Update: If you read this when it was posted initially, or after I updated Tuesday night with lots of responses, I have added more responses, plus my own recommendation.
When I was visiting the St. Paul Pioneer Press newsroom recently, some copy editors asked a perplexing style question: If we are creating content first for digital platforms, and trying to make a print product efficiently from that content, how do we handle references to “today”?
“Tomorrow” can be problematic, too. Newspaper journalists have traditionally avoided “yesterday” and “tomorrow,” making them “Monday” and “Wednesday” if you’re publishing on Tuesday. So it’s probably still a good idea to avoid “yesterday.” But “Wednesday” should really become “today” when that digital story is published in the next morning’s newspaper.
Is there a good solution that doesn’t involve changing every “today” reference between digital and print?
Unless you count a quick Google search as research (I don’t), I haven’t had time to research whether the American Copy Editors Society or AP Stylebook has provided guidance on this issue. But the Pioneer Press copy editors indicated they had no guidance, and they handle a lot of wire copy, and I think they mentioned that they had looked. If you know of guidance from ACES or the stylebook (or hell, even @FakeAPStylebook), please share it.
For now, I’ll crowdsource this (and I’ll share the link with some ACES leaders and other copy editors I know). What’s the best way to provide date clarity? I’ll discuss pros and cons of different approaches, and then I’ll provide a ballot. I’d appreciate your vote:
- Always use the day of the week, for instance, Tuesday, if I mean the day I publish this blog post. Pro: You always know which day of the week you mean. Con: Someone reading the story on Tuesday might think “Tuesday” means last Tuesday or next Tuesday, because who says “Tuesday” on Tuesday instead of “today”?
- Use a dateline with an actual date, then use “today” in the story (yes, online stories have a time-stamp; but that’s often not on the screen, when “today” appears in copy; and online stories aren’t always read the day they are published). Pro: It’s clear to people who read the dateline. Cos: Do people actually note the dateline? Do we want to make them look back to the dateline (which may not be on the same page in print).
- In the copy, specify the day of the week: “today (Tuesday).” Pro: It’s clear. Con: It’s clunky.
- In the copy, specify the date: “today (March 6).” Pro: It’s even clearer. Con: It’s clunky.
- Use “today” online and fix it every single time for print. Pro: It’s the clearest solution to the reader. Con: It’s time-consuming, and, if you’re not 100 percent successful in fixing, you’ll have errors in print.
So what’s your advice? (If I’m leaving out an alternative, please share your idea in the comments.)
The poll (and results so far) are below.
Update: I got much more response on social media than on the poll. Thanks to Mark Loundy for Storifying the Twitter discussion (I’ve also embedded some tweets below).
Thanks also to consultant Merrill Perlman, former copy desk chief of the New York Times (and a Des Moines Register colleague from years ago), for this response by email:
IMHO, day of week should replace “yesterday,” “today” and “tomorrow.” Taking it a step further, it would make long-term sense to use the date, so that the time reference is always unmistakable, but that looks awkward both in print and online unless it’s already a week old. And no one has the resources to go back and change time references as they age …
Further thanks to John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun who sent this response by email:
At The Sun we edit each article as a “platform-neutral” text. In this form the day of the week is used instead of “yesterday,” “today<” or “tomorrow,” and that is the form that goes on the website, typically on the day before the print publication. In the version for the print editions, we change the day of publication to “today.”
Also responding by email was ACES President Teresa Schmedding of the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill.:
We would use today online since our web pages have a date published stamp on them — if it’s today. And today in print if it’s today.
No tomorrow or yesterday in either.
I should also say our CMS (Saxotech) makes thus a 2-second fix. While clarity is kind, I admit I’d probably vote for the day if it meant an extra 15 minutes of time for someone to hand fix all those references.
Sue Burzynski Bullard of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln added:
I’m for using day of the week instead of today, yesterday, tomorrow. Just makes more sense that way.
Thanks also to Joe Hight of the Oklahoman and NewsOK.com for this answer on Facebook:
We actually have a style guideline, created by The Oklahoman’s Standards Team, that reads as follows:
“All content in The Oklahoman and on NewsOK.com will carry the day of the week that an event is occurring, rather than today, this morning, this afternoon, this evening. This rule ends confusion that can be caused when stories are placed online before print publication.
“WRONG: The action will be considered today by the Oklahoma City Council.
“RIGHT: The action will be considered Tuesday by the Oklahoma City Council.
“AP Style actually advises: ‘Use only in direct quotations and in phrases that do not refer to a specific day: Customs today are different from those of a century ago. Use the day of the week in copy, not today or tonight.’ ”
Carl Lavin, also on Facebook, added:
I’m with Joe. The world has changed. Even in print someone may be reading on a different day than the day the paper was published. Online that is certainly true. Quotes can’t be altered of course, but references should be to the named day of the week. I’ve long advocated avoiding “today,” “yesterday” or “tomorrow.”
And on Google+, I got this response from Susan Crowell:
It gets even trickier when your “print” is a weekly. We have no specific policy and are probably all over the board, too, in practice. I lean toward “today (March 6)” even online with a date stamp at the beginning of the posting because people gloss right over that, and I guess I don’t assume they’re reading it “today.” Eagerly await the crowdsourcing response…
Also from Google+, The Reporter, a Digital First newsroom in Lansdale, Pa.:
Our online editors are required to read every in-house story before posting. I’ve spotted this “Today” issue a couple of times. I just change the wording.
On Twitter, as with the poll and other comments, the most popular answer is to use the day of the week in all instances:
https://twitter.com/#!/DaveDutton/status/177101756512219138
https://twitter.com/#!/JulieWestfall/status/177044917107965952
https://twitter.com/#!/PhilHeron/status/177116520072224768
https://twitter.com/#!/dennisedit/status/177076882553049088
https://twitter.com/#!/journtoolbox/status/177094180881969152
https://twitter.com/#!/jenconnic/status/177073778587742210
https://twitter.com/#!/SantaTeresaNews/status/177045064181223424
https://twitter.com/#!/cursingeditor/status/177048306244009985
https://twitter.com/#!/WakeOfWeek/status/177047691304505345
https://twitter.com/#!/mercbizbreak/status/177050228292202496
https://twitter.com/#!/stevebuttry/status/177236912384376833
Some tweeps favored changing between platforms:
https://twitter.com/#!/RuidosoNews/status/177102996256202752
https://twitter.com/#!/mike_D_hall/status/177076360060207105
https://twitter.com/#!/sltrib/status/177045145924014081
https://twitter.com/#!/LisaLoving/status/177045735316013057
Some favored other approaches:
https://twitter.com/#!/journtoolbox/status/177094180881969152
https://twitter.com/#!/MarkLoundy/status/177078464082481153
https://twitter.com/#!/scottddolan/status/177059331068542976
https://twitter.com/#!/for_django/status/177055959011700737
https://twitter.com/#!/gregorykorte/status/177046419700588545
https://twitter.com/#!/NAT_DigitalJosh/status/177276534892146688
A couple general observations:
https://twitter.com/#!/JulieWestfall/status/177075535606845441
https://twitter.com/#!/joemurph/status/177265016133783553
And, Twitter being Twitter, my request drew some humorous responses:
https://twitter.com/#!/ivanlajara/status/177105747325353985
https://twitter.com/#!/Jordanfenster/status/177102707390287873
My recommendation: Stop using “today” as a matter of routine in news stories (fine in social media and SMS alerts). Use the day of the week, adding “today” or the date as needed for clarity. And use good news judgment in allowing exceptions: a constantly updated breaking story that’s being updated constantly and is going to appear in print as a heavily edited write-thru in print, a page-one print advance of the president’s visit to town that day where the editor handling the story decides “today” reads better than “Wednesday.”
Where a content-management system can automate a change (and get it right without fail), I’m all for using the CMS to customize content to platforms. But if you get some automated changes that shouldn’t have been changed, I’d prefer to stick with day of the week.
And I do like the idea of dynamic date tags (Adrian Holovaty described the idea in his 2006 blog post mentioned in a tweet above) that would change “Wednesday” to “March 6” after a week, so the archived version would always read correctly. Does anyone know of a site that’s doing that?
One final note: This blog post is a great example of how misleading metrics can be, if you only look at one measurement, or if you place exaggerated importance in a single metric. This post only has 310 views so far, decent traffic for a first day, but many posts do better. I had a couple posts do better last week and a couple do about as well. But this one generated great engagement. The responses above on multiple platforms and the comments below are all part of how you measure the value of a post, and this one got people talking. Successful engagement sometimes generates vigorous conversation, but sometimes in small niches.
I like the immediacy of “today,” and I understand its digital-first connotations, but it creates some potential confusion for archive searches. “Tuesday” isn’t a lot better, but it’s a start. All the current approaches rely on readers comparing the date references in a story to the “posted” date, then doing their own mental gymnastics to sort it out — if they’re not reading the story the day it was posted. I’d like to think there’s a better way. Perhaps a bot that’s smart enough to convert “today” or “Tuesday” date references to complete dates when the calendar flips. Can someone start working on that?
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Oh, and — we don’t use datelines online, so that complicates the issue for us.
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I’ve dealt with this as editor at a semi-weekly, daily and now a group of weeklies. It’s even more exaggerated at weeklies. We often end up with two versions of the same story. For example, in our newsroom, Wednesday’s six editions go to press on Monday afternoon. If a breaking story moved today, March 6, it would say Tuesday on our site. However, if we left the story as is in print, when it is published inside the Wednesday, March 14 edition, if we left the Tuesday reference readers would think we were referring to Tuesday, March 13. Initially it was a great way to have copy editors reaching for the Tylenol.
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It’s a great dilemma, I often wonder the same thing. If you’re looking for an example from another news org, the LA Times last year made a change to this very issue, axing “today” and replacing it with that day of the week: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/readers/2010/02/today-is-so-last-week.html
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This isn’t a solution, but when I heard Saxotech was going to manage content for both digital and print I thought, I hope it has some kind of automatic editing function that changes “today” to “Tuesday” or “Wednesday” to “today,” depending on whether your referring to something in advance or in the present. In the one demo I saw there was a base story and then “children.” It would be great if the code were written so you could check a box like:
Date published online: 03/05/12
Date published in print: 03/06/12
and it set so that the day-of publication said “today.”
This would be great because I prefer the “fixing every time” option, but would automate it.
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This is a good one. We struggle with this every single day (and night).
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Thanks to @DavidVeselenak for the link explaining our approach at the L.A. Times. It took a lot of persuasion, but two years in, we find that most of the newsroom has become accustomed to a fairly strict day-of-week standard.
Our homepage producers do have the freedom to use “today” or “tonight” in display type when it makes most sense (you might see that, for example, in our live Super Tuesday coverage). And we still like “today” for emailed breaking-news alerts: They need to connote immediacy; being so ephemeral, they are unlikely to lead to confusion (users won’t be reading alerts three days later).
Nice discussion, as usual, @SteveButtry. Thanks for the post and the resulting helpful comments.
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I voted — severely in the minority — for “today” online and “Tuesday” in print, changing the references. And we’ve been using “this morning” or “this afternoon” for immediacy online.
Bloomberg, by contrast, at least online, avoids any time element, on the assumption that everything it reports happened a short while ago.
Turns out our stylebook (a combination of ours and AP) says:
“today
“To avoid confusion between online and print editions, use the day of the week, not “today” or “tonight,” when referring to the day of publication.”
I think that’s been honored in the breach.
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I’ve been reminded that our style entry (which i quoted) was proposed in October, then put on hold. No final style decision.
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I’m all for solving this. But we should do it for the right reasons, and only if it reduces reader confusion and increases clarity.
We should not do it merely because changing it is a pain in the ass. A good question to ask: Will eliminating the “work” of changing it between print and online result in any new content being generated?
The likely answer is “no.” So maybe it’s worth exploring, but not worth alternatives that make the product less clear.
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Using the weekday doesn’t automatically make everything clear — if you’re reading “The meeting is Tuesday” on a Tuesday, you’ll almost certainly wonder whether the meeting is/was today or if it’s coming up next week. And using just the date gets horribly clunky when you’ve got a bunch of dates in one short paragraph (often the case with court and crime stories describing date of incident/arrest/charging/release on bail). The online time stamp doesn’t clarify “today” in all cases, because stories are posted the evening before publication.
Until there’s a Web system that can do an automatic search/replace at the stroke of midnight, the compromise I’d suggest is saying “Friday, March 9,”etc. for “today” equivalents that are a “call to action” — meetings, events and possibly the first day of trials and the like. It goes against existing AP style, but “Friday, March 9” is otherwise a natural-sounding construction that people use in real life. And if we use it only on first reference, I don’t think it gets too clunky.
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