Content
Digital Journal‘s stories touch on various topics, from current social trends to the emerging innovators in business, digital culture, film, photography, music and politics. Digital Journal doesn’t shy away from hard-hitting issues about how everything influences our private and professional lives.
What do Cirque du Soleil, online poker, genetically-modified food and Microsoft all have in common? TDigital Journal pulls these diverse subjects together, in the same way that life on the Internet has broadened into a highly inclusive web of interests, relationships and viewpoints.
Below are some guidelines for Digital Journal writers who are curious about our editorial standards.
Grammar and Punctuation:
- Always insert a single space after a period, comma or other punctuation mark. No double spaces.
- For the sake of consistency, we generally capitalize the first letter after a colon if it begins a complete sentence. Sentence fragments and lists may begin with lowercase. These rules should be altered only for the sake of impact.
- Use a long m-dash with a space before and after to indicate pauses, not just a bunch of hyphens — MS Word allows you to make a shortcut on your keyboard, the default being Ctrl + Alt + – (on the numeric keypad).
- There is no such thing as a ‘single-quote’ quotation, unless it’s within another quotation or in a headline.
- Commas and periods always go within the quotation marks. Familiarize yourself with basic grammar rules if you’re rusty; a good, free online source is englishplus.com.
- Lists are done like this: cats, dogs and horses. You may use a comma before the final “and” or “or” if it introduces a new clause. “Cats, dogs, and he also mentioned civets.” Of course, we allow exceptions for the sake of cadence.
- Emphasize words with italics (use sparingly and make sure not to italicize punctuation, except in special circumstances like long quotes). Avoid ALL CAPS, bold, underline or other quirky Internet-era forms of **eXcl@mAt!0n**.
- Titles of movies, games, websites, etc. must be italicized. Songs, article titles and nicknames are in quotes.
- Refer to The Canadian Press Stylebook for any other inquiries; if that doesn’t cover it, use the APA Publication Manual or Chicago Manual of Style.
Spelling:
- We like to adopt compound (unhyphenated) technological terms as early as possible, with some exceptions: We say cellphones, real-time chatting (but in real time), website (but Web browser), email, Internet.
- You might want to look through digitaljournal.com‘s searchable database, especially stories originally published in the magazine, for previous examples.
- Refer to CP Caps and Spelling for other controversial terms.
- Always use Canadian spelling. But you would still write proper nouns with original spelling, such as In Living Colour.
- We also use: MP3, 80GB hard drive, 333 MHz, 32-bit processor, U.S. government, USA, 9/11, 3D, 176 x 144-pixel display, CD-R, 4.4x zoom.
- It’s per cent, but percentage. Never %.
- Unless it’s an extremely common acronym, introduce the full term at first and put the acronym in brackets, e.g., Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA).
- Finally, run a spell check (and a grammar check, if you have one). They’re often quite useful. You can change Word’s default language to Canadian English by going into Tools > Language > Set Language. If you’re opening a document that was saved in American English, you will have to change this setting each time.
Numbers:
- Write out “one” through “nine.” You may say “one-tenth” if it works for you. Thousands are written as 1,000.
- Dates are written like Jan. 16, 2006, but you should say “in late January.”
- Note: It’s eighties, 1980s, ’80s.
Style:
- We practice solid journalistic principles at Digital Journal. Write to intrigue and inform your reader. Let your unique voice be heard, without resorting to empty scraps of “colour.” Also, there’s nothing wrong with using a thesaurus, but make sure the replacement word is one you’ve heard of before.
- Sometimes you are writing to promote or bring awareness to a product, service or company (Google, for example). This is a necessary part of the business. You can be critical, as long as you’re fair. At the same time, try not to sound too breathless, forceful or overly enthusiastic. Write conversationally and casually.
- Contractions are fine if they sound natural, but don’t overdo it.
- Avoid hollow corporate-speak and technical jargon, unless it is somehow integral to your piece. Strive for clarity. And avoid clichés like the plague.
