Welcome to the Global Voices style guide. This is a reference document for all GV authors, translators, sub-editors and editors to help the community ensure high editorial standards across the entire GV site.

Introduction

This guide is a live document and provides a set of recommendations to ensure that GV content is consistent and clear for our readers and translators.

Points to consider,

Consistently high editorial standards adds credibility to our content.
Many in our audience are reading content that is not their primary language.
Consistency allows our Lingua team to translate posts into other languages seamlessly.

GV content is created, edited and published within the GV WordPress Content Management System - referred to as the 'system' from now on.

There are two types of GV content: posts and quick reads. This guide is written for posts but should be useful for quick reads as well.

News Writing

We try to ensure that GV posts meet professional news writing standards. Here are some tips:

Inverted Pyramid

Attempt to answer the five Ws - who, what, when, where and why - and sometimes even the how in the beginning of the story. In this structure, called the "inverted pyramid", the essential and most interesting elements of a story are put at the beginning. Supporting information follows in subsequent paragraphs in order of diminishing importance.

Concise Sentences

Try to keep paragraphs between one to three concise sentences.

If you are unsure about sentence length, try to say the sentence out loud at a relaxed pace in a single breath. If you can't finish the sentence easily, you may want to break it up into two or more different sentences. Remember, we want to feed the story to the reader in short, digestible bites. Give the reader too much information, and he or she will choke.

Active Voice

Most of the time, it is better to use active voice instead of passive voice in your writing. In this way, we keep people as the focus of our posts, and not the events that happen around them.

EXAMPLE: The meeting was protested by angry residents. This is passive. The meeting is the subject of the sentence instead of the protesters.

Angry residents protested the meeting. This is active. The protesters are the subject.

One important exception to this rule is when writing a lead involving legal processes, injuries, or death. In these cases, sometimes we prefer passive voice in order to keep a person as the focus of the lead.

EXAMPLE: National police arrested a prominent blogger known for his ruthless exposés of government waste on charges of tax fraud. Not bad, but police share the spotlight with the blogger in this lead.

A prominent blogger known for his ruthless exposés of government waste was arrested on charges of tax fraud. The blogger is now the sole focus of the lead.

It all depends on who should be the main focus of a lead. For more information, check out this great New York Times Learning Network Article on leads as well as this fun little column from the Christian Science Monitor.

Avoid Jargon

News style is obvious and precise. For our content to be easily understandable to our global audiences it must be jargon-free. All specialized language or slang should be explained.

Sourcing

We use links and quotes from social, citizen and local media to support our writing.

Whenever you quote, blockquote or reference a blog or media channel in your post, provide a direct hyperlink to the source.

Try to only hyperlink a few words - don't hyperlink whole sentences of text.

Story Structure

The standard GV post contains the following elements: headline, lead, context, citizen or social media commentary, photo and/or video.

We also do basic photo posts, interviews, video posts and podcasts; these stories always have a headline, lead and context.

Word Limit

To save time for readers, authors, editors and translators, the recommended length for posts is 500 - 1000 words.

There can be exceptions depending on the story; speak to your editor if you would like to write a longer post. (Total number of words in a post is displayed at the bottom of the editing field in the system.)

Headlines

Post headlines aim to provide an overall idea of each post as a whole. They should include key elements of the story: place, subject and verb.

Headlines should be catchy and interesting, but also as relevant and descriptive as possible. Good headlines are never dull, they are often emotional and create a vivid mental picture of the story.

GV headlines not only appear on various GV sites, they also feed automatically to our Twitter accounts. Headlines should never exceed 8-10 words or they will be too long to appear in full on Twitter feeds or RSS feeds in sidebars of other websites.

Please be aware that editors may change headlines to ensure they are clear to anyone reading anywhere. It is helpful to discuss headlines with your editor if you want, to get the very best one possible.

Headline Formatting

Make headlines easy to understand if the reader is not familiar with topic or location in question. For example:

Boycott of Puerto Rico's Popular TV Show “La Comay”
“La Comay” Boycott in Puerto Rico

Worldwide Protests for Brazil's Indigenous Guarani-Kaiowá
Worldwide Protests for Guarani-Kaiowá

Capitalise main words (not ‘small’ words such as ‘in’, ‘or’, ‘on’, and use single quote marks where necessary, double for quotes:

Iran: The Art and Design of the ‘Green Movement'

Capitalise the second main word in any hyphenated words:

Peru: What They Didn't Tell You About Afro-Peruvians
Macedonia: Decades-Old International Poetry Festival in Focus

Stress any exclusive multimedia content story:

PHOTOS: Pakistan's Countrywide Shia Solidarity Protests End Peacefully
Japan: Photos of Mass Anti-Nuclear Protest

Tips for Crafting Headlines

Tip 1: Headlines should be about the ‘news’, not about the conversation

Everything on GV is about citizen media conversations, so it makes sense that the headline should simply address the event or occurrence or 'news' that the conversation is about. Otherwise we end up with many headlines that have: Netizens Respond, Opinions from Bloggers, Blogosphere is Divided on etc. One day we could end up with 'Tweeps Debate Netizen Response to Blogosphere!'

Tip 2: Headlines should relate to story essence in a few words

Ask yourself: What is the primary question addressed by the story? Is it a who, what, when, where, why, or a how? Focus on that element in your headline. Is it a profile of a person? That’s a who story. Or is it breaking news? That’s probably a what story. If it’s an explainer or backgrounder then that’s probably a why or how story.

Also you might find this article World’s Best Headlines, helpful.

Tip 3: Headlines should grab the reader in a second or two

You want to capture the reader’s attention as early as possible. Research shows that most online readers scan, paying special attention to keywords and the first two words in headlines, before deciding to click.

Always make sure the first two words are strong in the headline. Don’t waste it on an empty word like the or a. Go for a keyword (usually a noun) that describes the subject of your story (Hacker, Earthquake, Peace, Gunpoint, Slavery.) Headlines that don’t grab readers with their first two words: 'Debates Emerge in London 2012 Empty Seats Controversy’ or ‘Global: A Tool for Online Education'

Tip 4: Value the verb/adjective

A strong verb or adjective - Arrest, Fired, Rioting, Fighting, Inflammatory, Outshine, Hopeful, Celebrate - creates a vivid mental picture and draws the reader in.

Point to consider: nouns overshadow verbs as popular search keywords, but verbs/adjectives can power a headline’s click-through rate by making the headline more appealing.

Tip 5: Be visual, be emotional

Studies show that videos eliciting a strong emotional reaction are twice as likely to be shared. If you want your post to be shared on social media sites, make your headline visual, make it emotional.

Consider these headlines:

Unaware, China's Handan City Consumed Toxic Water for Days
Historic ‘Tanka’ Poem Rises from Japan's Nuclear Ashes
Iran: A Crime on YouTube, an Execution in Public
Tiptoeing Tradition, Cuba Welcomes the New Year
India: Standing Neck Deep in Water to Protest

Tip 6: Keep our global audience in mind

Avoid using terms that are specific to regional readers, and may not make sense to our global readers or to search engines. Always try to find an alternative. Instead of - 'Italy: Netizens Debate AltaRomAltaRoma', this might work better - 'Italy: Rome’s Fashion Week Fails to Impress'

Tip 7: Go beyond puns

Write headlines for your readers, not to show you’re clever. For wordplay to work, it needs to communicate the story’s point and tone, and it should work on the literal and figurative levels, besides being clear to our global audience. Also, puns can make headline writing enjoyable, but they’re not terribly compatible with SEO.

Tip 8: Write 25 different headlines

It may sound over the top, but you'll be amazed at what you can come up with! Start off by trying to work with keywords. Come up with 5. Then add some emotion in. Can you feel it? Make the next headline visual. Can you see it? Maybe you can hear it? Try something funny for the one after. Then think of the most 'epic' headline possible. What stands out about this headline? Keep it and work your way backwards. Add some emotion in, something you can see, or something you can hear. Now sit back and look at your list, a winner is going to jump out at you!

Watch this slideshare from Upworthy for more tips on to how to make your headline irresistibly shareable

Tip 9: Consider the value of SEO

A great headline will get clicked. It will give readers an accurate preview of the content they're in store for. And a great headline with solid SEO will also drive traffic to your content. So, we advise this approach: Create a great headline. But also consider its SEO-friendliness.

Additional Resources

Avoid using...

Here’s a list of words and/or phrases that should be avoided in headlines:

Overused words:

Blogosphere
Netizen
Bloggers
Twittersphere

Vague verbs:

Bloggers React
Netizens Respond
Citizens Discuss
Bloggers Express

Problematic phrases:

Mixed Feelings Follow
Debates Emerge

Problematic words:

Tweep
Tweeple

Generic headlines:

Fate of Refugees
State of Social Media

Both country/nationality in headline:

Nigeria: Nigerian Netizens
Sudan: Sudanese Schools

Additional Articles

“Your headline is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader. Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist. But a headline can do more than simply grab attention. A great headline can also communicate a full message to its intended audience, and it absolutely must lure the reader into your body text.” - How to Write Headlines That Work

“... think about this: when someone Tweets your blog article, what do other people see? Your headline. That means they will choose whether or not to click on your blog based on your headline alone. No summaries. Probably no pictures.” - Top 6 Qualities of a Good Headline

“Treat your title as a mini advertisement for your work. Take at least a few minutes before hitting ‘Publish’ to not only make sure your post is in order, but that your title is going to do everything it can to maximize the chances that people will engage with what you have to say.” - Why Headlines are Important

Leads

"Do you know what the single, solitary purpose of your headline is? It's to get you to read the first sentence. Do you know what the single and solitary purpose of your first sentence is? To get you to read the second sentence." Source

The lead or lede is the most important element of a news story. It is often the first sentence or sentences of our posts.

“A good lead is like a flashlight shining down into the story.” Source

“Writing a great lead is really about listening to what your gut tells you about what makes a story interesting.” Source

“I've often heard writers say that if you have written your lead you have 90 percent of the story.” Source

Front Load Stories

Front loading means you put your most important information first when writing for the web.

The benefits:

Readers can quickly assess whether they want to read your entire article.
Readers can stop reading at any point and still come away with the main point of your article.
By starting with your conclusion, the first few sentences on your web page will contain most of your relevant keywords, boosting your Search Engine Optimization.

So don’t bury your leads! When you begin a story with information of secondary importance, you are “burying the lead" and forcing readers to delve deeper into the article to discover its essential points. Most readers won’t have the patience to do this.

Tips for Writing Leads

Tip 1: Keep it short

Leads should be no longer than 35 words. Peel your story down to the core. Ask yourself: What is the main idea? What is unique, or important or odd about the story?

EXAMPLE: With a twist of humor, moral and technical support has been pouring in across social media sites for Japan's “corporate slaves” or shachiku as they are referred to in Japanese slang.

- Japan's Corporate Slaves Put Humor to Hard Work

Tip 2: Stick to one idea

When possible, the lead should contain one idea. That idea should be easy to grasp; complexities should be simplified.

EXAMPLE: Brazilian riot police violently evicted a group of indigenous people from a former museum they had occupied in Rio de Janeiro to make way for 2014 World Cup construction.

- Brazil Violently Ousts Indigenous Village Ahead of World Cup

Tip 3: Build in the human connection

Highlight the personal relevance of the story whenever possible. Talk about jobs instead of employment, homes instead of accommodation and students instead of education.

EXAMPLE: If you are in Cyprus, your life's savings hangs in the balance, as the government deliberates a controversial €10 billion bailout agreement reached with the Eurogroup that puts the country's saving deposits down as collateral.

- Cyprus Cuts Access to Banks Amid Bailout Crisis

Tip 4: Use concrete words

The subject should be a concrete noun that the reader can hear, see, taste, feel or smell. According to the book Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writer, "Abstract words should be chased out in favor of specific, concrete words. Sentences should be full of bricks, beds, houses, cars, cows, men and women. Details should drive out generality."

EXAMPLE: China's crackdown on extravagance and banqueting has sent official fine dining underground. Local governments have turned in-house cafeterias into fine restaurants and hosted lavish private dinners in their homes in order to avoid being seen indulging in public.

- Official Fine Dining Goes Underground as China Curbs Excesses

Tip 5: Read it aloud

How does it sound? Is it easy to read? Does the language flow, or does it sound choppy? Is it clear the first time you read it? Ask how you would tell the story to your mother or to a friend. The written word, while more formal, should never be too far removed from the spoken language.

Avoid...

Being a calendar: Don’t start the lead with the day that the news happened. Avoid adding exact days and dates to the lead unless they are intrinsic to the story.

Starting with a quote: Delayed leads that begin with a question or a direct quote are tricky to pull off. Avoid them if possible.

Opinions: Avoid writing leads that sensationalize the news or stray from the story’s main idea. Leads need to be relevant to the story. Leave opinions out of it.

Repeating the headline: Instead, compliment the lead. Don’t forget that readers skim over the headline right before they read the lead.

Overloading: Keep long titles, unnecessary attribution, jargon, unfamiliar names, or little-known places out of the lead Ask yourself, does a particular detail add to your lead or clutter it? The Associated Press tells its reporters, "When a lead moves beyond 20 25 words it's time to start trimming." Some of the extra baggage they suggest cutting:

Unnecessary attribution
Compound sentences joined by “but” and “and”
Exact dates and times unless essential

Remember details can be used in the paragraph that follows the lead.

EXAMPLE: As deadly clashes between Islamist activists and authorities continue to escalate religious tensions in Bangladesh, the country's telecommunications authority is making moves to silence bloggers deemed anti-Muslim or anti-state. (Lead)

Award-winning blogger Asif Mohiuddin and three other bloggers have become the latest target of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, according to online news site online news site Timesworld24.com [bn]. The commission recently contacted Somewhereinblog.net, the largest blogging platform in Bangladesh, requesting that the four blogs be taken down from the site. (Detail)

- Bangladesh Authorities Go After ‘Anti-Muslim’ Bloggers, Global Voices

Types of Leads

Direct leads: Explain to the reader what the main idea of the story is immediately. Also known as hard news leads they answer the who, what, where, when, and/or why of a story right from the start.

EXAMPLE: A group of academics say Shakespeare was a ruthless businessman who grew wealthy dealing in grain during a time of famine.

Delayed Lead: Delayed leads introduce the story to the reader in a more creative way. A nutgraph - a paragraph that gives an explanation of the story in a nutshell - should follow immediately after to explain how the lead is relevant to the story.

EXAMPLE: Hoarder, moneylender, tax dodger – it's not how we usually think of William Shakespeare.

But we should, according to a group of academics who say the Bard was a ruthless businessman who grew wealthy dealing in grain during a time of famine.

Researchers from Aberystwyth University in Wales argue that we can't fully understand Shakespeare unless we study his often-overlooked business savvy. (nutgraf)

Examples from William Shakespeare Was A Tax Dodger, Grain Hoarder: Study - Huffington Post

Commentary

At GV we include commentary from citizen media from blogs, forums, and social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.

Social Media

Twitter

GV doesn't set a limit for number of tweets per post, but we recommend not including more than 8-10.

Selecting tweets

Tweets should show a range of opinion on a topic.

Avoid including tweets that say the same thing, instead paraphrase what they are saying:

"@alpha, @beta and @gamma were unanimous in their view that Global Voices is the best website in the world"

Avoid adding tweets just to demonstrate a hashtag, instead mention the hashtag in the text.

Choose Twitter users wisely

Once you select a tweet, look up the associated user profile.

Try opting for users located in the country where the event is taking place or people whose accounts focus on the area or topic being discussed.
Paint an accurate picture of the Twitter user and account.
- If they are well-respected bloggers, area experts or media professionals, mention that in the text leading to the quote. This establishes their credibility as a source or lend nuance to their observations.
- We must be clear about any agendas users may have. This will alert readers to take what they say with a pinch of salt.

Add context to the tweet sometimes you can find out information like the location of the Twitter user, which helps better understand whether the person is witnessing the event or simply repeating something read online or heard on another form of media.

Formatting

We want to include the person's real name if available, followed by their Twitter handle in parenthesis linked to their account, a description of who they are if available, the date of when the tweet was published, and then finally the tweet itself in a blockquote. For more information on how to format and translate tweets for our posts please refer to the our posting guide

Note on Storify.com

Storify is a social media aggregation tool we sometimes use to quickly assemble stories from Twitter and Facebook. We only use it in breaking news situations where the increased speed is vital.

Bear in mind that "Storified" posts can not be translated directly because it stores the tweets in a locked-up format, so to facilitate translation all posts will have to be manually "de-storified" by an editor, with tweets broken out into text blockquotes, which is quite time-consuming.

Facebook

When including information taken from Facebook, try to include as many relevant details as possible.

These might include:

user's profile name;

date published;

direct link to wall post/status/photo/video etc (this is found in the 'timestamp';

name of group/page plus translation if in another language;

background information on the source - who are they?

Social Media Fair Usage

Images circulated on social networks such as Weibo, Livejournal, Facebook, or Twitter do not automatically count as being in the public domain. It all depends on the context and who the original photographer is.

Some countries have lax copyright policy, so it is common for people to circulate images from even mainstream media.

In some cases, the original photographer may not want to be identified if there is a free speech issue, and it might be clear from context that the person intends for the photo to be widely distributed without identification.

Certain photo sharing services on Twitter, like Twitpic, have in their terms in conditions that the photos are intended for sharing and they even include an embed code. But sometimes users aren't aware of this and it's good to ask just in case.

Photos posted on either Facebook or Livejournal (in some ways, an ordinary blogging service just like Wordpress or Tumblr) wouldn't automatically mean you could republish unless indicated. You'd have to ask first. But again, sometimes there is some context that indicates it would be OK to do it, or maybe everyone is already doing it with the approval of the source and we could too.

It's always a bit tricky to decide so feel free to discuss with your editor if in doubt.

It's getting increasingly common for GV posts to include quotes or items from social media sources like Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter

Don't quote from a Twitter account with protected/private updates; be aware that Storify may bypass this.

Be aware of what tweets you include - make sure you don't violate anyone's right to privacy.

Some tweets have to be anonymous to protect the Twitter user concerned. Try in these cases to give a little context if it will not impact the user, e.g. "@anon_China, an anonymous Twitter user from Kunming province, China, tweeted on Friday March 18:"

Facebook

Posting material from Facebook pages, groups, or individual profiles is tricky, as sometimes content that might once have been publicly available is sometimes subsequently made private by the user.

There is also an ethical perspective to consider. Many people using Facebook still don't realise that their images and content may be taken and used in a news/media context. You may need to consider the implications of including an individual's name and comments made on Facebook in a GV post - will it put them in danger or affect them at all?

A good rule of thumb is to only use content that is freely available in the public domain; i.e. that can be viewed by anybody and is not viewable only by Facebook friends of the individual. Always try and link directly to the comment or comment thread.

However, if news is broken on Facebook then it is permissable to use information or material from a personal profile. Please discuss with your editor.

Groups and pages are different. If anyone can join, then the content is in the public domain. Bear in mind that some Facebook groups need approval to join, in which case use of information/material may need discussing with your editor.

Correcting Language in Quotes

Where text is a direct quote or blockquote, it cannot be changed from the original. If the original text has a lot of spelling and grammer errors, you may want to add in some 'editor's notes' in square brackets [...] in order to explain things to the reader, or indicate that the spelling mistakes are in the original.

If you want to indicate a spelling mistake in a direct quote or blockquote, you can add the word "sic" in square brackets after it to inform readers that any errors or apparent errors in the copied material are not from transcription - i.e. that they are reproducced [sic] exactly from the original writer or printer.

For directions regarding spelling mistakes in tweets, see here.

If you want to request a correction or update to a post that has already been published, you can request it via this form.

Inline Quotes

Short, direct quotes from people or reports etc, can be enclosed in either double "..." or single '...' quotemarks, depending on whether you are using UK or US spelling and grammar.

Any quote longer than a sentence should be enclosed in a blockquote tag on it's own line.

Remember to '"always'" provide hyperlinks for direct quotes if possible.

Context

It is important to remember that your reader may not be as familiar with your subject as you are. If your post mentions public figures, past events or other terms that may not be familiar to the average reader, have you explained these in the text, or included an explanatory link?

Incorrect:

John Atta Mills took office in 2009

Correct:

President of Ghana, John Atta Mills, took office in 2009

GV Style

Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation

Global Voices English authors can use either US or UK English in their posts - please just ensure you are consistent in whatever spelling, grammar and punctuation style you use.

Third person

Normally, posts will not be written in the first person (‘I’ or ‘my’), nor will they express the author’s personal opinion.

Instead they are written in the third person (‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘they’).

Emphasis

Feel free to use italic text or bold text to create emphasis in posts. However, please do not use underlines, as that usually indicates a link and could be confusing for readers.

Grammatical genders

Unlike English, many languages have grammatical genders. This means that, for example, the adjectives you use to describe bloggers will vary according to their gender.

Sometimes, Lingua translators of your post can make an informed guess by looking at the blogs and trying to retrieve their name, but that is time-consuming and works only in a limited number of cases where the languages are close enough for the translator to make sense of the info available.

You don't need to provide a [f] for female or [m] for male after the blog/blogger's name. An easy way to sort this is using she/he/her/his/him at some point of the sentence. Here is an example:

Lawyer and environmentalist Luiz Felipe Muniz de Souza commented on the consequences of the leak to local communities. [...]

It would have been better if this had been written:

Lawyer and environmentalist Luiz Felipe Muniz de Souza commented on the consequences of the leak to local communities. He said/According to him/In his opinion: [...]

Subheadings

In longer posts subheadings can be very useful to break the story into sections. Subheadings are used like titles for different parts of the story. Usually they are not needed.

Subtitles can be set simply to bold font with the <strong> tag, or wrapped in <h4> tags which will look nicer.

You only need to capitalise proper nouns in section subheadings.

Language Codes

Global Voices posts contain links to content in every language imaginable, as such we need to inform our users about what language a link leads to so they can make a good decision about whether clicking it or not.

To this end, whenever you include a link that is not in the language in which you are writing add the relevant language code, enclosed in square brackets, after the link:

On his blog L'Amour François writes about his hometown [fr].

GV uses the ISO 639-1:2002 codes, which are usually two or three letters long and are the same ones used for international Wikipedia sites.

Include the code directly after the link, even if this is mid-sentence. However if you have a link that needs translating put the language code after the translation.

For example, this link is in Arabic:

Despite all this, there is talk on the Internet about a ‘February 20, 2011, Movement for Dignity‘ [ar].

The group Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (International Francophone Organisation) [fr] said...

Translating Language Codes on Links

Note that when a post is translated, the language codes may need to be altered. If the link is the same as the new language being translated to then it can simply be removed. Conversely, a language code needs to be added if a post was in the same language as the original post.

So an English post with English links needs no language codes, but they must be added to each link when the post is translated to French. Similarly, an English post with Arabic links will have [ar] after each, but they can be removed in the Arabic translation of that post.

Interviews

Sometimes GV posts are based on an interview. Please use the following format:

Format interview questions as bold text and place interview responses in blockquote format.

Write out the name of the interviewer and interviewee at the first mention. Add an abbreviation afterwards in brackets (parentheses) and used the abbreviation for the rest of the interview.

Format the name/abbreviation of the interviewee in bold text in the blockquote responses.

For example:

Global Voices (GV): Why do you like to blog?

<blockquote><strong>Shobam Guri (SG)</strong>: Blogging is an important part of my life...</blockquote>

GV: How do you stay safe?

<blockquote><strong>SG</strong>: I have a great support network...</blockquote>

Miscellaneous Style

Don't Italicize Media Names

With the quoting of blogs, tweeps and other citizen media becoming more and more common in the media, it is no longer necessary to use italics to indicate these sources in GV content.

To conform with this, newspaper and magazine sources are no longer italicised in GV content either.

Please only use italics for reasons of emphasis from now on.

Capitalisation of Job Titles

Capitalise a person's title when used with the person's name or as a direct address. The title is not capitalised when used generally:

The US President Barack Obama

The president apologised to the bloggers

Capitalise job titles immediately following the name when the word the does not appear in front of the job title:

Barack Obama, President of the United States, helped draft the law

Anonymous Websites/Bloggers

If an article is anonymous or a site or blog unnamed, use the domain name without the 'www':

An interview with the leader of the opposition at wrycatcher.com highlighted the tensions surrounding this issue.

Acronyms

It is imperative that, when mentioning an acronym in a piece of writing for the first time, you also spell it out, for the benefit of your readers and Global Voices translators.

It is best to avoid any unnecessary abbreviations because Global Voices is created for an international audience who may not know what you are talking about!

EXAMPLE:

United Nations (UN) Council of Europe (CE) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

(Short) Translations in Parentheses

When you simply want to provide a brief translation, for example of a organisation's name, add it in parentheses (brackets) after the original, e.g:

The organisation's Facebook page 'Manifeste Pour la Tunisie' (Manifesto for Tunisia) has many members...

Titles of Quoted/Mentioned Items

Titles of any specific articles/reports/books/videos etc quoted or mentioned in posts should be enclosed in single 'quote marks'. Short book or film titles need only be enclosed in quote marks at the first mention:

In a post titled 'Why Whales?' in his blog The Pequod, Ishmael explains why he decided to go to sea.

The book '4001' lifts the lid on the world of South Korean politics...

Numbers, Dates, Times, Currency

Numbers

Spell out the numbers one to ten, and when a number starts a sentence:

Bloggers claim five people were killed

Fifty people were injured in the explosion

Use numericals for numbers greater than ten, but when high and low numbers occur together choose numerical format:

Bloggers claim 50 people were injured

Bloggers claim 5 people were killed and 50 injured in the explosion

Use a comma as a thousands separator and a period (full stop) as a decimal separator:

100,000.89 (one hundred thousand point eight nine)

Write out million plus numbers:

Over five million people were cut off

Nearly 540 billion insects live on the planet

Write out ordinal numbers:

It was the fifth time Gaddafi had spoken to his people

Dates

Try to include full dates in your post to help when people read the articles in the future, when the timeline of your story may not be so obvious.

Suggested date format is:

Egypt's people rose up in defiance of the authorities first on February 15, 2011...

Last Monday, February 15, 2011, marked the release of Saudi Arabia's most famous blogger...

On Thursday 24 March, 2011, protestors clashed with police in Bahraini capital Manama...

We tend to mention the year at the first date mention. Of course if there are subsequent dates from different years, be sure to clarify this.

Centuries and decades should be spelt out fully:

In the 1980s jogging was considered cool

NOT:

In the 80s jogging was considered cool

In the '80s jogging was considered cool

Times

When mentioning times, be sure to remember to add the relevant time zone - unabbreviated.

Use the following format for times:

The police arrived ay 2.30pm

Currency

Spell out foreign currencies, at least at the first instance. You can abbreviate afterwards using the ISO 4217 three character Currency Code List.

Any of these formats are fine:

Over 30 US dollars were spent...

The report cost the government 400 million GB pounds...

Last year the European Commission spent 23 billion euro on education...

The prime minister stands accused of embezzling 300,000 Swiss Francs (CHF) and spending 200,000 CHF on his own family...

Always supply a rough conversion to US dollars of any other currency amount in your post, to help give an indication of the amount for the most readers possible:

The bloggers raised over 20,000 Australian dollars (12,000 US dollars) for the open-source software

Special Situations

Offensive Language

GV does not have a blanket policy to include or not include swear (curse) words in posts. It is down to the individual authors and editors to write/translate responsibly, but also accurately.

If a swear (curse) word is integral and important to say a quote or image, you can choose to leave it in.

Alternatively, you can blank it out using asterisks, for example:

The president's hate speech outburst included swear words including 's**t' and 'f**k'

However, sometimes this can alter the meaning too significantly, or detract from an important element of the text.

It's best to discuss with your editor if you are unsure.

Graphic Content

Multimedia

GV aims to help make non-mainstream voices heard, but we also have a responsibility to our readers. If we embed graphic content in a post directly, we don't give our readers a choice over whether or not they view it.

By providing a link and warning, we pass the decision whether or not to view graphic content to the reader. Sometimes violent images or videos are needed to illustrate an important story; be sensitive as to how you use content such as this.

If an image or video shows death, serious injury or graphic violence, it is best to describe the content and provide a link, plus a warning, rather than embed the image or video in the post.

Also, it is important to describe graphic videos in the text. Firstly, because you are linking rather than embedding and text description can help inform your readers decision whether or not to click on to view it. Secondly, graphic content on e.g. YouTube is often removed; if you have a description, it is preserved whether the video or image is available or not.

A video uploaded to YouTube [Warning: Graphic] by user emmab33 on 16 May, 2011, shows Libyan police brutally beating a protestor to death on Tuesday 15 May, 2011.

Here is a real post example:

'The incident took place in Yopougon, a district of Abidjan, and was filmed. The video was posted by YouTube user AfricaWeWish on March 15'

On the video you can see a crowd gathered around the young man on the ground. He has been covered in tree branches. After hearing that the man is from a Northern city of Côte d'Ivoire, people start throwing bricks at his face. An Ivorian blogger has confirmed that the man killed in the video was from the north'.

At 00:44 minutes the assailant asks, “You were just passing by? Where did you come from?”. The man on the ground replies at 00:55 minutes, “I'm a trader in Séguéla (in the north of the country)” and at 01:20 minutes they start throwing stones at him. This corresponds with the version of the story shared on the Twitter hashtag #civ2010. This is the link to the video, but please be warned these are extremely graphic images.

Reporting Suicide

It's important that we report suicide responsibly. Please add the following code to the very bottom of any post that touches on suicide:

<div class="notes">The number one cause for suicide is untreated depression. Depression is treatable and suicide is preventable. You can get help from confidential support lines for the suicidal and those in emotional crisis. Visit <a href="http://www.befrienders.org">Befrienders.org</a> to find a suicide prevention helpline in your country.</div>

References, Resources

Guidelines for writers when writing for translation. A quote: "Do not write thinking of only what you want to say, but what you want the reader to understand."

Plain English Campaign – learn about the fight against gobbledygook or gobbledegook (sometimes gobbledegoo, gobbledeegook

Fight the Fog, an informal campaign by European Commission's translators urging writers and speakers to be as clear as possible in their original language.

The Economist Style Guide and the Johnson columns for those who prefer a British accent.

Style Guide

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