The blog’s guiding principle, “Chronicling narratives of writing mentorship in Canada and facilitating scholarly exchange,” helps shape content.
While every attempt is made to retain the voice and tone of contributing authors to this end, this guide provides formatting and structure details for consistency in content delivery.
Post format
General post formatting
At the top of each post, the following are required, in this order:
- A title. The title can be created with or without the author’s input;
- A featured image. This should be supplied by the post author;
- Name(s) of post editor and/or author;
- A volume and number. These are recorded in the CWCR/RCCR Submissions & Publications spreadsheet. No volume and number is required for announcements, and these should not be added to the spreadsheet;
- A short bio of the author, which includes titles and institutional affiliation, as follows:
[Title]
[Featured image]
Vol. X, No. X ([Semester] [Year])
Author
Author name, title, affiliated institution, other descriptors
For example,
Post type
The blog uses several types of posts. While other post types may be added from time to time, here is a description of each of the current post types:
- Affiliate report – provides a report or activity of an affiliate of CWCA/ACCR
- Individual profile (interview)
- Infographic
- President’s message
- Reflection
- Resource
- Writing centre profile [provides an overview and description of a centre and its activities]
- Writing centre history
- Writing centre program
The CWCR/RCCR Blog Editorial Collective is open to post types/genres not currently captured by this list: let us know what you are thinking about!
The blog uses the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition as its style guide. In cases where the author uses another format, and it is vital to the content or format (e.g., footnoting or language), then that style will be used.
C
Capitalization
Countries are shortened as capital letters without punctuation; e.g., US not U.S.
Named universities are capitalized, but then university is not.
Example
From its inception, the University of Limerick broke the mould of third level education in Ireland. What the university achieved in a little over 40 years is truly quite remarkable.
D
Dash
Em dashes (—) are used as a connecting punctuation within a sentence, without surrounding spacing.
Example
I am in no way thinking that I’ve said a single new thing in this blog post—I am, I know, a white person coming to the table armed with ideologies and theories generated by persons of color and expressing my understanding of their work in a public way (which can feel like stealing spotlight, and which was never my intention).
F
Format
Blog introduction with some exceptions, will begin with an author(s) biography, not more than 100 words. Hyperlinks may be used to link to an external author biography (i.e., at their home institution) and to their own writing centre, for example. Other pertinent information may also be linked. No more than four hyperlinks should be used. The biography is in italics.
Example
Carol Mohrbacher is a Professor of English and former Writing Center Director (the Write Place) at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Carol, using her many years of experience, advice and input from colleagues, as well as research in writing center practice, theory, and pedagogy, planned, developed, and launched a new Writing Center Administration graduate certificate in the Fall of this year. Below is our e-mail interview with Carol.
Interview-style posts: Questions are bolded and italicized. For answers, only the interviewee’s name and the colon thereafter are to be bolded and italicized.
Example
CWCR/RCCR interviewer [or interviewer name]: What are the major changes you are seeing in your program?
Cindy: That depends who you ask. Students, staff, and faculty are all seeing and experiencing the changes differently.
Spelling is in the English of the author. Words in languages other than English are not italicized.
T
Terms, when defined, are italicized; prior to and thereafter, Roman.
Example
In my roundtable discussion, I discussed the concept of translingualism. The term translingualism originated from Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach (Horner et al, 2011).
Glossary
Creator/Creation not creator/creation
Dr. not Dr
Elder not elder
First Peoples not first peoples
Indigenous People not indigenous people
Medicine Man/Woman not medicine man/woman
NATO not Nato
Oral Tradition not oral tradition
PhD; MA not Ph.D.; M.A.
Scuba not SCUBA
Survivor (Indigenous) not survivor
Traditional Knowledge not traditional knowledge
university not University
US not U.S.
vice-president not vice president