Spacing Style Guide

Welcome to the Style Guide of Spacing's urban blog network.

Since Spacing has decided to expand the number of blogs we operate, it is high-time we published a definitive style guide for our contributors. Please let us know if we've left anything off the list or if the guidelines are not clear enough for you. View instructions on how to make a post.

DE-BUGGING YOUR TEXT

The first, and probably most important, step you need to do when starting a new blog post is to de-bug your text. If you have written your post beforehand in a Word doc or some other application you must put it through the de-bug filter. Press either of these icons (T is for a text app like Notepad or Text Edit and the W is for a Word doc).

PHOTOS

Photos can be displayed as wide as 600 pixels. They should rarely ever be less that 450 pixels in width. A photo should almost always be placed at the top of the post. Often, text that is only a few lines in depth will not be read or skipped over if it is placed above the image.

Flickr sizes its photos Small, Medium, Large, Original. Spacing uses Medium version (500 pixels in width, width seen below) or you can select the Large photo size (usually 1024 pixels wide) and scale the photo down to 600 pixels. (ie, the image above has been scaled down from 740 to 600.)

Vertical photos are discouraged if only because they look bad in our template. As of mid-December, we have a glitch in our template that does not allow us to justify an image to the left or fight of the text. We're working on that and we'll place an update in this section once we can show you examples of how to properly use vertical images in our template.

PHOTO CREDIT:

A photo credit should look like this:

photo by Rannie Turingan

Italics, lower case 'p', with the name linked to the image (if hosted on Flickr) or to the photographer's web site. If the photo is hosted on Flickr they strongly request that we link directly back to the image's web page. It's their policy (not to mention bandwidth) and we are happy to oblige.

If the photo is from a local archive, for example, it should credited "from" instead of "by", and include the archives filing number. An example:

photo from Toronto Archives, fonds 1244, item 66

LINKS

When providing links to other web sites make sure to link the words that properly correspond to the actual link. Here are some examples:

Good: Today we took a walk with LEAF, a local tree advocacy group.
Good: Today we took a walk with LEAF, a local tree advocacy group.
Bad: Today we took a walk with LEAF, a local tree advocacy group.
Bad: Today we took a walk with LEAF, a local tree advocacy group (click here for web site).

Try NEVER to use "click here" or "see this" with links. It's 2010, and people know you have to click on things. "Click here" is also considered a stumbling block for people who are visually impaired and use audio text readers.

EDITOR'S NOTE OR INTRO/EXTRO EXPLANATION

There are times when we need to insert an "editor's note" or write up an introduction to a post. The text should be italicized and have a thin grey line inserted below the text. You can cut-and-paste this URL for the grey line:

http://spacingottawa.ca/uploads/atlantic/line-grey-1pixel-600wide2.jpg

Here's an example:

EDITOR’S NOTE: Around 10am this morning, one of Toronto’s great civic leaders passed away after a two year battle with cancer. David Pecaut was the Chair and founder of the Toronto Summit Alliance, and was a major force behind Greening Greater Toronto, DiverseCity, Emerging Leaders Network, as well as leading The Boston Consulting Group.

This style also applies to an extro, where text is used at the bottom of a post, possibly to describe what the writer does for a living.

PLACELINES

A placeline is used at the start of a post to indicate that the writer is not writing/didn't write from the blog's hometown. We like placelines a lot since it makes us look like our writers are worldly. It is very important to use placelines on the Spacing Atlantic blog where the focus of the content is not entirely on one city.

Here's a good example:

COPENHAGEN — I am in Denmark at the Copenhagen Climate Talks trying to make forests count. But I'm still trying to look out for my backyard while supporting urban intensification. An interesting observation from my vantage point here is.....

EVENTS

Spacing often lists events. The style shown below should is standarized so that our readers know exactly what to expect from a listing. Each line has a "soft-return" (press SHIFT+RETURN on your keyboard at same time). Also not that the address of the event is linked directly to a Google Maps search of the location.  Here is an example:

WHAT: Spacing's spring 2010 release party
WHEN: Monday, January 1, 2010
WHERE: Air Canada Centre, 40 Bay St.
HOW MUCH: $10 (new issue of mag included)
RSVP: to the Facebook listing and/or the Evite listing

If you have your own description to use just place it under the listing. If it is a press release you should italicize the text and indent it using the quote formatting tool (icon show below).

WORD USAGE

City vs. city
• When referring to the local government, please first use "City of XXXXXX." Thereafter, use "City" with a capital 'C'
• When referring the location of a city, it will always be a lower-case 'c'.

Streets
• When providing an address, we use St. instead of Street.
• When writing about a specific road as a topic, you can use the entire word  (ie Yonge Street), and then refer to it without "Street" or "Road" thereafter (ie. "when I walk up Yonge I can see all types of...").
• In the following example, you should spell out "street" for clarity reasons.  St. George Street instead of St. George St.

Years
• Always try to use 1970s instead of the '70s.
• When referring to "turn of the century" you should be discussing the late-1990s and not 110 years ago. You must state "at the turn of the 20th century" if you mean around 1900.

Titles of Organizations and Acronyms
• The first time you state an organization that is also known as an acronym, the name should be spelled out fully followed by the acronym in brackets. Such as, "Last week I was really disappointed with the decisions made at the monthly meeting of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)." You can use the acronym thereafter.

Percent vs. %
• We use the % sign instead of percent. Such as, "Meslin won the election by a 25% margin."
• But if we're being figurative, it should be spelled out. Such as: "We can't watch over Withrow Park a hundred percent of the time."
• And it should be percent, not per cent.

Numbers
• You should spell them out, up to and including eleven (ie, one, two, three...). Thereafter, it is 12, 13, 456, 908, etc. The numeric 11 can often be confused with two lower-case Ls.
• Never use a numeric at the start of a sentence even if it deviates from the above rule (ie, do not use "100 people died in the subway crash..." You can easily get around this, such as "Up to 100 people are dead in a subway crash").
• For big numbers, they should be a combo of numerics and spelling. Such as: 300-million people, $25-billion (and not 25 billion dollars).
• Unless there is a specific reason to state a large number (ie, a population) it is best to round numbers out (a projects budget might be $34,122,455, but its best to write $34-million instead).

Spelling
• We use two Ls in cancelled, etc
• We use OU in humour, etc
• We use Z in revitalization, etc

Hyphens
• It should read "redesign" instead of "re-design"; rule applies to words with de- at the beginning too
• make sure to hyphen words that are joined, such as: forward-looking, small-minded, etc.

PUNCTUATION & STUFF

• Place the period inside the quote. ie, Jack said, "I was sleepy today."

• Only one space between the period of one sentence and the start of the next sentence.

• Use a space around the M-dashes used in a sentence. ie, Jack was looking tired — and rightly so, his colleagues would argue — because of his workload.