This page provides guidance on how to prepare material for inclusion in the Second Nature newsletter (SN). Much of it also applies to content for the website. It is not meant to be prescriptive and other website editors are free to ignore it.

In general the function of a style guide is to make a publication look like it was all written by the same person, or at least that there are common conventions (so for example, if it says 'u3a is' in one paragraph is doesn't say 'u3a are' in the next paragraph). The style guide exists to promote clarity and consistency, not correctness: if you have strong views on my use of grammar please keep them to yourself.

Articles for the newsletter

By 'articles' I meant large chunks of text which may contain links and images. Shorter chunks of text can be sent by email. I prefer articles to come in as docx or the Google docs equivalent: not pdf please, because it is hard to move text from pdf into Mailchimp.

It's good to keep articles fairly short - 'How it works: carbon dioxide' in Second Nature 020 is a good example of what I like.

The newsletter is science-based but generally the style should be that of a quality newspaper, not that of a scientific paper. I'm not particularly interested in promoting doomism, degrowth or the overthrow of capitalism, although I accept that there are valid arguments for these things.

Please proof read your stuff and run it through the spilling chocker.

Mailchimp

Articles are entered into Mailchimp using what they call the 'legacy builder'. Images and links have to be entered separately. Once created the version in Mailchimp is the master copy, unless there is a good reason to go back to square one and start over. If you want to change your text after that point then a docx with changes tracked is best. (If you don't know how to do this, google 'word track changes').

The newsletter is sent out using Mailchimp. Once it's gone, it's gone.

Web content

We are not professional website designers, but we have a public-facing website and it should look like we care what it looks like. That means maintaining a standard look-and-feel which in Siteworks is imposed by the template that you use (we use the standard blue one) and by the menu structure that we set up. Going to PDF takes you away from both these things, and also makes it more likely that the user will bounce. There are other disadvantages: browsers can’t choose how to render the content, for example, and Siteworks doesn’t provide stats on how often it is viewed. And we can't fix typos.

So by default convert incoming docs to web pages. It’s a lot easier to do that from Word than from PDF. We should make an exception for docs that we are archiving (eg newsletters) and for those that are designed to be printed (eg handouts). For subsequent versions, please use Word with tracked changes.

A

Abbreviations without the dots please, eg USA not U.S.A.; similarly I don't bother with dots in ie or eg. It's a good idea to explain abbreviations and acronyms when they are first used, unless they are in common use. I wouldn't bother explaining Defra, for example, or Nato. See also Acronyms.

Acronyms Acronyms in this context are abbreviations that can be pronounced as words. Write these as if they are proper nouns; write other abbreviations in upper case - so Defra, but DESNZ.

Approval If I make significant changes to your text I will sent it to you for approval, which you can withhold; otherwise my decisions as editor are final. They may seem arbitrary but I hope not unreasonable.

C

Carbon in the literature some authors with refer to tonnes of carbon (C) and some to tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2). Make it clear which one you are using, and don't mix the two in the same article. Any schoolgirl will tell you that to get from tonnes of C to tonnes of CO2, multiply by 44/12.

CMG is I think an acceptable abbreviation for the Climate Matters Group. I'm going to use it anyway.

CO2 meaning carbon dioxide is acceptable. CH4 for methane is also OK, but probably best to explain it the first time you use it. CO2e means 'CO2 equivalent' and is often used to describe the warming effect of greenhouse gases other than CO2 itself.

Compound adjectives I am old school and I like to see them hypenated, eg 'long-term'. There are dangers in dropping the hyphen (as in the well-known example 'students get first hand job experience').

Contact details I don't publish your full name and contact details without your permission: if you include them in your article I will assume that you have given permission. If you are a regular contributor (or intend to be) and would like to receive feedback by email I suggest that you set up a separate email account for this. This is easy in gmail, I don't know how it is done for other mail services; don't ask me, ask google.

E

Exclamation marks! use them sparingly, and never more than one!!!

I

IGO is an acceptable abbreviation of Interest Group Online.

It's great to include images in articles, but please also send them as separate files. Resolution should be SVGA, so screen shots are best. If you send 6Mb images I will screenshot them: if you don't want me to do that, tell me (and tell me why).

By default larger images in the newsletter will be 550 px wide and smaller ones 220 px.

Integers use the usual broadsheet convention where numbers one to ten are in words and 11 and up as numbers. It just looks better.

L

Links please don't exposing the http in links - it looks amateur. So that means:

For climate change basics, go to The Met Office's What is Climate Change

Rather than

For climate change basics, go to The Met Office's What is climate change https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change/what-is-climate-change.

Editors also need to decide, case-by-case, whether a link should open in a new tab. We can’t control that if the text is in PDF.

N

Net zero net zero when it is a noun, net-zero when it is an adjective, ie 'the road to net zero', but 'net-zero policies'.

References in articles I prefer to receive a fully-referenced text (Natural Climate Solutions is an example) and then I can decide which links to copy into Mailchimp. I may upload the fully-referenced text to the website and link to it from SN.

Q

Quality newspaper a publication that aligns with your political views.

S

SN an abbreviation for Second Nature; SN018 for Issue 18, for example. If creating a website link, Second Nature 018.

T

TAT is singular, not plural.

team is singular, not plural.

temperature centigrade not fahrenheit please; kelvin if appropriate in a scientific context.

that I like to include 'that' after verbs where it makes sense, ie 'he said that wind turbines were a bad idea'. This isn't general usage these days, so drop it if you must, but be consistent and don't mix the two styles.

Tool Kit some editors prefer 'Tool Kit' to 'Toolkit', so indulge them and ignore your dictionary.

U

u3a is singular, not plural.

United States US will do fine.

Page owner: John Baxter