Writer's notes on how to do things

HEADINGS IN GATHER

Add headings into fields (don’t rely on the field labels being used as headings).

PG PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMME PAGE CONVENTIONS

About tab > Publications

You don’t need to duplicate documents used on the Study details page here.

Study details tab > What and how you’ll study

The most common headings we'll use are:

What you’ll study

How you’ll learn

Study details tab > Higher degrees

For content about PhDs, usually use this heading: Doing a PhD

PG TAB NAMES IN GATHER

Keep the programme part of the page/tab name short enough that the loaders can see which tab it is in the left hand menu.

e.g. Applied Finance - Apply (not Master of Applied Finance - Apply)

LINKS

Put square brackets around the text you want as link text and the URL

[link text URL]

e.g. Find out about [how to make toast http://www.jamieshomecookingskills.com/recipe.php?title=how-to-make-toast]

Try to put links at the end of blocks (or paragraphs/sentences if you can't get it at the end of the block)

PG QUOTES

Note we can use three lines for attribution on People pages, but not on About.  On About, the middle line is treated as if it's an iwi and appears directly after the name, with dots.  ie:

James Smith. Ngati Kuhungungu.  So avoid it on About pages, unless you want to add iwi of course. 

NEW RULE - On PG pages we abbreviate generic quals and include the 'major'. For named quals we spell out the name. 

Quotes on About page:

Stephanie Butterfield, BCom(Hons) in International Business
Manager at EY

When they have no job title:

John Smith, Master of Business Administration 

When they name iwi:

Flora Feltham, Ngati Kahungungu, Ngati Porou
Master of Information Management student 

When they are a student:

Dora Fulton
Master of Arts student in Philosophy

Quotes on People page:

Stephanie Butterfield
BCom(Hons) in International Business
Manager at EY

John Smith
Master of Information Management
Manager at Kovac 

John Smith, Ngati Kahungungu, Ngati Porou
Master of Information Management
Analyst at Movac

Flora Feltham
Master of Information Management student

Dora Fulton
Master of Arts student in Philosophy

AT-A-GLANCE SUMMARY CARDS

The content for these is on Paul's Requirements of PG programmes pages, except the "essence statements”, which we write and record in the Programme name and intro text field on the Requirements tab.

VIDEOS

All videos need titles. Only use a caption if you think it's needed to explain further. Keep them short and avoid using questions. Only use the name in the caption.

Use these kinds of titles as a guide:

Researching at Victoria’s Marine lab

Building games with industry experts

Studying where New Zealand law is made

Using IT to innovate

Caption - Professor Benoit Aubert, Head of School of Information Management, says organisational culture is the most important thing to enable innovation.

or if they don't quite work you can deviate.........

Fourth year student’s project— Too Crowded

Creativity in maths

Choose a still for the cover. Titles cannot sit over a face.

TRIPLE CROWN

This block has been approved by the powers.  You can tweak it slightly if you need to.

“You’ll be joining the Victoria Business School—one of just 73 business schools worldwide that hold the 'Triple Crown' of international business education accreditations. You can be confident your degree will stand up against the best around the world.

Find out more about accreditations and what they mean for you [http://www.victoria.ac.nz/vbs/about/welcome/accreditation]”
[insert three logos from uploads box on Economics and Finance About page]

QUOTES AND STORIES

Use the best quote you can find to illustrate/colour what you are writing about, regardless of whether you are using the person on the People and Stories page. 

HOWEVER you need to have at least one quote on the Topic /About page that does link to the P and S page.  Otherwise the reader may miss the P and S page altogether. 

If your quote came from a story you are using on the People and Stories page - add the text [Full story] (in square brackets) after the attribution so they know to add this link.

All staff quotes must link to either the full story on People and Stories, or if you aren't using them there, link it to the staff profile. (choose the best one and copy the link in). An example is

Professor Peter Whiteford, Lecturer in Media Studies 

[Linkto:http://www.victoria.ac.nz/seftms/about/staff/peter-whiteford] Staff profile

Remember to check whether the person has more than one staff profile and use the best one. Peter, for example, has a second that is empty except for contact details, despite it being the 'high' position.

All staff stories on the P and S pages must also link to their profile. This means that for a staff member quoted on the About page you might link to the full story and then from there to the profile. 

Use of speech marks in stories

Use the pattern that Vic uses in publications.  Don't go back and change loaded pages now - this will be sorted later.

1. If the story is entirely in the first person then don’t use any speech marks. 
2. If the story is a mixture of narration and quotes then – use quote marks as normal:

• • Speech marks at start of each paragraph/quote
  • If the quote runs over two paragraphs, don't close it at the end of the first para, but do add speech marks at the beginning of the second para, then close them at the end.
    "Victoria was amazing.
    "I really loved it." 
  • If your two paragraph quote is broken by a subheading, treat it as two separate quotes. ie close both paras.

 This should be the approach regardless of whether the page has a mixture of stories with different approaches. 

Naming conventions for quotes and stories.

HYPHENS

Use a hyphen when a noun follows:

an up-to-date collection

a state-of-the-art museum

BUT:

The collection is up to date.

Their studio is state of the art.

USE OF CAPITALS WHEN TALKING ABOUT SUBJECTS

Use caps when you are referring to anything which is an area of study or a subject. Use lower case when you are referring to the noun in a general sense.  It's true that sometimes it's not that clear which you are doing - in this case just use your best judgement!

eg

Geophysics explores the atmosphere and the ground beneath our feet—combining maths and physics with the outdoors. You'll get a solid grounding in the basics of Earth Sciences, Maths and Physics, and then choose to focus on either Meteorology or Solid Earth.

If you want to learn about the Earth and how it works, while working outdoors and honing your skills in maths and physics, Geophysics—Solid Earth is a good choice for you.

FUN FACTS - SOURCES

1. We name sources for fun facts except those that don’t need it (eg the number of minutes it takes to walk somewhere)
2. We include the date
3. If there is a suitable site to link to, we just name the organisation the fact came from and then link to the page (or a pdf if necessary)
4. If there is not a website, we include just the name of the organisation and the year,  or the publication as per APA style eg Tourism NZ, 2015, Tourism in Aotearoa Today (there will be very few if any of these)

Egs

One in fifteen

Number of working New Zealanders employed in the tourism industry

Tourism NZ, 2015

One in fifteen

Number of working New Zealanders employed in the tourism industry

Tourism NZ, 2015, Tourism in Aotearoa Today     (if no link)

30 to 50 trillion

The number of bacteria in a human approximately equals the number of cells in that body—about 30 to 50 trillion.

ScienceNews, 2016

30 to 50 trillion

The number of bacteria in a human approximately equals the number of cells in that body—about 30 to 50 trillion. 

ScienceNews, February 6, 2016                 (if no link)

Sources for rankings

We don't need to name the source when talking about the PBRF rankings. i.e. Victoria is top in NZ for research quality. (you must say research quality, not just research)

We do need to obviously name the source in the body text when talking about QS rankings.

Decision note from Tania:

I’ve had a chat to Tash about this and then Alida. I think you just carry on as you are and don’t reference the ranking except in fun facts. We haven’t done so in the past on the website re body copy and that information is there to find if people want to look for it. I also don’t think adding PBRF (or in full) adds a lot of value, as most people have no clue what this is either way (especially our main audience of school leavers).

Funfact example text

Number one  - Victoria University is ranked number one for overall research quality in Biomedical Science out of all New Zealand universities by the Performance Based Research Fund.

CENTURIES

The style for the website is to use the numerals for centuries. (agreed with Elizabeth and Tania)

ie Explore 21st century art.......not Explore twenty-first century art.