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Ink 19 Staff Wiki

Style Guide

Copy editing aims to check spurious facts, spelling, and grammar, and to provide style consistency within each article and across Ink 19. It’s a high aim.

Writers should double check their own work before submitting for copy editing.

  • Spell everyone’s names correctly — let’s not insult the artists we are reviewing.
  • Read your final story and correct any errors in spelling, capitalization, and grammar.
  • Check Quicktags and other formatting.
  • Include a real URL in the article form.
  • Add a featured image.
  • Double check the publicist’s email address.

Basics

  • Purdue Online Writing Lab is a good resource.
  • Plurals never need apostrophes.
  • Apostrophes replace what you’re deleting: ’70s.
  • We rock the Harvard comma (Mike D, Ad-Rock, and MCA).
  • Commas go inside the quotes (“She’s Crafty,” “Girls,” and “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn”).
  • Do not be tempted to run two, three, or four sentences together, as one.
  • Use the HTML for em dashes — sparingly for emphasis.
  • Album, movie, play, and book titles (large works) are italic: _Paul's Boutique_.
  • Song, chapter, and episode titles (parts of works) are in quotes: “She’s Crafty.”
  • There is never any need to use bold or underline in a story, make use of your own words to emphasize.
  • Capitalize album titles the way they are on the recording.

Writing

  • Is it interesting?
  • Did you use real words, make a point, have something to say?
  • Does the review give relevant details and include enough to give an idea of the full material?

A Note about Rights

  • Ink 19 doesn’t generally publish stories that have already run elsewhere (other print or online magazines, Amazon.com, other review sites). If you have a question, ask an editor.
  • Once your story runs on Ink 19, it’s your story. You can do what you like with it. We do ask that you credit the original Ink 19 article wherever possible: “originally appeared on ink19.com on <date>” or similar is sufficient.