by Leo Wiles
19 August 2015
I have been freelancing for some years now and pitching is the toughest. I’m not a journalist by trade, and editors tend to use terms that I don’t know – coverlines, standfirst etc. It may seem straightforward to those in the industry but guidelines provided by some magazines rely on such terms and it would be awesome if you or someone in the know could explain what they mean in plain English. Petra
Rach and I both learnt on the job. Coming on at a senior level, though, you’re right that people’s expectations are higher and you’ll need to hit the ground running. So here’s a crash course of publishing’s common terms and phrases. Granted, you probably won’t need most of them, but once I got started I couldn’t stop. Ah, the nostalgia!
Banner – Catchy headline located at the top of a double-paged spread.
Basement – Describes the copy that runs at the bottom of a page.
Beat – Like a policeman newspaper journos have a geographic patch known as their beat. In magazines your beat is your niche such as Royals, or like you, Petra, medical.
Blob – Sadly not a 1950’s horror flick, this refers to the bullet points used to break up lists.
Breakout – Rather than mob flash dancing this is where you have a fab bit of info that doesn’t fit in the main body of your story and is strong enough to be a stand alone, albeit small, piece. If more than 40 words it could be long enough to run as a sidebar. Which is where the designer will run the main body over three quarters of a DPS using the last quarter page for your sidebar.
Buried lede – Finger waggling and tutting accompany this mistake of literally burying the most newsworthy elements of your story within instead of making them your hook.
Church and State – A polite metaphor referring to the ongoing battle between advertising (state) and editorial (church). The line is there as often advertising tries to strong arm editorial decision-making to increase revenue but by doing so destroys the title’s credibility. Can you tell I am slightly biased here…
Closed question – The last thing any journo worth their salt should be asking is one that allows the interviewee to answer yes or no.
Colour piece – Break out the adjectives and emoticons with all those classic ‘how did that make you feel’ quotes. Often accompanied by an intro that describes the location, the person’s clothes, manner, way of speaking etc. so that the reader feels like they were there.
(Corr) – The bracketed abbreviation for correct that follows an interviewees names and lets the subs know that you have already fact checked the information and know it’s correctly spelt.
Cover line – We’ve talked a lot about how you should think in coverlines when pitching. Basically, coverlines are those deceptively simple, short sexy teaser lines of copy on the cover. Although brainstorming them can take hours, as they are that important a tool in enticing would-be readers to choose your mag over its competitor. Doing so was one of my favourite parts of being in-house. As growing up my parents and I would watch the news and create headlines over dinner for fun – yes people I am that nerdy!
Cuts job – Not to be confused with the examples of your work clippings or cuts. A cuts job is a plagiaristic piece put together, kinda like an unattributed Storify, to read like you interviewed someone but built from previous pieces.
Death knock – Hopefully a phrase you will never encounter as it alludes to a journo waiting outside the house of a recently bereaved family to find out how they feel about their loss.
Dinkus – Having worked in the last days of London’s Wapping printing presses located in the same grounds as my daily newspaper, this is my all time favourite. A nostalgia inducing term meaning a small drawing or shape that breaks up a body of text, or is used for pull quotes.
DPS – Shorthand for double page spread.
Editorialise – A derogatory description for writing in an opinionated manner. Generally held in the same regard by old school journos as advertortials and features written with no balance from the writers’ point of view… lazy and purile – need I say more.
Filler – That crappy story that still runs because there is nothing else to fill the space. Or it’s been paid for and it’s the end of the fiscal year where every department’s budget is under scrutiny.
Full bleed – To take an image to the edges of a page.
Gutter – Often white this is the vertical blank margin between two pages.
Hard copy – A printed out version versus the soft copy (ie, the digitised version).
Hard news – A succinct, factual, version of events versus soft news, the gossipy tabloid fodder version or one of non-essential information – best to be avoided unless you’re writing lifestyle.
Hook – Otherwise known as the strongest part of your story. Grabbing you from the get go, it is the angle that weaves through your piece.
House style – The words, phrases, political point of view and word count expected by a particular title of its writers.
Human Interest – Choosing to write a story highlighting the effects of a new legislation, law or budget cut etc, by interviewing those most affected and telling it based on their personal account.
Inverted pyramid – Just as it sounds, this upside down triangle was how my cadetship news editor explained the best way to write news stories -with the most important details at the top. An especially good technique when you have a sub who cuts from the bottom!
Masthead – Literally the name of the magazine that appears at the top of the cover so that on a newsstand it can still be read.
Middle of the book – A mag phrase that refers normally to the long lead material such as health, wealth and lifestyle that can be done months in advance, encased in the short lead and picture lead pieces wrapping it.
Orphans and Widows – To be avoided! This refers to that awkward word or letters left by themselves; eg, the ‘orphan’ in print is the first line of a paragraph appearing on the last line of a column of text, while the ‘widow’ is the last line of paragraph appearing on the first line of a column of text.
Pad – Referring to the need to make your piece longer by padding it out with quotes, facts or waffle that didn’t make the grade in your first draft.
Phoner – A now too common way to interview people over the phone rather than a traditional face to face / sit down / one-to-one.
Pull quotes – The eye catching quote, often in bold and a large point, to entice people to read the feature.
Segue – Often used in broadcast radio, this is the bridge from one piece to another. It can also be used in copy to enhance a feature’s flow.
Spill line – Not that grease spot left over from lunch but the text at the bottom of a page revealing where readers can find the rest of the story i.e. ‘to be continued on page 112’.
Slug – The key word or acronym working title of a story on the flatplan as it moves through production.
Spike – I am old enough to remember the Chief sub’s metal spike where he would gleefully impale copy (thankfully never mine) that was destined never to see the light of day. These days we refer to it as killing a story and paying a kill fee to freelancers which is normally a reasonable percentage of the commissioned fee.
Standfirst – Denotes the introductory paragraph.
Stet – A Latin verb meaning Let it Stand used by editors or subs for proof readers to ignore the previous changes marked up on copy. Reiterated by a series of dots underneath the passage with stet circled beside it.
Strapline (AKA tagline or sell) – This term refers to the line of text located under your headline is there to provide a snappy summary that makes the reader want to read more.
Sub-editor – The increasingly undervalued journos responsible for checking that copy is factual, that the spelling and grammar is correct and that it reflects the house style and tone of the magazine. They’re also responsible for all those clever headlines, sells, captions and so on. A good sub can add much needed flair and polish to a sub-standard piece.
Subhead in Australia (cross head in the UK) – A term used to denote the headline, often in bold and underlined, inserted midway in a lengthy column or large body of text to break it up visually.
Title case – Using a capital at the beginning of each word, except for; of, and, and the, in a headline, strapline or sell.
Typo – A term journos use to save face and say they’ve mistyped something rather than admit they didn’t know how to spell it… or is that just me.
### – Not a regular hashtag, this is an old fashioned way to indicate to the subs that this is the intentional end of your story. Personally I’ve always used ENDS. An old habit from the days when I removed pieces of paper from my Brother typewriter and needed to indicate that there weren’t pages missing.
Do you have other terms and phrases you use on a regular basis to add to this list? Or any nostalgic terms you remember that aren’t used anymore?
Flatplan – allows you to see all the pages of copy and ads at a glance. I remember when they were done with little print-outs on the wall, stuck under a special rail.
Me too Alison! Do you also recall when you’d stand around with the other dept. heads and shuffle them around to get the best contrast and flow throughout – ahhh the golden years working with a braintrust of experienced and passionate professionals.
Thanks Leo! I always thought a dinkus was the symbol that came at the end of the feature, like how you’ve defined ###, which is particularly useful when the feature runs over several pages and may be broken up by other items in between. I may be confusing it with a dingbat. Interesting to find out a dinkus is any section break (which Word annoyingly automatically changes to a line).