SJC-style-and-production-guide-2012

diagnosis/prognosis are sometimes confused. The first is a speculation about the cause of aproblem, or sickness. It can apply to machinery or people. The second is the likely outcome.‘The prognosis for economy is not good. We can expect further inflation,’ or ‘The prognosisfor the patient’s recovery is good. She should be up and about in days’.dietitian not dieticiandifferent from rather than ‘different to’. Also differ from.dint means by force of - ‘she convinced me through sheer dint of argument’. A car gets a dent,as does an ego.disability is always used, largely because it is ‘adjectival’ in that it describes an aspect of aperson’s life, rather than socially re-classifying them. Thus a person has hearing, speech orsight disability. They are still a person, not a blind man/woman, or deaf mute. A person usesa wheelchair, walking frame or stick because they have a disability. They are not handicappedor crippled in all aspects of life. Neither are they confined to a wheelchair (a similar totalisingtendency). They simply use it when mobility is required. But ‘disability’ can be an awkwardword at times. Occasional use of blind or deaf for reasons of style is understandable.direct speech (See also News Ltd section)Quotes must not be altered from what the person actually said. It is important that directspeech be correctly punctuated so that there is no doubt as to who said what. Quote marks gooutside punctuation unless the quote is a partial quote beginning in mid-sentence. Note:‘This is the way the world ends,’ he said.He said: ‘This is the way the world ends.’ (But avoid this form of attribution)He said this was ‘the way the world ends’.Note that in a running quote, where a number of paragraphs in quotation marks are writtenin succession, the quotation marks are not closed until the final paragraph. Note also that thequote is attributed at the end of the first sentence.‘I found evidence of large numbers of trivial crimes in urban areas that were largelyunreported,’ Ms Tucker said.‘More sinister was the serious violent crime in the villages, which were regularly cited as theidealisation of the traditional way of life.‘Fiji was being sold to tourists as ‘the way the world should be’.‘I found a horrendous amount of crime in the villages.’Running quotes must record what was actually said in the order in which it was said; theymust not be a collection of quotes from throughout an interview taken out of context andthrown together. Do not start a quote without having introduced the speaker, ideally in anindirect paragraph immediately before the quote.An example of too frequent thoughtless quoting:The Australian Rugby Union expressed concern about safety after plastic bottles were thrownat the Australian sevens side in Wellington last week.‘To suggest that a country who hosts more rugby games in a year than any other in the worldcannot run safely World Cup events is just childish and nonsense really,’ NZ Rugby Uniongeneral manager Steve Tew said.UQ SJC STYLEBOOK 2012 – PAGE 36