Aloha, Shipmates.
I hope today was a great day for all. What did I learn today? I was reminded today of how cool it really is to be in the Navy. I attended a retirement ceremony for a master chief with 22 years of service. It was a fun ceremony. However, the grammar geek in me took the opportunity to look for tips for today's blog as I was reading through the program.
The program was very nicely done by our graphics shop here at PACFLT ... MC2 Patrick Murray and our summer intern, John Hendrickson. However, as I was reading through the bios, I was reminded of how inconsistent these bios are from person to person. MCC Eric Harrison and I laughed about it last week or so about putting ship's names in ALL CAPS or italicizing them.
I think we should do whatever the retiree wants in his or her programs and such, but we should be consistent in the document. As for our news writing, I think we should adhere to AP Style and capitalize only the first letter. I say this in reference to external releases only, because when we are at a command or on a ship, we need to follow what the skipper wants. We can fight that battle all day and night, but when it is the skipper's newspaper ... well, hello local style.
Any thoughts?
One last thing ... today's photo was taken by MC2 Kyle D. Gahlau. Great photo, Shipmate!
Have a great weekend ...
Write on!
I adjust my releases depending on where it is being sent. I did not always do this, but I try to not send something to an editor that he/she will need to make a lot of changes. For my own internal publications, I try to remain faithful to AP.
ReplyDeleteI have a suggestion for a future topic - what do people think of the fact we don't put the abbreviation after the first reference. It is still hard for me since when I went to DINFOS they used to do that. Plus the people at my command think I should be doing it.
Thanks for the post, Shipmate! We need to take the extra time needed to reach out to our audiences, I believe.
ReplyDeleteAs for the other subject. We will tackle that one soon.
So much time was wasted on my last ship, as the old XO, an English major, kept sending my stories back because he had 'fixed' them. Correspondence manual dictates all caps for ship's names I believe, and I was using AP Stylebook. It was for external release. It's frustrating but eventually he saw how and where his corrections were getting corrected and realized I knew what I was doing all along, but it had to take that third party to cement that. MC1 (SW) Brian Biller
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