Thursday, August 9, 2007

Formatting Standards

Here are some issues we need to resolve and possible options. In the spirit of "just do it" I've indicated a possible solution. If you'd prefer something else, by all means say so and if the majority agrees we'll do it that way.

1. Post title.
For movies: "Review: A History of Violence (2005)", "Commentary: Albert Brooks Films", "Siskel & Ebert Archives Online!" etc.

For TV: "Lost: "Walkabout" (Season 2, Episode 13)"

2. Film information. Not included in a separate section. Make references to directors and actors in the body of the review as you like.

3. Including a picture. Is mandatory for reviews, optional for everything else. I find it's really not that much work to find a picture on Google Image Search that I like and put it in there. And everyone likes looking at pictures! This will probably be an item of some debate.

4. Ratings. Out of 4 stars. Half stars are allowed (and encouraged). This is how most professional critics do it, thus it's my preference. I'm sure this will also be a source of contention so feel free to argue away!

Location: at the end of the body of your review, and bolded.

5. Body. Start writing immediately below the picture. If you make reference to the film's name (or any other films) in the body of your review, bold it.

6. Signatures. Not necessary seeing as they would be right above where it says who posted it.

Anything else? Here's an example of a review using my suggested style of formatting.

Oh also, at Matt's suggestion I started a draft post for the mission statement of this site (hopefully this can be the first actual post). It's a draft in hopes that you will all edit it until it's ready for the world!

6 comments:

Mike Marsman said...

will we have any kind of spoiler policy? i think spoilers must not happen within the first paragraph. if there are spoilers included, something like "warning: spoiler info below" should prefix them.

Mike Marsman said...

re #1 for TV... what about season reviews? for example, i just got caught up on ugly betty and am somehow hooked on it. i suspect i'll want to post something about it, but not 23 times. for tv seasons, something like "Ugly Betty - Season 1"

Anonymous said...

I just took a shot at a multi-season review. Turns out Blogger does allow direct HTML editing, so it's marked up "my" way (with headings, <cite> elements and such). The most visible divergences from the notes above are that <cite> is styled in italics rather than bold, and I chose to "float" the images within the body rather than keep them separate.

cjguerra said...

I think the poster should add themselves as a tag (for easier filtering). See my sample post for more details.

cjguerra said...

I wonder if we should include a link to the relevant imdb.com entry? Or maybe that should be up to the poster.

Anonymous said...

both of mike's suggestions sound good, and definitely try and remember to tag yourself.