Digital skills workshop given to freelance copy editors in London (July 2012).

1. Digital skills for subs
● Print vs digital
● CMS & techy elements
● Online copy editing
● Multimedia overview
● Jobs?

2. Print vs digital
What's the difference between print & digital?
What need did sub-editing fulfil for publishers?
What needs exist now and in the future?

3. What does an online sub-editor do?
Cathy Relf, Rantingsubs.com:
The boring answer is: they cut copy to fit space, correct
spellings and grammar, change copy to fit house style,
check facts are correct, write headlines and proofread.
For the web, they also source pictures, write captions and
credits, add links and optimise for search engines. Yada
yada. More things too, such as poking tardy journos, laying
out pages, clarifying meaning, finding missing information
and sometimes rejecting articles.

4. Managing online content
• CMS • Content template

5. Brief Intro to Metadata
● Data about Data
● Data: The content
Metadata: Structure, Context, Meaning

6. Metadata aimed at
● CMS - to render the article correctly
● Search Engines - to index accurately
● Readers - to contextualise the article
● Organisation - to archive and find

8. Periodical Journalism handbook - 1985

9. Human-readable Metadata

10. Machine-readable Metadata

11. Machine-readable Metadata

12. Facebook's Open Graph

13. Metadata makes Links

14. Metadata makes Links

15. Content is also Metadata

16. How Metadata emerges
Manual Automatic
● Title ● Author
● Description ● Date
● Categories ● Web Address
● Tags / Keywords

17. Basic HTML
● <b>Bold</b> <strong>Bold</strong>
● <i>Italics</i> <em>Italics</em>
● <blockquote>"Indented text."</blockquote>
● <ul>
<li>Bulletpoint list</li>
<ul>
● <a href="http://.....">Link text</a>
● <a href="mailto:xxx@email.com">Email</a>
See handout

18. <p>This is a paragraph of text. This is a paragraph of text. This part
<strong>This part is in bold</strong> is in bold and this bit is italic. Then
and <em>this bit is italic</em>. Then there's a link to another website
there's <a href="http://website.com" before the paragraph ends.
>a link to another website</a> before
the paragraph ends.</p>
In this paragraph there's a quote
<p>In this paragraph there's a quote which is indented:
which is indented:
I'm a quote which is indented
<blockquote>I'm a quote which is
The quote is by a person and their
indented</blockquote>
name is linked to their email address.
The quote is by <a href="mailto:
person@email.com">a person</a>
and their name is linked to their email Here is a list:
address.</p> ● Item 1
<p>Here is a list: ● Item 2
<ul><li>Item 1</li> ● Last Item
<li>Item 2</li>
<li>Last item</li></ul></p>

20. 5 tips for online headlines
• Clarity over cleverness
• Delivers on its promise
• Stands alone
• 40-60 characters - frontloaded
• Google tools

21. Which heads/sells work?

22. 5 tips for intros
• Stands alone and delivers
• 'Must read more' factor
• Frontload the good stuff
• 250 characters - intro/metadescription
• Alternative keywords

23. Keywords
from
Google's
Keyword
Tool

24. How to edit body copy - ideas?

25. 1. Break up running copy
• Sections with subheads
• Q&A format
• List format
• Bulletpoints, images, blockquotes
• Use shorter paragraphs/sentences

26. 2. Getting the right tone
• Site personality (brand)
• Variations across content types
• Check the narrative mode
• Don't oversub or 'featurise' blogs
• Slang, jargon and SEO

27. 3. "SEO the copy!"
What does this mean?
Google SEO starter guide:
http://www.google.
com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-
optimization-starter-guide.pdf
SEO best practices webinar:
http://www.mstoner.com/blog/marketing-and-
branding/seo-best-practices-webinar-recording-
now-available/

28. 'The ultimate editor'
"In print media, what matters most is engaging prose. In
digital media, what matters most is visibility... The ultimate
editor, the filter between you and your reader, is
humourless and passionless. An algorithm."
- Antonia Senior in The Guardian
"Search engines are in the business of bringing an
audience to their paid advertising customers - they do this
by offering a quality search experience."
- Mark Sheehy, M Stoner

29. SERPs

30. My quick SEO checklist for editors
• Post useful, engaging, relevant content
• Use tools to find keywords
• Top keywords in page titles and headlines
• Sprinkle don't stuff!
• Include relevant slang or jargon
• Alternatives & word endings: -ings -es -ed
• Go niche to beat the competition
• Proper names, nouns and titles in full
• Must-click metadescription

31. 4. Edit for easy scanning
• People read in an F shape

32. Editing for scanning readers
• Head/sell most important
• De-waffle start of paragraphs
• Subheadings
• Pull out/emphasise but avoid underlining
• Use links with relevant link text

33. 5. Links - why are they important?
● What the web is built on
● People want and expect “linky-ness"
● Currency of the web
● Link karma
● Marketing/networking
● Stickiness
● Transparency/trust

34. Q: When to link?

35. A:
● Explanation or definition
● Context or background
● Attribution of source content
● Required by © licence
● Navigation to related material
● Email links to a contact
● Google juice

36. Links need link text
● Use short, relevant text
● Rewrite 'click here'
● For PDF links, add: (PDF)
Subbing in a doc or content template?
Underline the link/anchor text http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text and paste
the link next to it – as here – to let the uploader know which words are to form
the link. (Remove the underline in the CMS.)

37. How to create a link
Two ways to turn text into a link in a CMS:
1. Visual editor: highlight text, click chain icon
and paste the URL: Ebay
2. HTML editor: write it out in HTML:
<a href="http://www.ebay.co.uk">Ebay</a>

38. 5 final tips on body copy
• Widows
• Smart quotes
• Copyfitting
• Call to action
• Ask 'Why?'

39. Styling the copy
Within editing screen of CMS
Bold <b> <strong>
Italic <i> <em>
Indented quote <blockquote>
Section Heading <h3> <h4>
Lists <ul><li>
<ol><li>
See HTML cheat sheet.

40. Styling the copy
Looked after by the general website styles
● Headlines
● Standfirst
● Colours
● Metadata
● Links

41. Review so far
CMS & content templates
Metadata
HTML
Headlines
Intros
Body copy (structure, tone)
SEO
Links
Styling copy

42. In Print
Distances measured in Points
1 point = 1/12 pica = 1/72 inch
12pt type will be exactly 1/6" high on paper

43. On Screen
Resolution measured in pixels.
21" screen 1920 x 1080
Laptop 1280 x 800
iPad 1024 x 768
Smartphone 480 x 320

44. 1280 x 800 pixels

45. 1024 x 768 pixels

46. 800 x 500 pixels

47. Type is 11 pixels high

50. Resize an image - Photoshop

51. Resize an image - Skitch

52. Resize an image - Wordpress

53. Resize an image - online
resizeyourimage.com
shrinkpictures.com

54. How to resize a YouTube video

55. Multimedia checklist
● Resize images/video for web use
● Use to break up heavy text
● Does multimedia content match the copy?
● Check copyright permissions/credits
● If audio/video is main story, include a
transcription or summary of content for
accessibility and good SEO practice
● Accessibility check
- alt text on all images
- beware visual-based instructions

56. More on accessibility
● Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) 2.0
● Yahoo! Style Guide on gauging accessibility
● Fangs tool on Firefox browser
● Slideshow about accessible content

57. Pressing publish & final checks
• Beware sub's notes – Oh you dummy!
• What exactly happens when you publish?
• Cross-platform checks
• Errors: amend, strike through or update note

58. Post-publishing tasks
• Social media work and social bookmarking
• Monitor and respond to comments
• Analytics and iterative editing

59. Contact details
Email
fionacullinan@hotmail.com
Twitter
@fionacullinan @peteashton
Blog / Website
fionacullinan.com peteashton.com

60. Content strategist Scott Abel: http://thecontentwrangler.com/