Style Guidelines – draft

Copyright and accessibility principles

Australian copyright laws should be adhered to for both images and text. Where the work of others is used, the AWW post will carry proper attribution to this other work. AWW will endeavour to uphold the principles of accessibility as defined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.

If in doubt about whether permission is required to use an image, refer to the Australian Copyright Council Fair Information page. Book covers may be used without seeking permission where the post meets the criteria of “fair dealing for criticism or review”. Refer to the ‘Fair Dealing’ information sheet on the Australian Copyright Council website for further explanation. (Sue Terry points out that a different information sheet indicates that the issue is not as clear as the ‘Fair Dealing’ sheet – refer to the ‘Educational Institutions & Libraries: Using Book Covers’ information sheet)

Titles

    • Roundup posts that appear monthly may refer to the previous month e.g. “Februrary Roundup Crime Fiction”
    • Roundup posts that appear bimonthly or occasionally should be numbered or period given, e.g. “Short Stories Roundup #1”, “Poetry Roundup: Jan-Jun 2017”

Titles of other features may be drawn from category e.g. “Sunday Spotlight with Author”

Body of Text

  • Length of roundup posts and guest articles should be 1000-1200 words; book baits and other special features should be 300-600 words.

Book titles: links and formatting

  • Hyperlink initial mention of book title to the book’s entry on the Australian publisher’s website. Josephine Wilson’s Extinctions (UWAP 2016)
  • Subsequent references to the title should either be in italics e.g. Extinctions or bold e.g. Extinctions to make it stand out from the resent of the text.
  • If the book is self-published, link to author’s website

Links to review

  • In-line references to reviews may hyperlink the review to a reviewer’s name, e.g. Resident Judge reviewed Extinctions by Josephine Wilson
  • After a block quote (indented in the post by “”), the link may be given as “source” or “read review here“.

There’s multiple themes and metaphors woven throughout the book- teetering almost on too many.  There’s the Stolen Generations, genocide and extinction, adoption, domestic violence and its intergenerational effects, regret and the fissures in family relationships.  This sounds a rather grim menu, but it’s leavened by little touches of humour over our shared human foibles. (review here)

Images

  • Editors have privileges to upload images.(If you’re not an editor, indicate to the person reviewing your post which book covers you’d like to feature.)
  • Check in the media library to see whether an image has already been uploaded, searching by author-keyword. If it’s not already there, you may upload.
  • When choosing an image to upload, choose a size of 30-500KB. Anything larger uses more of our storage quota; smaller than 50 results in a poorer image for those with high resolution screens.
  • A good source for images is Goodreads (as publishers’ websites often have very large files), but please check in the media library before uploading an image.
  • When uploading images, save using author-keyword-keyword (or keyword-author), e.g. wilson-extinctions, or spare-room-garner.
  • Images will be stored on the AWW website (rather than using an image on another site, e.g. Goodreads).
  • For accessibility, ‘Alternative Text’ should be completed for all images used on the AWW:  eg <description of image> by <creator of image>
  • Use “set featured image”. This will avoid the problem of volunteers’ portrait pics featuring in social media links. You can set a book cover from your post (or author pic, if relevant).

Image size in post

  • There has been debate among the AWW team regarding conforming our image size to copyright. Note: images of 150-200 pixels wide are considered as a thumbnail according to the Australian copyright laws.
  • To achieve an image size of width 150 or 200 pixels, first upload the image; then, in draft mode, edit the image and choose “custom”; change the first figure to “150” (for posts with multiple images) or “200” for posts with fewer images.

Other images

  • All images should be properly attributed to the creator, where known. Attribution can be done through a hyperlink to the place where the image came from.
  • If the copyright owner specifies the text of the attribution (eg. this is often done as part of a Creative Commons licence), this text should be used as the attribution on the AWW website.
  • All attributions should include the name of the creator of the image and should include a hyperlink to the source of the image.
  • Where possible the image should be hyperlinked to the page from where the image was taken or to the website of the image owner.

Categories

Please check off the relevant categories for your roundup or post e.g.

  • Children and Young Adult (YA)
  • Crime, mystery, detective, thriller, suspense
  • General Fiction (formerly contemporary)
  • Guest author essays or articles
  • Historical Fiction
  • History, memoir, biography
  • Interviews
  • Literary, Classic
  • New releases
  • News
  • Nonfiction – other
  • Prize Winner
  • Romance, Romantic Suspense, Erotica
  • Small publishers feature
  • Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Science Fiction
  • Spotlights or Q&As

Tags

Please add tags to your post as this helps us to be found in search engines. (Note: no more than ten tags should be added to a post.) Suggestions of tags that can be used:

  • <Lastname, Firstname>
  • <subject matter of book>
  • <geographical region to which book refers>
  • <Series Name>

Bios

  • Place at the end of the post
  • Hyperlink to the volunteer or guest author’s website
  • Thumbnail photo of the volunteer/author or another image of the author’s choice can be placed to the right of the text of the bio

Headings (when used)

  • h4 should be used for headings

Referencing (mostly for guest posts or essays)

  • Individual volunteers can choose the format of references
  • Consistent formatting style should be used throughout the post

Guest Posts & spotlight intros

Introduction of a guest post introducing the writer of the post (even when post is attributed to guest author) should be written in italics.