Copy editing checklist

Ensure the story is ready for publication. Check for:

• Spelling
  • If it’s not in CP’s Caps & Spelling, check the Canadian Oxford Dictionary
• Grammar and structure
• Tags
• CP Style. E.g:
  • Punctuation inside quotes
  • Headlines, subheads and captions are sentence case
  • Numbers under 10 written out
  • “Sept. 21, 2015” but “in September”
  • “6350 Coburg Rd.”  but “on Coburg Road”
• Names
  • Google any odd names (easy to misspell), or names that have popular variations (“Macdonald,” “MacDonald” or “McDonald”? “Shauna” or “Shawna”?)
• Dates
  • Check any absolute date (The Halifax Regional Municipality was created on May 1,1996)
  • Check any reference to “xx years/months/days ago”
• Places
  • Check any name you haven’t heard of. (Did we spell “Musquodoboit” properly?)
• Numbers
  • Do they add up?
  • Is a movie ticket price increase from $10.99 to $11.99 a nine, 10 or 11 per cent increase?
  • If our headline says “12 budget highlights” do we actually list 12 in the story?
  • Do we say “a two per cent increase” when we mean “a two percentage point increase”?
  • Is Truro a “two-hour drive” from Halifax? Check it in Google Maps.
  • Put large numbers into context. (Eg: “Irving’s new Assembly Hall would fit 15 buildings the size of the Halifax Central Library.”)
• Facts
  • Are they accurate ? (Is the Nova Scotia Duck-Tolling Retriever really the province’s official dog?)
  • Do they make sense?
• Opinion
  • Is the story anchored in fact?
  • Is speculation attributed and described as such?
• Fairness
  • We don’t allow people to criticize others without rebuttal. If we couldn’t reach the person criticized, we say so in the story.
  • We don’t allow anonymous sources to criticize named people. (We generally don’t allow anonymous sources at all.)
• Attribution and copyright:
  • Do we know each source’s preferred pronouns? Do we use those accurately in the story?
  • The phrase “said” implies content gathered in a personal interview. We don’t say a source “said” when we mean they “stated” (in a news release). We indicate if a source “said” the comment, in a scrum, to other people.
  • Do we use “she admits” (implying guilt) when we mean “she acknowledges” (she confirms or recognizes)?
  • All media (eg. photos, video) should be properly attributed to the content creator, with a link, where possible. (We never attribute content to a platform, such as “Source: Facebook”)
  • We need permission to reproduce content from the web and social media, except when we use it as the subject of our story.
• Legal risk:
  • Alert your instructor to any story stating that someone has done something criminally wrong for which they haven’t been convicted, or charged by police. The same applies to any ethical indiscretion (eg. a conflict of interest) — esp. one made by a licensed professional. Stories with these types of allegations need to be airtight.
• Hyperlinks
  • Is the link functional?
  • Is the link text worded clearly? (Does the text logically suggest the source material? Eg. “The province announced last week it would post ministerial expenses online on Sept. 1.”)
• Death:
  • If we mention “the late Graham Downey” we need to be certain he is deceased.
• Captions
  • Confirm the spelling of each name against the one used in the story
  • Count the names and the faces. Do they match?
  • Check order of names: left to right
  • Confirm positions of people such as “second from right”
  • Confirm or omit gender attribution
  • Confirm action in caption is actually shown
• Rewrite headlines/subheads and add hyperlinks (if necessary)