When you’re writing for an online publication such as Reality TV Calendar, there are a few formatting details that can make a tremendous difference to your readership. These guidelines are based on editor Ron Lemon’s experience with making Reality TV Calendar one of the two most popular Reality TV article sites on the internet, with a monthly readership averaging a half million unique visitors. While this style guide is specifically for Reality TV articles, it should apply to any articles or blogs desiring a large readership.

Most articles are written as plain text - and that’s good! A Word .doc document, a .txt plain text file, or the text in the body of an email are all fine. If you do additional formatting, that’s fine too; see the Bold and Italic guide further down the page.

Title or Headline
The name of the show should appear first. This will improve your ranking for both Google Search and Google News. Example:

Survivor Panama: Exile Island - A Twisted Version of Survivor Palau

As you can see from the above example, a shorter title is generally better. Keep it to 35 characters if you can. “A Twisted Version of Survivor Palau” is just about right. But don’t get too ironbound about that! Pick what you feel is the right title, to convey the sense of your article, and the editor will know how best to take it from there.

Lead Sentence of the Article
The lead sentence (the first text after the title) should include the title of the show. For example the recap of Survivor could have the opening sentence In this week’s episode of Survivor Panama: Exile Island Terry, Sally, and Austin face discouraging odds. The reason you include the article title in both the article title and lead sentence, is that the news feed readers such as Google News treat them separately.

Be aware that many of the news readers only show the first few words. Use those first words to tell your audience what the article is about! Here are some recent listings from Google, to give you an idea of what information is presented:

Survivor Panama: Exile Island - A Twisted Version of Survivor …
Reality TV Calendar, Canada - 22 hours ago
After this weeks edition of Survivor Panama: Exile Island I am suddenly anti-Terry! Why wouldn't he just give that hidden immunity …

Cheese Burger Choices on Survivor Panama: Exile Island Reality TV Calendar
"Does This Look Red To You?" Commentary by ChipLeader Reality TV Calendar
Survivor Panama: Exile Island - Terry Commits to Engage Reality TV Calendar
all 5 related »

As you see, there’s not much there beyond the article’s title, so that title needs to be short and effective!

Numbers 1 through 10
Any number, 1 through 10, should be spelled out in the article. I should have written, “Any number, one through ten…” Write eight rather than 8, 29 rather than twenty-nine. If you begin a sentence with a number, spell out the number. In other words, never begin a sentence with a digit! Long numbers should never begin a sentence.

… (elipsis) and - (dash)
Avoid using “…” and “-” as much as you can. Browsers tend to mangle your writing when they encounter them. If you do use a dash - do it like this - with a space on both sides of the dash.

Avoid long strings of text without any space in it, such as a long URL or things like this/that/other-choices. Browsers will mangle your article unless you leave it a space to know where to wrap the line.

Paragraph Length
Long paragraphs are harder to read than short paragraphs.

See if you can break your longer paragraphs into shorter paragraphs. When your article is posted on the Web, that extra white space makes it easier for your readers to follow what you’re saying.

These three paragraphs in this Paragraph Length section could have been combined as a single paragraph. If this article were in a book or print magazine, they should have been! But, as you can see, breaking it up does make it easier for your eye to follow. Each time you’re making a fresh statement (as with each of these three paragraphs), consider starting a new paragraph.

Proof Read
If you’re going to write an article that you want other people to read - after all, that’s why you wrote it - proof read it before you post it, and check it again as you post or send it! Spell check, or whatever works for you.

Optional Formatting with Bold and Italic
If you wish to use HTML formatting tags and you know what you’re doing, you are welcome to use them when submitting articles to Reality TV Calendar. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry, the editor will do it for you.

If you do tag your article with bold and italic, use <b> for bold and <i> for italic. Avoid using <strong> and <em>. <strong> and <em> can confuse some of the older browsers, sometimes rendering in bold and sometimes in italics.

I use boldface type for the headings within the article. I do NOT use the h1, h2, h3 heading labels - because those can get mangled in syndication. If you stick to only using boldface and italics, you should be fine. By using as little formatting as possible, neither the editor nor the search engine will be able to ruin your writing very easily.

When you’re intermixing blow-by-blow recap with your own running commentary, there is no need to distinguish the two with different type face, italics, whatever. The whole recap is your commentary and observation - so the whole thing can be plain text.

Reality TV Article Check List
There is a reason that commercial airline pilots use check lists. We don’t want them to overlook or forget something important! This page is my article checklist. I check here to make sure I have things right. Whenever I get feedback from the editor, I add it to the checklist, so I’ll remember to have it right the next time.

My current check list:

1. Is the TV show’s name in the article title? Are you consistently naming the show the same way?
2. Does the lead sentence also include the name of the show?
3. Have you checked for 1-10, …, dashes - and correct spelling/grammar?
4. Are section titles in bold (not h2)? Is anything else bold? If so, why? You might need to add that reason to this checklist!
5. Do you use italics for emphasis only? If you use italics for anything else, add that to this style guide.
6. Did you proof read the posted version?
7. Have you adjusted for any editing feedback received on prior articles?

Additional check list items for my Blog edition of the article:

1. Have I marked where to split between the teaser and the rest of the body?
2. Have I marked or appended Technorati keywords?
3. If submitting to Sir Linksalot, the two lines should be:
   On Survivor m/d/06 Headline
   URL

That’s all! If you have suggestions or questions, please contact me or add a comment below! We’d like this to be useful to all Reality TV Calendar writers.

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by VikingBear, 15 April 2006 OnSurvivor.com
Permalink to this Syndication Style Guide: http://www.onsurvivor.com/syndication-style-guide/