On Sun, 2010-01-03 at 09:51 +0000, Charles Matthews wrote:
Brian McNeil wrote:
I don't think WMUK needs a style guide as long as Wikinews' but, it might be an idea to note points as we go along that should be consistent.
Oooh, let's do the endash-hyphen thing right here ... not. The press do have their own style guides, so the message is more important than the medium.
I was not suggest importing ultra-anal-retentive nitpicking from English Wikipedia. Particularly something as stupid as the ndash one which is a visual issue and for a press release they would look the same 'on the wire'.
The rules I saw as important to apply in the press release were:
* British English spelling (including preferring 'organisation' over 'organization') * Consisted, UK-style date formatting with the month spelt out to be unambiguous. * Spell out all numbers of twenty or less
The rest is just preference for active voice where possible and good grammar.
I have moved material around to get the punch into the first para. "Mary Rose" is good: on everyone's radar, apparently.
Are press releases going onto any of the semi-junk freebie pseudo-wires? There's several of these turn up in Google News results.
How are the current recipients of issued press releases managed? Is there a distribution list? How would, say, a blogger go about subscribing to WMUK news?