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Author-in-Residence, Day 5...some final words.

Well, not really final words - I'm not going anywhere!

But here are a couple of little reminders; issues that have been cropping up over the last couple of weeks of me looking at your film reviews.

1. Use italics for film names, and don't forget the date after the first mention; it makes it clearer to the reader that it is a title of a film rather than a thing.  Take, for example, this -  Ridley Scott's Alien.  What!? Ridley Scott has an actual Alien??  Once you write Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), it all becomes clearer.

2. Likewise, use italics for quotes; it helps the reader separate the quote from the rest of the text.  If you quote is more than 3 lines long, you should indent it, and leave a line space above and below it.
 
3. What to do if bits of information needed for a bibliography are missing -
If there is no date use (s.d.) in its place. s.d. stands for sine die, or no date.
If no publisher is given, use (s.n.) instead. s.n. means sine nomine, or no name.
If there is no place of publication use (s.l.) instead. s.l. means sine loco, or no location.
 
4. What if there are several authors? If there are 2 authors, just put the surnames and initials as normal, ie Hagan, J. and Gomm, P.   If there are more than 2, you can use et al, which means 'and others', so Hagan, J. et al.

5.Think about your readers eyes! No tiny fonts that we are going to struggle to read please... and likewise, nothing too swirly and fancy, especially if it means that you are unable to distinguish the italics etc. Just stick to a good old reliable one, like Arial etc.


Ok, that'll do for now I think- if anything else crops up that I think would be useful, 'I'll be back' (Schwarzenegger, 1984) ! :)



Comments

  1. Hey Jackie :)

    Thanks so much for all your daily postings - golden nuggets of wisdom! :)

    ReplyDelete

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