Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebot’s newsletter.
Election selections
|
Election Day is less than three months away, and we probably don’t need to tell you that we’re already in an unprecedented campaign season. And while 68% of Americans get news about local politics, only 25% are satisfied with it, according to new research from the Pew-Knight Initiative. This, along with the already low trust the public has in the news media, means that the pressure is on journalists this year to frame their election stories in ways that are thoughtful, helpful, informative and trustworthy. Fortunately, there are research-backed strategies on everything from combating misinformation to writing about opinion polls that can help journalists make more informed choices about their election coverage. That’s why we're partnering with Modifier and Trusting News to expand the USC Annenberg Style Guide that powers Stylebot to include easy-to-adopt best practices for election coverage. So we’re doing something a little different in the newsletter this week and giving you a sneak peek of research-backed election advice for newsrooms. We’ll start with an easy one: polls. Opinion polls are a staple of election coverage, but reporting on them is not without consequence. Here’s our advice on how to do so responsibly: This election-related advice is now accessible to anyone who subscribes to Stylebot. But we don’t want to share it only with organizations that can afford it. That’s why we’ve also partnered with the Knight Foundation, which will pay for small and nonprofit newsrooms to access Stylebot through the election. Learn more at the Knight Election Hub or simply get in touch by replying to this email. And this isn’t the last election-themed newsletter you’ll get: Next week we’ll share some timely tips ahead of this month’s Democratic National Convention, and leading up to the election we’ll share advice on writing about key topics, such as abortion, immigration and LGBTQ+ issues.
Questions? You know what to do: Hit reply and let us know. ❤ Team Stylebot
💌 A tip a weekIf someone forwarded you this email, subscribe here to get one writing tip a week in your inbox. 💬 Get reliable, ethical writing advice at your fingertipsImproving your writing means making better choices every day. Stylebot makes it easy with our Slack, Teams and Google Chrome extensions. Try Stylebot for free today. 📝 About StylebotStylebot helps media professionals save time without sacrificing quality by answering editing questions on Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Chrome. We're on a mission to make editing faster, easier and more fun ✨ Learn more about Stylebot or follow us Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
|
Stylebot
Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebot’s newsletter.
Did you see any flags flying at half-staff on Memorial Day? What about at half-mast? These terms are often used interchangeably to describe flags that are flown only halfway up the flagpole, and the answers to last week's quiz on the terms were pretty evenly split. We probably should have added an "it depends" answer choice, though. Everyone technically got it right, but we recommend using "half-staff" as the default term, as it's what's used for flags on land. Reserve "half-mast" for flags...
Dangling modifiers creep into our speaking and writing all the time, but you all are pretty good at spotting one 🧐 If you didn't take last week's quiz, you might be thinking, "What are dangling modifiers and how can I avoid them?" Dangling modifiers occur when a sentence begins with an adjectival modifier but the subject of that modifier is misplaced in the sentence or simply isn't there at all. Longtime newsletter readers will be familiar with our favorite high-profile example that's easily...
To write the phrase do's and don'ts, you need to create your own list of do's and don'ts. Do you, for example, stay consistent on apostrophe use, or do you instead insert an extra apostrophe for clarity? You can see that we opt for the latter, but that's not what you prefer. The vast majority of you who took last week's quiz like "dos and don'ts." We can relate. As longtime newsletter readers know, one of our pet peeves is when people unnecessarily add an apostrophe along with the "s" to make...