Tuesday, 29 July 2008

Style guide, guide THE TIMES

What should I use for the company brochure? Café or Cafe? Use the black color for the title, or use the other color? Writers, editors or designers may raise different questions when preparing the writings or document presentations for its organization.

In order to determine the standards and guidelines for an organization’s publication, a style guide is needed. Actually, a style guide is a set of standards for design and writing of documents, it includes rules and suggestions for design and writing style.

Benefits of using the style guide for design and writing documents:


  • Conform to corporate image and policy
  • To inform new staff of existing style
  • To define the negotiable style issue
  • To improve consistency
  • To remind and clarify the style decision for the staff

Here is a good example of style guide of The Times, “The Times Style and Usage Guide” prepared by the Chief revise editor Richard Dixon in 2003. It is a very comprehensive style guide for its writers and sub-editors.





The alphabetical list has been augmented by:
  • What's New section

Special Sections:

  • Armed Forces
  • Arts
  • Churches
  • Courts
  • Politics
  • Sport
  • Titles

Writers and sub-editors may find reference easily through the style guide, and confusion could be avoided in order to increase the efficiency of the work.

References:

Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Blog may send you to prison

Have you ever thought that writing blog can be found guilty? In Egypt, a blogger called Soliman (22-years old) had been prosecuted and sent to jail. He has used his blog to criticise the country's top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university and President Hosni Mubarak. The judges thought that the feeling expression of Soliman on the webog was insulting the government and the president, also inciting the sedition. Soliman was finally sent to jail for 4 years.

In this case, we may discover that for some of the countries, the blogosphere could be surveyed by the government invisibly. Blogger are not allowed to express everything, especially the topics which hit the polities and religious field. It is easily to find guilty if your blog cover the sensitive topics.



Within these few years, blog becomes part of our life. The main reason of the rapid growth of the blogosphere is the existence of the user-friendly blogging software and provider, e.g. Xanga, Blogger, Sina, etc. Through this software, blogger may express their ideas on the weblog more easily and frequently. Usually, blogger may use the blog to express the feeling on personal issue, daily life, business, sports, politics, etc.


In Hong Kong, most of the people own its personal blog, e.g. students, famous autistics, politician, journalist, even though the chief executive of Hong Kong also update his personal blog regularly.

Although blogging become more popular and people treat it as the alternative channel to the traditional journalism, however, the credibility of blog is one of the concerns for the audience. It cannot be denied that most of the blog are used to express things in a more personal way. The content of blog is lack of professional journalistic judgment and quality. So, blog may be considered as personal voice rather than reflection of fact.

References:

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)