Pitchkid Style & Punctuation Guide
Style guide last updated September 9, 2021 — What is a Pitchkid Style & Punctuation guide?
- A set of standards for the writing, formatting, and laying out WordPress posts for Emberdome Media and their websites.
MUST-READ FOR MUSIC JOURNALISTS
Kurgan Compass™
- Kurgan Compass™ is not a place for the mainstream — or those easily triggered. On Kurgan Compass™, regular geek-culture belongs with the lowest cast of society — that would be the thralls. The elites of the Kurgan, however, are those having attained Nirvana. Masters of Kundalini. They have sacrificed their third eye to the old gods. Fantastical worlds shown in video games? Kurgan-supporters already live it. IRL. To them, LARP is not a play; they go shopping in chain mail with bow and arrow — always with a couple of eight-legged horses.
- Warriors, heroes, merchants, and larger-than-life writers live (and die) on the Kurgan. Are you one of us?
- Using initial sentence contractions on the Kurgan is forbidden and punishable by death. Do not contract the first word in any sentence.
- Example: It is a rainy day… takes precedence over It’s a rainy day…
- ALWAYS include an interesting, striking, lead-in “sell” paragraph to appear below the article’s main title — the length is capped at 175 characters. This paragraph should be UNIQUE but not weird or geeky — it should be mysterious and a bit aggressive.
Yestermade™
- Yestermade™ is a place for geeks. On Yestermade™, geeks, dark academia, and intellectual honesty rule the day — high-school jockeys and superstitial chicks are frowned upon, and often kicked in the nuts/ass.
- Using contractions is fine and recommended. It’s a rainy day… as opposed to It is a rainy day…
- ALWAYS include an interesting, striking, lead-in “sell” paragraph to appear below any Yestermade™ article’s main title — the length is capped at 167 characters. This paragraph should be light-hearted, fun, informative, and/or geeky — never dry nor too short.
Headlines & Product Titles
- Headline capitalization is not irrelevant for websites that force ALLCAPS. This is because of SEO and social media sharing, where the headline font used on a website is rarely the same used by Twitter or Facebook, hence an ALLCAPS headline that is not written in Title Case looks unprofessional.
- In headlines, titles of any medium should use single quotes i.e. Capcom confirms January release date for ‘Resident Evil: Code Veronica’
- Which words should NOT be capitalized in a headline or a product title?
- Articles: a, an, and the.
- Coordinate conjunctions: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so.
- Prepositions: at, around, by, after, along, for, from, of, on, to, with, and without.
- Which words should be capitalized in a headline or product title?
- The first and last words should always be capitalized, even if they’re in the above list.
- All nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs should be capitalized.
- Subordinate conjunctions, such as after, as, because, how, who, if, than, what, why, that, when, where, whether & while.
- Commonly missed words: it (pronoun), is (verb), be (verb) and their/our/my (adjective) should all be capitalized
Long-Form Articles & Reviews Formatting
- For longer-form articles like Reviews, use subheadings to break up the article, improving overall readability.
- For example, consider breaking down the content of your article into some basic subheadings with a closing paragraph to round out your opinion at the end, as follows:
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For Editors Only: Find succinct quotes throughout the article to highlight for the reader who is likely to merely glance through any given article, attempt to catch the reader’s eye, and retain engagement.
Review Scores for Movies & Games & Music
Writers should include a review score from 1-10, plus 3-5 paragraphs or sentences for the “good” versus the ‘bad” bullet list that is included on the review block.
- Yestermade Reference Game Review:
- Kurgan Compass Reference Movie Review:
Body Text Title Stylization
- In body text/content, longer works (books, movies, games) must be italicized whereas shorter works such as song titles and magazine articles should use curly quotation marks and Title Case, for example, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
- YouTube channel names should be italicized. i.e. PewDiePie. Also, keep in mind Associated Press’ can sometimes be used as a reference for naming conventions, unless their advice conflict with this style guide, go for it!
Press Releases
- Press releases, articles, blog posts, and e-mails using the pitchkid.com sender domain (Zoho Mail) should use US English spelling — even for Europe.
Date Formatting
- Catering to international audiences, historical dates should be written as 200s instead of the 3rd century, for example.
- When referring to historical events, use BCE and CE (BCE means Before Common Era, and CE means Common era.)
- Do not use two-letter BC/AD to date historical events.
- Dates must be written as months, i.e. December 11, 2020 — to avoid confusion using. British/American date formatting versus European practices can result in dire misinterpretations. For example, 2020-01-10 can be read both as “January 1, 2020” and “January 10, 2020”.
Pitchkid Style: Always Look Pro
- Use long em dash i.e. — instead of – as often as possible. For example “Star Wars — The Imperial March” instead of “Star Wars – The Imperial March”.
- ALWAYS use curly quotes “ / ” and ‘ / ’ — also, use curly ’ apostrophes. Straight quotes and apostrophes i.e. ” / ” / ‘ are strictly forbidden.
References:
- Feel free to visit the AP .edu link below regularly to ensure articles and posts look professional.
- Alternative/short-form AP guide for curly quotes and punctuation, etc.: