ad
 Advertisement.

add
Copy to be added to a story already written.

advance
1. A preliminary story describing a future event. 2. To move a story
up in priority (“We’re advancing the scandal story to the front
 page.”)

angle
The aspect emphasized in a story.

assignment
The task or story a reporter must cover.

background
1. A story that is not assigned a deadline. (See also “backgrounder.”)
2. Any information that is given to reporter not specifically for a
quote, but for general information on a subject.

backgrounder
A story that details the background of a subject. (“I’m assigned to do
a backgrounder on the new company.”)

bank
See deck.

banner
A headline that extends across the page or screen.

beat
The area or subject matter that a reporter regularly covers.

blind interview
An interview which does not give the name of the person interviewed.

blurb
Short phrase issued by a publisher to promote the sale of a book.

BOD
“Book-on-demand”; method of book printing where each book is produced
as it is ordered.

boil down
To reduce in size.

break
1. The time when a story has been published. (“When did that story
break?”) 2. The first news source to report a story. (“An indie
Web site first broke the scandal.”)

brief
A brief story.

bump
1. To move something ahead or behind schedule. (“We’re going to bump
this story up to Tuesday.”) 2. To increase or decrease. (“We’ll bump
your payment up to compensate you for the extra work you did.”)

byline
The author’s name at the beginning of a story.

caption
The descriptive text for an illustration; often credits the name of
the photographer or artist who made the illustration. Also “cut line”
or “cutline.”

casebound
See “hardbound.”

clip
A collection of a writer’s previously published work, used to show the
talent and interests of a writer. (“Can you send me some clips on the
 subject?”)

codex
A book made of bound pages.

copy
The text of a story.

copyreader
One who edits and gives headlines to news stories.

cover
To research and put together a story.

credit
Acknowledging the source for a given fact.

cub
A beginning reporter. Also “rookie.”

cut
Remove a portion of a story.

cut line
See “caption.”

daily
A publication that publishes every day.

deck
Part of the headline which summarizes the story. Also “deck copy,” “bank.”

dog watch
See “lobster shift.”

editorialize
To inject the opinion of the writer in a story.

filler
Short news stories or tidbits used to fill space.

flak
A low-position spokesperson for a company.

flash
Short news summary of an event.

follow-up
A story that gives new developments about the subject of a previously
published story.

folio
Page number.

foto
 Photograph.

fotog
 Photographer.

freelancer
One work works for himeself, and is not employed by the publisher; a
freelance assignment is one given to a writer not employed by the
publisher. Also “free-lancer.”

fyi
For your information.

get
A very good, or exclusive, interview.

graf
 Paragraph.

hardbound
A codex book whose cover material is hard and not flexible. Also
“hardback” or “casebound.”

head
See “headline.”

headline
Title of a story.

inset
1. Correcting copy inserted into a piece that is already typeset. 2.
Any material inserted into something larger: pages, copy,
illustration, advertisements. (“The corrections in the book’s new edition were made
with inset copy — you can see that the typeface is slightly
 different.”)

journo
1. Journalist. 2. Journalism.

kicker
The first sentence or first few words of a story’s lead, set in a font
size larger than the body text of the story.

kill
To delete copy; to remove an item from the publication schedule (“In
light of the airplane tragedy, the editor decided to kill the airline
humor story.”)

kill fee
Fee paid to reporter for a killed story; usually a percentage of the
normal fee.

lead
The lead paragraph or sentence in a story.

lede
See “lead.”

leg man
A reporter who gathers news.

library
A publication’s private collection of files, clips, illustrations,
prepared bios/obits, etc.

lobster shift
Working in the hours after a publication has gone to print.

masthead
The page of a publication that gives its staff and editorial information.

morgue
See “library.”

mug shot
A head-and-shoulders picture of an individual.

net sales
Number of actual sales of a book (ie, not counting copies sent to
distributors and later returned).

nut graf
Paragraph in a story containing the “meat” details of what the story
is all about, often directly following an anecdotal lead.

obit
 Obituary.

on spec
Submitting a piece on the “speculation” that the editor will accept
it, a practice more new free-lancers

op-ed
“Opposite editorial” — features page usually printed opposite a
newspaper’s editorial page, often containing pieces presenting a
position on an issue which is the opinion of the author and not
necessarily (or usually) the opinion of the paper. Also “O&E.”

orphan
A single line of text beginning a paragraph or section of text and
appearing at the bottom of a page.

pad
To make longer.

paste-up
A page’s individual elements assembled in its layout on a board
(usu. by _pasting_ or taping); used to make the photographic plates
which are then printed.

pic
Picture or illustration.

pitch
Story idea sent to an editor by a reporter.

pix
 Pictures.

play up
Emphasize. (“Why don’t you play up the infidelity angle?”)

pork
Material held for later use, if needed.

POD
“Print-on-demand.” See BOD.

pull quote
A quotation from an article, sometimes edited for brevity, displayed
in larger type as a figure to the body of the article. (Also
 “pullquote.”)

puff
Editorialized, complimentary statements in a story.

puff piece
A news story that contains a lot of puff.

query
A pitch, usually for longer, editorial or magazine pieces.

redletter
Exclusive, breaking news coverage of a major news event, printed in red type.

retraction
A publication’s withdrawal of a previously-published story or
fact. (“The _Times_ retracted their comments on the man.”)

revision
A re-written or improved story, often with additional quotes or facts.

rookie
See “cub.”

run
1. To put an item on schedule for publication (“Let’s run this item in
the gossip column.”) 2. A reporter’s beat.

sacred cow
News or promo material which a publisher or editor demands be
published, often for personal reasons.

scoop
1. An exclusive or first-published story. (“That story you did was a
nice scoop.”) 2. A synonym for “tip.” (“I got another great scoop from
 her.”)

sell-through
Percentage amount of net sales for a book.

short
See “brief.”

source
An individual whose statements are used for material in a story.

spec
See “on spec.”

stet
Proofreader’s mark for “restore to condition before mark up.”

street edition
The edition of a newspaper that comes out first and is available “on
the streets” such as at newsstands.

subhead
A smaller one-line headline for a story.

TK
Proofreader’s insertion mark for data “to come”; also “TKTK.”

take
A section of a running story.

tie back
See “tie in.”

tie in
Part of the story that reiterates past events in order to make recent
developments clear. Also “tie back.” (“Your piece is good, but the
tie-in is weak.”)

tip
Information about a potential story that has not been broken.

top heads
Headlines at the top of a column.

trim
To reduce the length of a story.

vet

weekly
A publication that publishes once a week.

widow
A single line of text ending a paragraph or section of text and
appearing at the top of a page.

For more, see “Glossary of Printing and Allied Terms” in the third edition of Words into Type (pg. 535), in print for more than a quarter-century and still unparalleled.

The cut-up (or “cutup”) is a method of juxtaposition where a work (usually text) is cut into pieces and the pieces rearranged in a random order, similar to the montage or collage technique in painting. The traditional cut-ups of Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs were done manually with scissors, razor blades, axes and other cutting devices. (Netmonkey.com has published an excellent summary of the theory behind the cut-up method, and another good one is in Brion Gysin’s own words.)

Scissors are no longer necessary for making cut-ups; they can be performed more efficiently using a digital computer. The following is a list of open source tools for cutting up etexts and other data using open-source software. The best of these tools improve on the process, generating Markov chains from text input and who knows what else.

Note that the cut-up does not free the artist from the duty of expression; cut-ups serve as a compositional aid and are not a substitute for the act of composition itself.

• Florian Cramer’s “Permutations” contains what he calls “the only technically ‘proper’ CGI-Adaption of Gysin’s/Burroughs’ cutup method.” (All of the site’s Perl source code is GPLed.)
• Lee Worden offers a similar cutup CGI which uses a different algorithm than Florian’s, but is also easy to use.
• cutup, part of the tinyutils package (deprecated), is a small shell script for cutting up an input text file into four sections and then reassembling the slices diagonally. (a Perl rewrite should feature the ability to choose the number of x- and y- slices on the text.)
• Luke Kelley’s Cut-Up Machine is a Web cgi that lets you insert up to 100 elements from Naked Lunch into the output text.
• English as She is Spoken is Jonathan Feinberg’s Python script which takes text and runs it through AltaVista’s Translations service, and then runs the output through again, multiple times until no further “linguistic mutations” occur.
• An earlier Translations tool is the Transmogrifier; this tool powers a multi-lingual chat room (within 10 years you will probably be able to select a default language in your net interface and see the entire Internet translated in such fashion.)
• chef is a lex scanner for outputting its input text in the dialogue of a Swedish chef; the Debian filters package contains a bunch of these little text dialogue filters.
• The Shannonizer takes text or URL input and outputs a translation by a number of famous writers, including Hunter S. Thompson and Lewis Carroll.
• BABLE is a Perl script that generates Markov chains. It works best on large texts.
• Dissociated Press is an Emacs function for “dissociating” the current buffer, combining words and characters to form newords and charcatures; in Emacs, type:
  

  M-x dissociated-press <RET>

• Jamie Zawinski’s dadadodo generates Markov chains of word frequencies. One of its best features is the ability to scan a given text and write a compiled object file which you can then use later to generate output based on the original text.
• JWZ’s latest is webcollage, which builds a collage of random images from the Web on the root window of your X session.

  Ideas for improvements/expansions to webcollage:

  • ability to specify a single host or localhost directory tree when searching for images;
  • ability to specify the number of random images to output (coupled with the above gives a random-image cgi that could be useful for Web sites).
  • ability to save the image from the root window to a file (with as many of the original file properties saved as possible)
  • ability to limit images from a site or sites (say, display random images from eBay auctions)
  • integrated with the window manager so that a double-click with the left mouse button (say) opens a default web browser window with the URL of the originating image; a triple-click (say) pastes the URL to the X selection.
  • option for outputting to an .html file, either with x number of <img src> lines or with an image map
  • including a text option so that random pages/paragraphs/sentences/words/chars of text can be added to the output

This last one leads to an idea for an avant-garde web-art project: you write a program that obtains random text from the Web and then outputs that text in HTML, with random links interspersed through the text (the link heuristics are configured by a filter file whose entries contain two lines: the pattern to match in the input text and the link to use in the output, either a specific URL or a text value, in which case it uses a random URL containing that text); the resultant page is then a hypertext cut-up. Will sites allow you to link to them in such a context? Will linking out of context be outlawed? Or will popular browsers eventually contain cut-up-mode toggles, enabling a network of enthusiasts to trade and morph their filters, even holding filter-contests for the most unique views of/traversals through the Web?

Free software cutup tools are described in The Linux Cookbook, 2nd edition.

Related to this subject is a page on computer-generated writing.

As is Fuse by Scott Draves. The algorithm is inspired by dissociated-press but works on images, not text.

Another related subject is generative art — art where devices such as computers are used to generate source material (which, as with cut-ups, may then be reinterpreted, modified and otherwise used by the artist). Like cut-ups, it poses interesting philosophical issues of authorship and the creation or invention process. The definitive site for generative art research and free software tools is www.generative.net.

wiki

The GNU version, Gawk

short outline and intro

a page about AWK programming

AWK tutorials, articles and books

Eric Pement’s awk intro and list of handy one-liners

“An Awk Primer”

simple awk tutorial

“how to use awk

interactive awk tutorial

Awk by example: 1 2 3

The original “awl” book by Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan and Peter J. Weinberger: The AWK Programming Language

Free online book: Gawk: Effective AWK Programming

ToC for another online awk book

a list of awk scripts

awk FAQ

customization tips

Emacs and Outlines

Using Outline Mode

using it for papers and writing a draft

outline editing for html

Making a numbered outline with outline-mode

GROFF, Troff, and roff

Wiki: the troff macros and troff

The troff.org site

On getting the “real” troff

Groff home page [more]

Groff forum

GNU Troff intro

Putting your resume in troff (and part 2)

Online groff resources

dir listing of software

short intro

The Grap language for typesetting charts and graphs

roff docs

using ps fonts with groff

Groff MOM macros: search

tips and tricks for learning, building and using regular expressions

IBM developerWorks tutorials and articles

“Know your regular expressions”

“Hone your regexp pattern-building skills” is a hands-on tutorial taking you through the classic UNIX and Linux command-line tools.

Other tutorials and articles

You can pre-order the Regular Expressions Cookbook to get it the day it’s released (2009). Mastering Regular Expressions is currently available.

“Pattern Matching and Regular Expressions”

“Regular Expressions explained”

“Finding Text in Context”: an article about grep’s context output.

Regexp examples and one-liners

Examples from regular-expressions.info

regexlib.com, a searchable library of thousands of regular expressions

list of regexps for matching numbers

For further reference

If it lives up to its name, the Regular Expressions Cookbook is bound to be a classic.

Need more? The dmoz listing for regexps is long.

Online book, Kochbuch für LaTeX (Deutsch) is full of prewritten “recipes” for various typesetting jobs and situations.

“LaTeX: It’s Not Just for Academia”: part one and two

Fonts and Typefaces

The TeX Font Guide is a readable online book filled with advice (and examples).

“Using TrueType fonts with TeX (LaTeX) and pdfTeX (pdfLaTeX)” by Damir Rakityansky

“Using TrueType fonts with TEX via Postscript Type1 format”

“Adding Postscript fonts to teTeX 0.4”

“Making a PostScript font available”

big directory of zipped tex/latex fonts

long readme with step-by-step instructions on installing fonts

more hints and tips on installing fonts from simaril consultants

available fonts

mftrace - Scalable Fonts for MetaFont

fonts and symbols, metafont info and links for creating your own fonts and simple drawings with metafont

What happened to Thomas Dunbar’s METAFONT and Linux: A Personal Computing Milieu? (Published as a compressed PostScript file, early 90s)

TeX and LaTeX groups and publications

The UK TeX FAQ (searchable)

comp.text.tex

PracTeX Journal: practical TeX, “how to get things done” with TeX

NTG: Dutch language oriented TeX users group

TrueTeX Software: TeX for Windows

Beginner? Look at the short list of UNIX commands.

Need a command-line cookbook? Get the second, revised edition of The Linux Cookbook.

Command-line fu is a huge group database of CLI wisdom.

Winning one-liners (Usenet thread, 1991)

Great ImageMagick one-liners for making text boxes, text images, symbol font graphics, caption and word labels and icons.

“Five Quick Command Line Tips”

“Great Command-line Combinations”

Usenet: comp.unix.shell [topics] [FAQ]

Al Aab’s text hacks

The basics: an intro and

long list of tips and articles

community database of tech “recipes”: tutorials on every subject

handy one-liners for awk

How to do everything: unix tutorials

Interesting UNIX tools

The classic Useless use of cat award

searchpattern

Linux mailing lists

Plenty of these have good tips.

silug-discuss

luci-discuss

linux-elitists

plug-discuss

k12osn

ilugc

lvlug

“Writing Electronically: The Effects of Computers on Traditional Writing” by Sharmila Pixy Ferris

A technique for finding videos, images, and sound files that are on the Web but aren’t “public.” But when you’re searching, what you’re searching for is being recorded. So another hands-on tutorial shows a set of techniques for keeping those searches secret. [more]

Learn more from Googletutor.com.

Paper, “NOTES ON FREE TEXT INFORMATION RETRIEVAL” by Mark Zimmermann (March 1990)