you need to, to break up a sentence. Each comma should really read as an intake of breath. SlangThe same sentiment goes with slang. The Rockall Times is a British site and as such will be swung in a completely and unfair bias towards British modes of speaking and the slang used. Other countries' slang is accepted if it's a) immediately recognised in the UK or b) important to the story and explained at some point. We'll do a British slang guide further down. PhrasesFunny things phrases. At the same time wonderful while being completely ludicrous – which is why we like them so much. Everyone within a certain geographical area will know exactly what a particular string of words means, while that string intrinsically makes no sense at all. For example: Different kettle of fish. What's all that about? Where was the first kettle? Why do they need two kettles? What are they doing with kettles full of fish anyway and why is differential kettle recognition such a valid way of drawing a distinction? The downside to the esoteric jumble of words that is a phrase is that since they are such a mark of a culture and so intangible at the same time, a huge number of people learn them wrongly, only to be embarrassed by some smartarse know-it-all at a dinner party 20 years later. For example: Common or garden, No holds barred. Hide nor hair. Please spell them right.ApostrophesIt's very simple but most of us frequently make the same apostrophe mistake time and time again. Every time the apostrophe is wrong, it causes a momentary break in concentration and understanding of a sentence (a bad thing). All you need to remember is that the apostrophe (') is used if there are letters missing. So with the most common mistake "it is" becomes "it's". Its without the apostrophe means "belonging to it". Which brings us onto the second main problem – apostrophes denoting something belonging to someone. Peter's, for example. However, if belonging to a group of people, you'll often have to out it at the very end of the word, like citizens', sardines'. If the word itself is a plural word like women, then it's treated the same as if it were singular – i.e women's. AcronymsAvoid as much as possible. They are simply the manifestation of the modern obsession with computer-like efficiency in our lives. They are also directly to blame for a good percentage of suicides in the 29-39 age group. If you do have to use one and it isn't immediately obvious what the acronym stands for, write it out first time, add the acronym in brackets after it and then use the acronym from that point on. Feel free to find various ways of mocking this madness of turning words in unreadable letters. Or of organisation called something a bit daft so that the acronym can be pronounced. Internet terminologyAssume a general level of Internet language understanding. Emoticons like smileys etc are fine fine fine. Basic commands are fine. Things used all over the Internet – like streaming video – are fine. Get outside this and start thinking or explaining the terms of just not using them at all. SMS and IRC language like wtf (what the fuc*k), btw (by the way) are okay. But only the very well-known ones. The rest are BANNED. Broahahahahahaha (incidentally, "Broahahahahahaha" is the best way of representing power-crazed maniacal laughing). Annoying hacker/script kiddie/Netizen (a banned term btw) gibberish like using numbers instead of letters, or k instead of c etc are only to be used if taking the piss out of someone. WORDSHere is a very short list of important words and how to handle them:
BRITISH GUIDE TO SLANG AND OUR FAVOURITE BITS OF ITBritish slang comes secondly only to Australian slang. We love slang – but not because it is slang but because the words themselves are so bloody good. Some are already above, we'll put some others that we are likely to use frequently – and would like you to enjoy too – below:
Remember that all the above is just a guide and will be completely waived if something is mind-bendingly funny. If you pull that off, we're all gonna be millionaires. |
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