Guidelines for the University News System

The News System is designed to allow for a great deal of flexibility in how a news item looks. Text may be italicized, underlined, or made bold, and bulleted lists, ordered lists and even tables may be inserted. The system is also capable of handling different fonts, point sizes, colors, and symbols, as well as a variety of justification and spacing options.

The fact that the system has the capacity for all these different looks, however, is not necessarily a recommendation to use them. In fact, in order to produce a professional looking news item, and to present a unified look across the Web site, it is recommended that differing fonts, point sizes, spacing and so forth not be used. Instead, it is best to use the default settings already built into the system.

If a news item is composed and edited within the News System, then the default settings will automatically be applied. This is the simplest way to know that the item will look right on the Web page. For this reason, it is recommended that news items be composed in the News System.

Text may of course, be copied and pasted into the News System from Microsoft Word, or other applications, but this practice often results in unwanted code being copied in as well. This code—which is visible in the News System if the view is changed to HTML by clicking the “Toggle HTML Source” button in the tool bar—often has the effect of overriding the default settings resulting in a news item with non-standard fonts, spacing, or other problems.

Those who use the “copy and paste” method should be sure to toggle to the HTML mode and clear out the unwanted code manually before publishing the news item.

Further points to keep in mind when creating a news item

Although full instruction manual for using the News System is available, the following points should also be noted when creating a news item.

Headline:
It is best to keep the headline short. The purpose of a headline is to identify the subject of the article and to introduce the story; not to tell it. Try to keep the headline to fewer than ten words in length.

Lead:
The lead is an optional sentence that serves the purpose of expanding a bit on the headline. The lead should not be used to contain the story, a schedule, directions, or any other text that belongs in the body of the item.

Byline:
The byline is the name of the person the article is by. It is optional and generally not needed.

Body:
The body contains the bulk of the article, the story, and should be entirely comprised of text. Please do not place images, graphics, or other non-text items in the body.

Redirect URL:
This space is for a full-path URL to be used in the event that the headline of the news item is to point to a Web page rather than to an article in the News System. (A full-path URL is one that includes the http:// or https:// part of the URL, for example: http://www.montclair.edu.) Any URL in this space should point to a Web page that is hosted on a Montclair State Web server. Please do not use this space for URLs that point to a third party Web page because viewers will be linking to Web content that is not Montclair State’s without having been advised that they are leaving the University site. Since Montclair State has no control over the content of third party Web pages, it is imperative that viewers know that the page they are about to see, is not Montclair State’s.

If a link to a third party Web page needs to be made, then a news item should be created and the link placed in the body of the news item together with language that clearly explains that the link goes to a third party’s Web site. Again, always use full-path URLs for all links.

Also, please remember you cannot use both the Body and Redirect URL functions in the same news item. Either create a news item using the Body function or insert a full-path URL in the Redirect URL function.