Week 13-14

Fantastic Fiction is a website that has a great design. It is one of my favorite websites because it is easy to use and provides good information. I use it when I want to look up authors or books. Their homepage provides book recommendations and the search bar is easy to find. All you have to do is type the book/author you are looking for. An author’s page provide a photo of them and a short bio. Right under the bio is a listing of the newest book releases. Everything else an author has written is listed below. At the very bottom of each page is a list of similar authors. I have discovered many new books by using this list.

The website layout is very pleasing to the eye. Its main color is dark blue, complemented by light blue, white, black, and occasionally yellow. The website effectively uses white space. I am able to find what I want quickly.

My editing mistake for the week comes from my friend’s Facebook post: “Hey! Anyone who is intrested at the Layton Wal-Mart we are doing a toys that rock event.” She spelled interested wrong and the sentence would have sounded better if she had said: Hey! To anyone who is interested, we are doing a toys that rock event at the Layton Wal-mart. It would have made more sense.

Week 12 - Headline Writing

Writing headlines is a very creative process that takes a lot of time, I've found. When we first starting writing headlines I thought, “Oh, well this will be a breeze. Writing headlines can’t be that hard!” Boy, was I wrong. Trying to create headlines that will capture the reader’s attention is difficult. While writing three different headlines for one story, I found it hard to switch the words around and create a different headline for each headline. I was stuck on one singular idea for each story, and had a hard time changing it around for each type of headline and its spacing.

Going through and reading some good examples of headlines, I found it’s not just about the words; it’s also about the punctuation. Semicolons and colons are an essential part of a headline and helps to create ingenuity within a headline. The headline “Parents take note: Report cards are out” is a great example on how to use punctuation within a headline.

Creativity is a very essential part in writing headlines, and it shouldn’t come instantly. I struggled with this while writing my headlines because I wanted instant gratification, and I wanted to just be able to write a headline fast because, for some reason, I thought it would be easy.

This assignment really humbled me and made me realize how difficult it really is to write headlines for different stories in different amounts of space.

Week 11 - Good and Bad Headlines

This week after writing headlines, I feel really bad for the people who have to come up with headlines all the time because it is a difficult task! No wonder sometimes we end up with some bad headlines. Also kudos to the people who come up with headlines because most of the time they are awesome. I don't think I could ever take up a job just writing headlines.

My favorite type of headlines are the kind that are interesting, precise, and not too cliche. Bad headlines for me are ones that are boring, confusing or badly toned.

I really liked this headline because it's interesting and provides somewhat of a backstory to the story. We know the painting was stolen by Nazis probably during WWII. I want to read more because it gives that little detail, and it pulls me in even more.

Although I do tend to read a lot of Buzzfeed articles, their headlines bug me. They're written in a way to entice a reader like clickbait and not actual great headline writing. One headline reads "This Is Why Everyone Is Talking About Slavery In Libya." I feel like it's just way too many words with little information at all.

Week 10

I found an article with a great beginning that kept me wanting to read the article even though the subject was about something I wasn't entirely interested in. The story was from NPR about how American Airlines accidentally gave too many pilots days off during the holidays. Here's the lead -

I'm not one who is usually interested in stories about business, but this one caught my eye when I read the first line. I'm not even traveling this holiday season, but I still feel like the story is important to me. It's interesting to me just how one sentence can make a reader want to read an article they wouldn't regularly read about.

This lead is also great because it gives all of the pertinent information within one sentence without overloading the reader. If the sentence didn't pull me in to read the rest of the story, I could be just fine reading the first line and knowing the gist of the story. I know most people don't read articles all the way to the end, and I assume journalists know that, too. This journalist succeeded in getting the story across in only 26 words.

#13-14 Finding A Strong Layout

Finding a good web layout follows certain guidelines for success. While it is not a definitive process of what will bring traffic to your website, there are approaches you can take that will put the focus on the content. Content is what you should be more worried about in the end, but a distracting, ugly layout could deter readers away from your stories.

Reason.com covers the stories that have a libertarian skew to them. They have a lot of ideas that are new to many readers. So their main hope is to explain their viewpoint on the most topics to the most people. I feel that their homepage delivers this idea and does so with a neat compact design. The tabs at the top of the page line up with the next line below. The rotating image in the middle of the page, goes through the top stories for the day. The side bar on the right gives headlines, driving readers there, while the left drives readers with images. The entire site fits together neatly like Lego blocks. They aren’t using the same size blocks throughout, but they are sure to make it level at the appropriate places.

Possibly not the best example of form, but the message is strong.

#12 Dialing Back Storytelling

While the PowerPoint presentation was all good information, there were some ideas that taught me a lesson. I have tried for most of my life to tell a story with a bit of flair and mystery. I feel that the end of a story, no matter how mundane, should hit the audience with some force. I wait for as long as possible to get to the point, building suspense in my mind. Unfortunately, I’m sure that some of the time it leaves my audience bored and unconnected. But regardless of my failings, I will always try for pageantry.

The PowerPoint file on headlines taught me I should try to leave the mystery to my stories. Mystery is not for the news. I learned that I needed to end the continuous dancing around the message, stand at a podium, and deliver the report. Some stories offer themselves up for flowery words, but the majority demand straightforward, respectful terminology to deliver the news. I learned if I want to write for papers or the news, I need to tone down my pretty words for the more direct or blunt phrases. 

Basically, I learned that the news is less fun, but probably better than my meandering ramblings.

week 13 & 14

The power point slides were informative about layout-design. There are different concepts that go into it that I didn’t realize. The slides mention the gray space and the white space. Each area is different in what they are trying to convey. The gray space section mentions that you need to use the photos and graphics to separate any space. You want to have the picture used in a way that is visually appealing to the readers. With the white space, you need it to help make the space be where the readers focus on the content. The tips are helpful because it gives a better understanding about what types of photos to use and how the order is important.

Amazon's website has their main page showing color and the alignment of prime, video, music and meet Alexa.

An error I found was on a Facebook article from Fox13 news. It was about a teen who made a half-court shot at a Utah Utes basketball game and won $5k. The article was not a good one to begin with it was all over the place and didn’t give detailed information when it was needed. There was a spot where it said “ Charlie thought “Mountain America Credit Union was puuting up the prize money…” There was one too many u’s in the sentence.

Headlines 2

This week, I learned just how tough writing headlines can be. I don’t want that to sound like a cop-out – I promise it’s sincere. That is also not to say that I ever thought writing headlines way easy per say, but I certainly did not expect it to be as difficult as was. To be honest, the task seemed near impossible for a couple moments and I marveled that anyone could do it as a living. As I went down through the assignment, however, I began to guess with a certain level of accuracy whether a certain phrase would or would not fit within a certain number of characters, with either going over or staying under. It began to almost flow for me. I also rediscovered my love for a thesaurus – especially when needing an alternative word with the same exact meaning but an entirely different length. It stretched my ability to think concisely and succinctly, and in the next breath stretch out the meaning into more words.

My mistake for this week is a bit a quirky one. I caught it in the textbook reading for my public relations class. The mistake is within the a quote, so whether it was the publishers of the textbook that got the purpose of the websites mixed up, or the quoted individual themselves, is ambiguous. For the sake of the reputation of the textbook publisher’s, though, lets hope it was the quoted. The mistake says “…social video hosting on Photobucket, photo hosting on YouTube.” It is YouTube that provides social video hosting, though, and Photobucket photo hosting.

Hi classmates! Finding examples of different headlines was a breeze for me this week, but I faced a difficulty when writing headlines. The first mistake I made was related to headline punctuation. There are a special set of punctuation rules to follow for headlines. When to add commas: A comma may be substituted for “and” when one subject goes with a set of verbs A comma may be substituted for “and” when two subjects go with on verb. When to add semicolons: A semicolon may be substituted for “and” when a headline contains two subjects and two verbs. A semicolon may also be substituted for a period between two sentences. An example: Athlete wins gold; team moves up. The second mistake I made was that my headlines were too long. The headline should be specific. As an editor, you can omit possessive pronouns, gender-specific details, and by using the infinitive “to” for indicating future actions. Try substituting words and trying new focuses on the story. Reading the headline out loud and asking my husband to read them has helped me with the length of my headlines. I know I can get better at making creative, attention-grabbing headlines with more practice. I hope this post is a nice refresher on headline rules!

WEEK 12

Hey classmates!

Headline writing, I must admit, is one of the most difficult forms of writing I have ever attempted.
Honestly, I have never been a woman of few words.

In elementary and middle school I was always the annoying kid who got points taken for writing TOO much on assignments, unlike the rest of the class who wrote too little. It's not something that I'm proud of.

On the powerpoint the number one thing that struck me was the importance of using powerful, meaningful words, and using few of them.

My first week writing headlines I lost points because they were too long, which didn't surprise me. I tried harder this week to write short and sweet headlines that would still sufficiently get the idea across. I was so impressed by so many of your headlines and loved reading the examples that Professor Josephson gave of good headlines! I guess the best way to summarize the art of headline writing is that the best headlines are those which carry the most meaning in the fewest number of words.

A good example of a grammar mistake is below! Make sure and use a colon when you're making a list (: I hope you all have a great week!

Hello, class!

I have read many headlines while reading all the news stories from the Associated Press. One thing I never realized is the active voice. On a headline like "Trump warns Russia" it does not mean that Trump would currently be warning Russia, but that he already warned them. You use that past tense writing even though it is still happening. Another example would be something along the lines of "Wal-Mart cancels trade deals with China." This finally made sense to me, I had always read headlines like this and wondered why it was in the past tense, but now I understand the rule.

An editing mistake that I found this week was also at work again. There is a sales pamphlet that talks about the commission structure of my job. It says that "...3 sales..." gets you to the next pay tier. I noticed that the "3" needs to be spelled out as "three" until it reaches 10 and so on.

Blog #12

I’m glad that we were able to spend more time on headlines this week. Headlines and headline writing are a lot more complex than I thought they would be. I definitely think I still need more practice with them, but I have learned a lot and have come a long way in the past couple of weeks.

Tip #12 in the PowerPoint states that headlines should only use names of people, places and things that readers will recognize. I found a couple of headlines this week that are an example of this tip.

“Senate panel approves Utah Supreme Court nominee”

This headline does not use the name of the nominee because an audience probably wouldn’t know who they are. Instead of using their name, the headline talks about them being a Utah Supreme Court nominee. By saying that instead of their name, the audience can still tell they are newsworthy.

“Trump faces new challenges in tax overhaul, Alabama race”

This headline uses Trump’s name because he is a notable person and a lot of people know who he is. An audience would easily be able to understand his importance. He is a widely recognizable figure, so it makes sense to use his name.

The editing mistake I found this week is from an online horoscope. The mistake is the word “thing.” It should actually be “think,” as the horoscope is talking about going back to school.

Week 12 Blog 

Hello Classmates!

A tip that stood out to me from the slides was Tip 1. The headline should be worded differently from the lead. 

Use a headline to capture the attention of the reader. I think of it like a marketing tool or advertisement. You want the essential information in the headline to draw in the audience. Online readers have a short attention span. That is why the headline has to be concise and summarize the story in a few words. Repeating yourself in the lead could bore the reader and that is not something you want to do as a writer. 

The lead should not be a repeat of your headline. It should be a summary of the story and tell the reader the impact of the story on them. 

The mistake I noticed this week occurred while I was writing my book report. I feel stupid about the mistake. I was reading a grammar book for crying out loud. I got a semicolon and colon mixed up. Luckily, I caught while doing my final edit. My grammar book says that colons and semicolons can never be used interchangeably. Semicolons create a longer pause in a sentence between independent clauses. A colon is used in between independent if the second sentence expands the first sentence. 

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Steve. 

Week 12

One of the things I learned this week is the correct way to punctuate a headline. I did not realize that headlines use a comma for the word “and,” and a colon to signify that someone is speaking. I also learned that single quotation marks are used in headlines instead of double quotation marks. As I looked for different headlines, I noticed that the semicolon is not used very often. This is probably because there are many people who do not know how to use a semicolon.

Headlines are all about saving space. That is why these rules have been established. I wonder if these rules will still be important as the number of news articles online increase.

Headlines are much harder to writer than they appear. I noticed that simple words were usually better than complex words because simple words are shorter. There were many times I tried to use a great verb that was too short for a whole line, but no other words could fix next to it.

My spelling mistake for the week is a text message I received from a group text message. One of the people typed Wedmesday instead of Wednesday. I’m surprised his autocorrect did not fix the mistake.

Week 12

Week 12

When I read headlines I think to myself, “Oh, I can write that.” Wrong! It’s more difficult than it looks. Our last few assignments about headlines has me rethinking what I write. The most recent assignment we have about writing three headlines is a good one. It made me think of how I need to word each headline differently. You want the headline to explain what your story is about.

 As I went through the slides I got a clearer understanding of headlines. One example from the slides that it mentioned was, “School sends report cards home today, but instead it says to try, “Parents take note: Report cards are out.” This looks simple, but I wouldn’t have thought of that with the semicolon.

Some headlines make sense, but there are times that it seems too simple. There was a power point that read, “Tropicana orange juice raising prices.” It was broken down into three rows. It got the point across but seemed to sound plain and boring. Another tip that the slides had was when writing a name in a headline make sure that the name is recognizable to the readers. There was a slide that stressed about needing to re-read the headline to make sure it is not misinterpreted. I liked this tip because it’s true. If you don’t check your work it may be misinterpreted the wrong way. 

Blog #12, The Art of Surprise by Julie White

A few days ago I met with a group of Children's book writers. All eager to create the next bestseller, we huddled together and read our manuscripts. One writer shared with us her story. It lacked the finesse of the other writers and we made a few suggestions. The first thing we recommended is to write in active voice with strong verbs. It immediately made a big difference in her storyline.

Writing news headlines also requires strong writing. Not difficult to master, but one that certainly takes practice, writing headlines is an art form. May I humbly share that my first attempt at writing a news headline crashed and burned before my eyes? After a few tries, I got the hang of it.

One of my favorite headline styles that I want to master is the “surprise with unusual combinations” headline. Here are a few that won awards in 2009.

'Going once, going twice, going to be confused.' (Story about a state's foreclosure auction process.)

'Small step for man, giant gaffe for NASA.' (Story about when NASA erased first moon landing tapes.)

'In the world of tag, he's it.' (Street artist that does it all.)

No matter what kind of writing we specialize in, good writers are needed in every industry. With practice, we can become proficient in the art of writing headlines. Who knows, one day we might be working for a newspaper.

Here's a sign that says it all. Make sure you proof-read your documents. 

Blog 11: Headlines

Blog 11: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...Headlines

I think that headlines are so fun. They are very difficult to write, but they are arguably the most important part of a story. Headlines are what draw readers in. Essentially, they are the first impressions of the writing world, and despite what everyone says, we all judge books by their covers and articles by their headlines. As I researched online news sources for good headlines, I found a few that stuck out.

1. A headline that uses a good, strong verb

Tens of thousands commemorate Arafat in Hamas-run Gaza

2. A headline that is specific

Scores dead after quake strikes Iraq

3. A headline that stresses the message, not the messenger (Attribution is found at the end of the headline)

At least 1,000 injured as shocks were felt in Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Kuwait and Turkey, agencies say

5.  A headline with a humorous tone

Kansas Teens Too Young to Vote are Running for Governor Instead

6. A headline that uses present tense to indicate past action (typical)

Trump absolves Putin and shoots himself in the foot

My favorite headline was number five, the humorous one, because it appears like a normal headline but has subtle humor.

For my editing mistake this week, I found an easy, minor mistake. In the first paragraph of this click-bait article, the second to last sentence has a double article, “The centuries-old tradition required someone to be present to confirm a a royal birth was actually happening.” Honestly, this is one of the easiest editing mistakes to make and the hardest to find.

Week 12

I really appreciated the tips on writing headlines because I’ve never had to write them in my life. Therefore, I can use all of the help I can get.  I did enjoy writing them though. It was kind of like a game because you had to be clever and fit them in the right amount of space.

A helpful tip for writing headlines is that a comma may be substituted for “and” when one subject goes with two verbs. It also works the other way around; in headlines a comma may be substituted for “and” when two subjects go with one verb.  That helps reduce the length of a headline.

I also like the tip that says a colon may be used to indicate says or said. A tip that has been hard for me is that in multiple-line headlines, logical word groups can’t be split between lines. You have to really be cautious with those.

Lastly, I do have to say that I prefer upstyle headlines rather than downstyle headlines. I feel like downstyle headlines sometimes look like an unfinished sentence and upstyle headlines look like a title.

A grammar error I found this week was an advertisement that said, “Buy 2 get your 3^rd free. I know advertisements are allowed to break the rules sometimes, but if they were writing correctly they should have said, “Buy two and get your third free.” I would have never noticed things like that until I took this class.

Below is a picture of a very clever headline!

Blog 10: Good Leads

Blog 10: Good Leads

Writing a good lead is hard! This was always my least favorite part of Media Writing, and I still struggle with it. Luckily, editing leads and determining what makes a lead “good” is a lot easier than writing the lead myself. As I searched the internet for good leads, I found a few that stuck out more than the others.

This example came from CNN. The story was interesting, so I opened the article to see what kind of lead it had. This lead has two parts. First, the lead, then the nut graph.

“It's been a long time running -- four decades to be exact -- since an American woman broke the finish line tape at the New York City Marathon, but Olympic medalist Shalane Flanagan did just that on Sunday.

With an unofficial time of 2 hours, 26 minutes and 53 seconds, the 36-year-old Flanagan beat three-time defending champion Mary Keitany of Kenya by a minute and one second. Times won't be official until later this month.”

This lead is more of an impact lead because it shows the impact this story is making. Not only did the runner accomplish something, but she was the first American in 40 years to do it. Therefore, this lead makes an impact on the reader.

The example I found this week is fantastic. Figuring out where to put an apostrophe is always confusing, especially when the base word is plural. In this example, they correctly put the apostrophe on “companies’ websites,” but they could not decide where to put the apostrophe on “Men’s running shoes.”

This week’s assignments were fun for me. I enjoyed creating my own headlines and finding different styles along the way. The most important lessons I took from the PowerPoint and supplemental reading are: be sure to omit forms of the verb to be and articles, and put verbs in present tense. 

Here are two good headlines:

• Woman buys computer, other electronics for $3.70 at Walmart self-checkout, police say
• Texas cop lures injured woman to hospital using can of soda

These headlines are eye-catching and summarize the story into one-sentence very well. The verbs are active and in the present tense. The sentence is specific to the subject. The first headline stresses the message and the attribution is found at the end. The first headline also substitutes a comma for the word “and” then omits articles. The second headline uses a strong verb; the word “lures.” The second headline has a humorous tone.

Here are two bad headlines:

• About Utah: Going good while the going's good
• Murray officer released from hospital after being hit by a car

The first headline is worded weird. It was probably supposed to appear catchy, but the headline doesn’t come across this way to me. The second headline mildly grabs the reader’s attention. There are no strong verbs in this headline. It doesn’t appear to be in present tense. The second headline could have improved with this example: 

• Distracted driver strikes officer directing traffic from a fire

I hope this post helps some of my classmates find interesting stories using headlines!