User:Gryllida/Quiz/StyleGuide

This quiz includes questions about the style guide. Please read everything in the style guide carefully, and test yourself today!

• Copyedit other submissions in the Newsroom and improve their chances of publication.
• Write your articles better with the aim of getting them published easier and earlier.

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1 What is the style guide about?

	The ways Wikinews content should be presented to readers.
	A comprehensive guide to English spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
	Information on the reporting process.
	Wiki editing syntax.

2 What is the purpose of the style guide?

	A style guide helps writers and editors by providing a standardised way of writing.
	Style guides help ensure consistency in such things as headlines, abbreviations, numbers, punctuation and courtesy titles.
	The Wikinews style guide is aimed at producing understandable and informative articles readily understood by the majority of readers.
	To make writing more difficult and to create excuses for not publishing an article.

3 What is the status of the style guide?

	Changes may be proposed at the talk page, however, they are not applied retroactively.
	It is a guideline.
	It is a policy, which allows no exceptions.

4 In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, author George Orwell devised six easy tips to make anyone a better writer. What are these tips?

	Use Simple English only.
	If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
	Never use a long word where a short one will do.
	Never use the passive where you can use the active.
	Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.
	Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
	Use a couple foreign quotes in each story. They provide an international view on the topic and make the article more neutral.
	Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

5 What are some more of the technical, easily fixable, guidelines about headlines?

	Use upstyle capitalisation.
	Use present tense.
	Use downstyle capitalisation.
	Use past tense.

6 What are the guidelines about headlines?

	Write in a neutral point of view.
	Make them short.
	Avoid jargon and meaningless acronyms.
	Use active voice.
	Make them unique and specific.
	Use verbs.
	Try to attribute any action to someone.
	Tell the most important and unique thing.

7 How do we specify date of the article?

	It is not needed, because we have the sources and the story says anyway.
	As the first line of the article, using the date template.

8 What needs to be included in the first paragraph?

	Five Ws: who, what, where, when, why. The 'how' is not important, leave it to the end.
	Five Ws and an H: who, what, where, when, why, how.
	The most impressive part of the story. What makes it relevant.

9 Approximately how long is the first paragraph?

	One sentence.
	Around 50-80 words, using one to three sentences.
	There is no length limit.

10 Approximately how long is the article?

	Any length, at least one paragraph.
	At least five paragraphs.
	At least three paragraphs, and single-line paragraphs do not count for this purpose.

11 What are the expectations in regards to language in news reports at Wikinews?

	Use punchy, active language to intone a sense of immediacy.
	Each paragraph covers a single topic only.
	Write about two-three related topics in one paragraph.
	Each paragraph needs to be at least five sentences long.
	Write one-sentence paragraphs with quotes, and group them by topic using headings.
	Each paragraph should ideally be only one or two sentences (three if you use very short sentences).
	Use spoken English constructs to make the text more energetic and impressive.

12 What is the article structure?

	Start with the background to contextualize the reader, then write about the new event at the end.
	A key, and strict, policy is absolute neutrality.
	Put the most important and newsworthy facts first, with least important and least immediate facts last — this is opposite to development order in typical narratives, and is termed inverted-pyramid style.
	Concentrate on the new facts and their known or potential consequence — background information is of lesser importance.

13 What is the article tone?

	Be balanced.
	Promote the human aspects of any story, using quotes etc — this makes the story interesting to a wider range of people.
	Be clear, concise and unambiguous.
	Ask questions which engage the reader into the activity of completing the description of the event.

14 What about fact checking and how they are presented?

	Argue your point in the article, to present it to the readers more clearly.
	Speculate about the event. Write your opinion about what happened. It is interesting for the readers to read blogs and opinion columns.
	Ascribe any speculation to a source — never introduce any of your own.
	Be clear, concise and unambiguous.

15 When is attribution needed?

	Everywhere, it is like an inline citation and helps the reviewer with fact checking.
	Opinions, unverified claims, speculation.

16 In what tense do articles need to be written?

	Past tense or the present perfect.
	Present tense.