Journalistic Writing Style Rules

This quiz will serve as a refresher on the style rules that apply to journalistic writing, as we discussed in class at the beginning of the semester.

You can take the quiz TWO times in order to achieve your best grade.

Use the following list of journalistic writing style rules as a guide as you take the quiz. Think of this as an "open book" quiz.

JOURNALISTIC WRITING STYLE RULES:

- Use formal, professional language. Avoid slang

- Do not use contractions. (Unless you are quoting someone)

- Write in third person. (Do not use "I," "we," "you," "in my opinion," etc.
- Write in past tense.
- Never abbreviate days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.)

- Punctuation goes inside of the quotation marks. For instance, "We played a great game," said Billy.
- When you first refer to someone who's quoted in a story, use their full name and job title if applicable. On the second and all subsequent references, use just their last name.
- Generally, writing should be concise (brief and straight to the point), and paragraphs should be kept short.
- Headlines of articles should contain a verb. For instance, "Girls Basketball Rides Hot Streak"
- When writing numbers, spell out the numbers one through nine, and use the numerals for any number greater than 10.  

- When writing a date, months over five letters long (all months except for March, April, May, June, and July) should be abbreviated (ex: Dec. for December). For the day of the month, use the number (ex: Dec. 15). Only include the year if necessary. For instance, it is not necessary to include "2017" in an article about our current basketball team.