The Copy Editing And Headline Handbook

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Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 2001-07-03
Publisher(s): Basic Books
List Price: $23.09

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Summary

Everyone in the newsroom agrees that copy editors are the unsung heroes in the business who, until now, have never had a succinct and authoritative guide for on-the-job use. From counting the headline to line breaks, from decks to jumps, from editing numbers and photo captions to editing for organization, The Copy Editing and Headline Handbook is the complete source of essential information for the copy editor. Whether copy editing on a computer or on the printed page, for a newspaper or for a magazine, Barbara Ellis shows how to clean, organize, and proof copy like a pro. With special sections on libel, captions, forbidden words, job hazards, and head counts, as well as a section of the most commonly used symbols in copy editing and proofreading, the Handbook is essential for every copy editor's bookshelf.

Author Biography

Barbara Ellis, Ph.D., is a seasoned copy editor, having served on six copydesks for nearly fifteen years and as a copy editing professor at Louisiana's McNeese State University for eight years. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xiii
PART I HEADLINES
Headlines: The Prime Seller of Newspapers and the Copy Editors Who Write Them
3(10)
What Kind of People Work on the ``Desk''?
4(5)
A Career That Lasts Beyond Retirement
9(4)
Headlines: The Door to Copy-Editing Mastery
13(8)
It's Your Turn to Write a Headline
14(2)
A Gallery of Classic Headline Gaffes
16(1)
Serious Stories = Serious Headlines
17(4)
``Counting'' the Headline
21(12)
The Copydesk Routine
22(2)
Two Systems for Doing the Count
24(2)
System 1: Counting in Numerical Sequence
26(1)
System 2: Counting by Character Widths
27(1)
Into Action
27(1)
Deciphering the Head Order
28(2)
Learning Attitude Adjustments
30(3)
Specialty Headlines
33(10)
Kickers
34(1)
Hammerheads (a.k.a. Hammers) and Wickets
35(2)
The Slammer
37(1)
Tripods
38(1)
Sidesaddles
39(4)
The Master Lists of Forbidden Words in Headlines
43(10)
Forbidden Words: Sports
44(2)
Forbidden Words: Hard News
46(3)
Alleged and Accused
49(4)
Setting Up a Work Regimen and Determining the First Word (the Subject)---and the Second (the Verb)
53(10)
Setting Up a System
54(1)
Find Out ``Whodunit'' and the Headline's First Word Will Appear
54(2)
What to Do When You Hear ``Voices''
56(1)
The Headline's Second Word: The Verb
57(1)
What to Do About ``Is'' and ``Are''---the ``To-Be'' Verbs
58(1)
Agreement of Subjects with Their Verbs
59(1)
Down Among the Collectives, Agreement Is Still in the Eye of the Beholder: Is It ``The Couple Was'' or ``The Couple Were''?
60(1)
The Verb as the Headline's First Word: The ``Verb Head''
61(2)
Headline Punctuation, Abbreviations, and the Use of Numbers and Symbols
63(14)
Periods
63(1)
Commas
63(1)
Semicolons
64(1)
Quotation Marks
64(1)
Colons
65(3)
Dashes and Parentheses in Feature Stories
68(1)
Apostrophes
68(1)
Question Marks
69(1)
Exclamation Points
69(1)
Abbreviations
69(4)
Acronyms
73(1)
Numbers and Symbols
74(3)
Line Breaks, Decks, Jumps---and Second-Day Headlines
77(8)
Line Breaks
77(3)
Decks (a.k.a. ROS or Read-Outs)
80(1)
Subheads
81(1)
Second-Day Heads
82(1)
Jumps Headlines and ``Continued'' Lines
82(3)
The Art of Writing Feature Headlines
85(8)
The Clever-Headline Writer
87(1)
The Masters of the ``Clever'' Head
88(5)
Different Papers, Different Head Styles
93(12)
Boning Up on Style Before Starting on a Copydesk
94(1)
Counts Too Short or Too Long?
95(2)
Names in Headlines
97(2)
Headline Styles for News of Fires, Accidents, and Major Disasters
99(6)
PART II COPY EDITING
An Overall Look at Copy Editing Today
105(6)
The Impact of the ``Maestro'' System and Pagination
106(3)
Attitude and Editing
109(2)
The Editing Routine
111(14)
Into Action
113(4)
Editing Features and Opinion Pieces
117(1)
Editing by Computer
118(4)
Hard-Copy Editing
122(3)
Editing for Organization
125(16)
A New Method for Editing a News Story's Organization
126(1)
The Basics of Newspaper Story Organization
127(1)
Hard-News Organization
128(4)
How to Code a Story
132(2)
Coding ``Delayed'' Leads and Discovering Buried Leads
134(3)
Feature Story Organization
137(1)
Organization of Second-Day Stories and a Series of Articles
137(2)
Some Last Words on Editing for Organization
139(2)
Editing the Lead
141(12)
Editing Hard-News Leads
142(2)
Immediate Leads
144(3)
Editing Other Styles of Immediate Leads
147(1)
Delayed Leads
148(2)
The ``You'' Lead
150(1)
Editing Feature Leads
150(3)
Editing the Close and Quotes
153(16)
The Hard-News Close
154(3)
Feature-Story Closes
157(1)
Editing Quotations
158(3)
Detecting ``Phony'' Quotes
161(2)
Editing Quotes from the Unschooled or the Foreign Born
163(1)
Which Quotes Should Be Killed?
164(2)
Partial Quotes
166(1)
Placement of Quotation Attributions
167(2)
Adds and Trims
169(10)
Adds
170(1)
Trims
171(1)
Major Trims
172(2)
Notebook Dumping and Stray-Fact Hitchhikers
174(1)
Minor Trims
175(2)
Lancing the Boils and Bloodsuckers in Sentences
177(2)
Editing Stories Involving Numbers
179(24)
Suspicious Numbers
180(2)
Recognizing Statistical Bias
182(3)
Suspicious Research Numbers
185(1)
Understanding Property Taxes
186(2)
Editing Percentages
188(2)
How to Calculate Percentages
190(2)
Figuring the Percentages of Increases and Decreases
192(3)
Stock Market News
195(1)
Editing the Market's Ups and Downs
196(2)
``Times as Great'' Is Not ``Times Greater Than''
198(1)
Nautical Numbers
199(1)
Betting Odds
200(1)
The Writing Style Used for Numbers
201(2)
Attributions, Identifications, and Second References
203(16)
Attribution Form and the Venerable ``Said''
204(2)
Attribution Placement
206(3)
Identifying Sources in Attributions
209(1)
Coping with Long Titles
210(2)
Second and Subsequent References to Sources in the News
212(3)
Pronouns in Second References: When ``He'' and ``She'' Become ``Their'' and ``They''
215(4)
Catching Errors in Grammar and Usage (That/Which, Who/Whom, Parallelism, Subjunctive Mood, and Other Pitfalls)
219(18)
As and Like
220(1)
Because and Since
221(1)
Lay, Lie, and Pay
222(1)
Like and Such As
223(1)
On
223(2)
Should and Shall
225(1)
Where
226(1)
While
226(1)
Who and Whom
226(1)
Who's/Whose and It's/Its
227(1)
Parallelism
228(1)
Relative Pronouns: That, Which, and Who
229(2)
Verb-Agreement Dilemmas
231(3)
Split Infinitives
234(1)
Subjunctive Mood
235(2)
Transition Words and Forbidden Words in Text
237(18)
Hard-News Transitions
237(2)
Feature Story Transitions
239(4)
The Master List of Forbidden Words and Expressions in Copy
243(2)
Forbidden Terms in Text
245(10)
Writing and Editing Captions
255(20)
Making Captions Fit
256(1)
Writing the Caption
257(2)
The State of the Caption Elsewhere
259(3)
L = Look Before You Leap
262(1)
O = Subtract the Obvious by Adding Substance
263(2)
M = Reflect the Mood of the Illustration
265(2)
I = Check Identifications
267(1)
S = Spelling and Grammar
268(3)
A = Accuracy and Preventing Litigation
271(4)
PART III ACCURACY AND LIBEL
Two Safeguards for Headlines and Copy: Pursuing Accuracy and Avoiding Lawsuits
275(18)
Joseph Pulitzer: ``What a newspaper needs... is ...accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!''
278(2)
Time, Inc. Publications: Role Models for Exemplary Accuracy
280(2)
Lawsuits: College Publications Are Eligible Too
282(1)
Even When Papers Win, the Lawsuit Is a Lose-Lose Situation
283(1)
``Serial Killer Arrested,'' ``Marijuana Cases,'' and Other Libelous Headlines
284(1)
War Stories of ``Near Misses'' and ``Direct Hits'' May Be the Best Libel Teachers
285(1)
The Increase of Multimillion-Dollar Lawsuits and the Uniform Correction Law
286(2)
A Sampler of Practical Protective Systems for Copy Editors
288(5)
Job Hazards: Dealing with Too Many Earthquakes, Monicas, and Shootings
293(4)
Notes 297(18)
Glossary of Copydesk Terms 315(8)
Bibliography 323(4)
Index 327

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