13. Underscoring.—Underscore once for italics, twice for small capitals, and three times for CAPITALS. Use wave-line underscoring to indicate display type. Many newspapers have abandoned italic type and small capitals altogether, because their linotype machines carry only two kinds of type, and black-face type is needed for headlines, etc. Because of this, where one formerly might underscore a word for emphasis, it is necessary now to reword the sentence altogether.
14. Corrections.—When it is necessary to strike out letters or words from copy, run the pen or pencil through them and draw a line between those to be set up together. Do not enclose in parentheses words to be erased. A printer will not omit, but will set up in type, parentheses and everything enclosed within them. When a letter or word has been wrongly stricken out, it may be restored by making a series of dots immediately beneath and writing the word stet in the margin. Two letters, words, or phrases that one wishes transposed may be so indicated by drawing a continuous line over the first and under the second and writing tr in the margin. A capital letter that should be a small letter may be so indicated by drawing a line downward from right to left through the letter. Because of the haste frequently necessary in writing copy, it has become a trick of the trade to enclose within a circle an abbreviation, a figure, or an ampersand that the writer desires the printer to spell out in full. Do not "ring" a figure or a number, however, without being sure it should be spelled out. It is much easier for a copy-reader to ring a number that needs to be spelled out than to erase an unnecessary circle. If it is necessary to have the printer set up slangy, misspelled, or improperly capitalized words, or ungrammatical or poorly punctuated sentences, put in the margin, Follow Copy. For illustrations of these corrections, the reader may examine the specimen proof sheet on page [276].
15. The End.—Mark the completion of the story with an end mark, a #, or the figure 30 in a circle, the telegrapher's sign indicating the end of a day or a night report. Then read carefully every page of the copy, correcting every error, no matter how slight. Finally, give it to the city editor, unfolded if possible, but never rolled. If it is inconvenient to keep the pages flat, they may be folded lengthwise. Folding crosswise makes the copy inconvenient to handle. The sheets should not be pinned together. The pin betrays the novice.
16. The Story in Type.—A reporter should read his story with painstaking care after it has appeared in print, to detect any errors that may have crept into it since it left his hands and to note what changes have been made at the city desk. It is told of a reporter, now a star man on a leading New York daily, that he used to keep carbon copies of all his stories and compare them word for word with the articles as they appeared in the paper. Only in this way can a writer change his style for the better and learn what is expected of him.
II. PUNCTUATION
17. Rules.—While every well-regulated newspaper has rules of its own governing the use of capital letters, commas, dashes, parentheses, and other marks of punctuation, and any article written by a reporter will be punctuated according to the individual style of the paper in which it is printed, no matter how it may have been punctuated originally, it is nevertheless worth while to offer the following general rules of punctuation for the guidance of news writers. And it would be well for every properly trained journalist to have these rules well in hand; for in the eyes of the editor and the printer, bad punctuation is worse than bad spelling, because the meaning of a misspelled word usually can be deciphered, while that of an improperly punctuated sentence is often hopeless. For one, therefore, who hopes to do successful journalistic work a thorough knowledge of the following rules of punctuation is practically a necessity.
1. Capital Letters
18. Proper Names.—Capitalize all proper names. A proper name is one that designates a particular person, place, or thing. In particular:
19. Titles of Books, etc.—Capitalize the first word and all the important words in the titles of books, newspapers, magazines, magazine articles, poems, plays, pictures, etc.: that is, the first word and all other words except articles, demonstratives, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, relative pronouns, and other pronouns in the possessive case. A the preceding the title of a newspaper or a magazine is regarded as part of the title and is capitalized.
Right.—Two copies of The Atlanta Constitution were produced.