SpokenMedia Website Style Guide

Here are some style guidelines for the SpokenMedia website:

  • When in doubt, look at older posts to see what style has been used in the past
  • You could also ask! 😛

Blog Posts

  • Do have descriptive post titles
  • Do “Write tight”–don’t use superfluous wording, try not to use overly complex sentences
  • Do use these style conventions:
    • Major section headings: <h3>
    • Minor section headings: <h4>
    • Line/horizontal rule: <hr />
    • Images: Include alt and caption text, and attribution <div id="sm-citation">Person</Optional Site Name</div>
    • Flickr/Twitter Attribution: <div id="sm-citation">Photo Credit: @username/sitename</div>, link to image at Flickr

      • For example:

      Brandon Showing the Player

      Photo Credit: @theolynn/Twitter

      Brandon Showing the Player

  • Do include citation for all of our presentations we post to the site, they should be centered and use <div id="sm-citation-left">...</div>. For example:

    Cite as: Muramatsu, B., McKinney, A. & Wilkins, P. (2010, May 5). Opening Up IIHS Video with SpokenMedia. Presentation at OCWC Global 2010: Hanoi, Vietnam, May 5, 2010. Retrieved May 6, 2010 from Slideshare Web site: http://www.slideshare.net/bmuramatsu/opening-up-iihs-video-with-spokenmedia

  • Do split long articles with the <!--more--> tag. The convention I used was to include the objective/introduction before the tag, and the details after the tag
  • Do spellcheck and edit your work. WordPress has a built in spell checker, use it!
  • If you change something in the style, you should go back through older posts and make sure they’re consistent. I know this can be a pain, but it helps maintain site consistency.

Presentations Page

  • Use a APA-formatting for references
  • Include links to an online copy of the paper and/or presentation
  • If there’s a presentation, upload it to Slideshare.net and also upload the raw format, a PDF format and a PDF format with notes (if you have them for the slides).
  • Sample formatting of the links: [ Presentation: Slideshare, PowerPoint, PDF, PDF with Notes || Paper: PDF, DOC ]

Creative Commons License Unless otherwise specified, the Spoken Media Website by the MIT Office of Digital Learning, Strategic Education Initiatives is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.