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How to: master online sub-editing (part one)

Posted: 04/09/09 By: Danielle Colyer

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Successful sub-editing for the web essentially requires learning how to adapt, develop and, in some cases, move away from 'traditional' subbing skills. This guide focuses on how to approach text articles to optimise a story's online exposure.

How should I approach the words?
The short, and perhaps obvious answer to this is, treat online words differently from words going to print. Sarah Hartley, digital editor at the Guardian, tells Journalism.co.uk it's a good idea to adopt the KISS approach - 'Keep It Simple, Stupid!'

If a reporter has written complicated flowery prose, replace it with short, active and easily understood sentences containing plenty of keywords.

Keywords
Keywords are the online sub-editor's best friend - making sure they appear early on in the story will mean stories are easily found by search engines. Prime keywords will be people, places, names and events. Think about what words a reader would type into Google to find a particular story.

But don't be tempted to cheat by subbing a story's intro into an epic list of keywords. This is known as Spamglish and, as digital editor Christian Dunn points out: "It will turn readers off and search engines will take a very dim view of it if they find out."

Using simple synonyms will add to your list of keywords, which are crucial to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is as much about how you present the words as the words themselves. Make sure the reporter hasn't saved important information until the end of the story - tell your reader everything in the first paragraph. Yes, you are 'ruining' the surprise, but that's exactly what you want to do.

The internet is not a novel, so the pages will be skim-read by eyes hungry for the facts of the story. Ensure whoever has written the story has put the main details of the event high up and kept them brief.

Keep it brief
Brevity is 'one of the basic skills an online journalist needs', writes Paul Bradshaw on the Online Journalism Blog. Keep sentences, paragraphs and articles tight and succinct, written as blocks or chunks of text so they can be easily skimmed by the reader.

The online sub-editor can have more flexibility with using bold text, bullet points, and sub-headings than is often acceptable in print, so take advantage of this. Bullet points are great for summarising chains of events, or making facts and figures more palatable to the reader.

Clever use of sub-heads can also break the story up into 'manageable' sections - defined by key points or events - which will draw the reader’s eye further down the page.

Writing headlines
Headlines on the web, as with print platforms, need to draw the reader in. Writing effective online headlines takes time and practice to perfect, but unlike print, if it doesn't work, you can simply change it as the story updates.

Online headlines need to be short and sweet: comprised of keywords with fewer puns, wordplay and metaphors. If you can, try to fit a summary of the story into 60 characters, as Google will only recognise the first 60 characters of a headline and RSS feeds also often cut the headline off after 60 characters.

Read part two of 'How to: master online sub-editing', covering multimedia and interactivity.

Read other Journalism.co.uk 'how to' guides at this link.

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