The "One Thing" Week 8- Stay On The Ball

Although we just had a test in class this week, I still feel like I learned something worthy of a "One Thing" post. This is something that I was always aware of, but I feel is especially applicable to this class. This "one thing" is staying on the ball, with that I mean I've realized the importance of keeping up with readings, homework and really paying attention in class. To be honest, I did not spend that much time studying for this test, however, I felt prepared when I got the test, because of this "staying on the ball" concept. I usually try to stay on the ball, but fall short, and end up not studying very much for tests that I am nowhere near prepared for. This class reiterated the importance of keeping up with my work, and I'm happy to have re-realized that.

The "One Thing" Week 7- Lead The Way

I learned the importance of a lead in a Newspaper Practicum class that I took last year. I learned that a strong lead is important to grab the reader's attention, if they're not interested in what the lead is telling them, chances are slim to none that they will continue to read the article. Although I already learned how important a lead is, the article containing the six rules for writing news leads was a nice refresher, and made writing a lead almost as easy as following a check list.
Something new I learned was while reading "The Lexicon of Leads" article we were given. I never realized that leads could be categorized in this way, and that depending on the content of the story or article, the lead should be written differently. Before reading this article, the only kind of lead that I knew how to write was a summary lead, but now I feel more educated on how to make a lead more fitting to the story.

The "One Thing" Week 6- Rules And Regulations

After reading the Associated Press Style Essentials, I learned many rules that I was not familiar with before, most of them taught me that I had been incorrectly writing many things.

Here are some of the rules I found most important, that I didn't know before:
-DO NOT abbreviate Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Utah and Texas.
-DO NOT capitalize a.m. p.m. Always use figures with them. Do not use spaces in the abbreviation.
-DO NOT capitalize academic degrees when spelled out, or names of college classes.
-DO use periods in lower case abbreviations.
-DO NOT use periods with upper-case abbreivations.
*Exceptions: Use periods in abbreviations of United Nations and names of countries and cities and         in special situations where an all-cap abbreviation replaces a common noun (as in D.A. for district attorney).

These rules not only are important to know for enhancing my overall writing skills, but I feel as if many of the rules in this packet will help me with things such as resumé writing and job applications.