CRN Style Guide and Markup Reference

Last updated: 19 March 2014

This guide describes some technical aspects of CRN house style. To encourage conformity and reduce the workload of the CRN editors, posts failing to adhere to the specifications below may be referred back to their contributors for correction.

Contributors should also be familiar with the CRN Guidelines for Contributors and Editors.

General

  1. View your post in the HTML version of the WordPress post editor before submission. Many problems can easily be seen there that are hidden in the Visual Editor.
  2. Do not use custom CSS or non-semantic HTML markup to change the presentation (e.g. text alignment, colour, boldness, etc.) of your submissions. Readers appreciate the consistent experience and uniform presentation provided by standard HTML markup.
  3. Never use <strong> (i.e. bold) formatting in your text. If you wish to emphasize a word or phrase, wrap it with the <em> element.

Titles

  1. Post titles should use normal sentence capitalization. This is a change from CRN’s previous use of book title capitalization, to which virtually no contributors managed reliably to adhere. Thus:

    This is a correctly capitalized post title

    Not:

    This Is an Incorrectly Capitalized Post Title

    Note that the current CRN theme displays titles entirely in upper case, but this may change in the future.

  2. Keep post titles short. A title should succinctly identify the purpose or point of its post.
  3. Do not end titles with a period.

Linking

  1. For posts that are primarily linking to another article (and only such posts), link to the target article using the [crn_link] shortcode. This is automatically turned into a ‘View article →’ link.
  2. For link posts consisting of a single paragraph, the [crn_link] should appear at the end of that paragraph. Only the url= attribute should be supplied, specifying the URL of the destination article. For example:

    [crn_link url="http://example.com/article"]

  3. For link posts consisting of more than one paragraph, the [crn_link] should appear in its own paragraph at the end of the post. Both the url= (to specify the article) and ownpara= (to indicate that the link should be formatted as its own paragraph) attributes should be supplied. For example:

    [crn_link ownpara= url="http://example.com/article"]

  4. Never use the _target="blank" attribute on a hyperlink. See item 2 of Jackob Nielsen’s The Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 1999.
  5. Don’t use link shortening services (e.g. bit.ly, wp.me, etc.) for links.

General quotations and citations

  1. When you reference a person, organization, book, website, etc., as a source, wrap the reference in a <cite> element. For example:

    <cite>Dr. A.N. Other</cite> writes …

  2. Single paragraph quotations should be wrapped in a <blockquote> element and, if appropriate, end with a citation using the <cite> element:

    <blockquote>This is a quotation consisting of a single paragraph. It ends with a citation. <cite>A.N. Other, An Interesting Book</cite></blockquote>

  3. Multi-paragraph quotations should also be wrapped in a <blockquote> element. If a citation is appropriate, it should be included in a separate final paragraph using the <cite> element:

    <blockquote>

    This is a quotation consisting of multiple paragraphs and ends with a citation. This is the first paragraph.

    This is the second paragraph of the multi-paragraph quotation.

    <cite>A.N. Other, An Interesting Book</cite>

    </blockquote>

  4. Never apply additional formatting (e.g. using the <em> element for italic emphasis) to an entire quotation.
  5. Ensure that there is no extraneous formatting or spacing in your quotation.

Bible quotations and citations

  1. Bible quotations follow the general rules above.
  2. Single or multi-paragraph Bible quotations should always finish with a <cite> citation element. Specify the book name in full and use an en-dash (not a hyphen) for verse ranges. Follow the book, chapter and verse reference with a comma and the usual abbreviation for the Bible version used. For example:

    <blockquote>If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. <cite>1 John 1:8–10, NKJV</cite></blockquote>

  3. Do not include verse numbers in the text of quotations from the Bible, unless they are expressly referenced in the post itself. If verse numbers are referenced by a linked article, but not by the extract in the post itself, omit them from the quotation.
  4. If you include verse numbers, they should be wrapped with a <sup> element to make them superscript, with a single space on either side of that element to separate it from adjacent text. For example:

    <blockquote><sup>8</sup> If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. <sup>9</sup> If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. <sup>10</sup> If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. <cite>1 John 1:8–10, NKJV</cite></blockquote>

Bylines

  1. The CRN theme automatically provides a ‘posted by’ byline. If you are the author of the post, do not include an additional byline in the post body.

  2. If you are not the author of the post, wrap the main post body in a <blockquote> element and precede it with an introductory paragraph identifying the author and his or her relevant position or qualifications. For example, a typical introductory paragraph may be along the following lines:

    <cite>Dr. A.N. Other</cite>, Dean of Theology at Somewhere Seminary, writes:

Images

  1. All images must have an attribution. See an example of image formatting and attribution.