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Headers

The standard header for a story consists of two lines: the slugline and headline. Extra lines may be added for bylines (the word By is capitalized) or editorial advisory lines (the word Eds: is capitalized and followed by a colon and a message starting with a capital letter). The final line of the header (whether it be the headline, byline or the Eds: line) must end with a letter space and an "equals" sign ( = ). This is necessary for customer computer systems to recognize where the editorial header ends and the text starts.

Slugs

The slugline must consist of no more than 22 characters including the slash (i.e. a maximum of 21 letters). It usually gives the country or region the story is centred on and the subject: e.g. Germany-Government/. If a Singapore newspaper were to pick up on U.S.-Chinese relations, the slug would be US-China with Singapore as the dateline.
These two words in the slug must be hyphenated and end with an oblique or stroke.

Countries that have two-word names should be abbreviated and closed up so there is no space in the slug:
S.Africa-Gold/ (not "South Africa-")
US-Clinton/ (not "U.S.-")
S.Korea-Defector/ (not "South Korea-")
Bosnia-Peace/ (not "Bosnia-Herzegovina-")
PNG-Island/ (not "Papua New Guinea-")
CongoBraz-Crisis/
N.Ireland-Conflict
NewZealand-Maori (not "New Zealand")

It is permissible to use the name of a major organization or event instead of the country in a slugline:
UN-Assembly/
OPEC-Conference/
Olympics-Medals/

A sport can also be the first part of a slug: Tennis-Germany/

Roundups that combine related slugs may be given a single-word slug, e.g. Bosnia-Fighting/, Bosnia-US/ and Bosnia-Reaction/ may be combined into a roundup that is simply slugged Bosnia/

Headlines

Unlike the slug, the headline should contain the name of the country in full, e.g. Northern Ireland, New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa. Abbreviations like UN, US or EU appear without periods in the slugline, but with periods (U.N., U.S. or E.U.) in the headline and text.

Cap up: FEATURE, NEWS FEATURE, ANALYSIS, BACKGROUND, PROFILE, RESULTS, HOLD, KILL, CORRECTION, 1ST LEAD, ROUNDUP, LEADALL, URGENT

Categories

There are five news categories and an advisory code for transmitting on the dpa wire:

i - politics

u - general interest (customers will see this as "X")

f - finance, business, economics

e - entertainment, culture, religion, science, technology

s - sports

v - editorial advisories

   Style Guide Home | Index of Key Words | Sports Slugs previous  table of contents  next 


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