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The following conventions are to be applied to text submitted to the Church Magazine and Church website.
General Exceptions
Articles that are written in "character" or "ethnic" style and testimonies or poems would not be expected to conform to the House Style. Some latitude may also be, taken for layout and space reasons, by editors during the desktop publishing stage.
Paragraphs
Paragraphs should not be separated by inserting a blank line (i.e. double spaced); one press of the Enter key (carriage return) is all that is required to denote a paragraph.
Paragraphs should never be indented (with spaces or tabs at the beginning of the first line).
Titles
Titles should always be supplied and written in Title Case, not CAPITALS
Byline (who it's written by)
Main titles should be followed by a byline (the author's name)
Text Formatting
The desktop publishing (DTP) process involves having to manually remove formatting from titles and subtitles. Main titles (ie. at the start of your piece) should not be formatted with any Heading attributes at all, otherwise it makes a mess of the DTP programme settings (the DTP operator can easily recognise it's a main heading because it's at the top of the page). Sub headings also should not be formatted.
Font Style
All text should be submitted in the word processor's Normal style. The actual font type and size used is not important.
Bullets Points and Ordered Lists
Single sentences written in bullet point lists or ordered (numbered) lists should normally start with a lower case letter and no full stop at the end. Bullet point/ordered lists containing multiple sentences per line are the exception to this rule.
Spaces
Double (or multiple) blank spaces should not be inserted after a full stop or other punctuation mark. Only a single space should be used.
Emphasis on Words
Do not use underlines or make all letters in a word capital or bold, instead make the emphasis by using italics.
Words Per Page
An A5 Church Magazine page consist of approx 275 words. Please try and keep your word count to multiples of half of this, i.e. half page135 words, one page 275 words, one and a half pages 410 words, two pages 550 words etc.
Numbers
Numbers should be written in the following format:
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numbers between one and ten should be written in full (unless in lists or house addresses) e.g. In the first week (not 1st) year three children will visit no. 9 High Road.
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numbers over ten should be written in figures, e.g.13
Dates and times
Dates and times should be written in the following format (elements may be left out):
Days
Days should be written:
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Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun (in lists)—three letter abbreviation
- Monday, Tuesday etc. (in sentences)—in full
Phone numbers
Phone numbers should be written as follows:
Groups
Groups should be referred to in the singular, e.g. the Committee said (not says)
Dashes
A dash between words (not hyphenated words) should be a long Em-dash
"—", not an ordinary dash "-". There should be no spaces between the Em dash and the words, e.g. "...so I will say it again—for those who didn't hear me—lock the door after you". Notice that when used mid-sentence there should be two Em dashes (used like two brackets).
Quotations
Partial quotations should be preceded by three dots and/or followed by four dots to represent missing text, e.g. "...I have pleasure in announcing today...."
Editor's extra words
Editor's extra words, when added to clarify a quote, should be surrounded by square brackets, e.g. "...so [later on] they can stand by them selves."
Email and web addresses
Email and web addresses should be written in lower case.
Initials
Initials should not be separated by full stops, i.e. RSPB, not R.S.P.B. and Mr AEL Wilson, not Mr A.E.L.Wilson
File Types
Text should be written as an .rtf file using Wordpad (included free as part of MS Windows), MS Word or any other word processor. The .rtf file should be submitted either on floppy disk or attached to an email (both should be from an up to date virus protected computer). Text should not be sent in the body of an email, because this inserts line-breaks (paragraphs) at the end of each line.
Submitting Text
Text files for the Church Magazine should be emailed/given to the editor.
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