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This pop-up blog aims to teach journalists the minimum they need to know to write clean copy – specifically, how to type, edit, save, receive, and transmit copy in which every character comes through unscathed. If you’ve ever had quotation marks turn dumb or accented letters drop out of a story, or if you’ve scratched your head at how to write a fraction or I♥NY, this blog is for you.

Start reading “Borked Unicode: Tips for journalists on writing clean copy” ☞

(The article will soon be broken up into sections for convenience, but I had to get it out the door. The article was commissioned by A List Apart, which then spiked it despite the article’s being exactly what was promised.)

Borked Unicode: Tips for journalists on writing clean copy

Good journalists file clean copy. But what does that mean? This article gives journalists the basics they need to know to ensure that every character, word, sentence, and paragraph they intended to write gets correctly saved and reproduced on computer systems, and ultimately online and in print. You’ll learn enough to avoid the dreaded borked Unicode.