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Digital journal Insight Forum

Style Guidelines

Insight-Forum-Style-Guidelines

Here’s a quick list of the editorial and style guidelines for Digital Journal’s Insight Forum. Following these recommendations will help get your work published faster, and ensure your content resonates with our audience. 

Article length

We suggest articles are between 800-1,000 words. The ideal minimum word count is 500 words, and the maximum is 2,000 words

Your content must be original

We are looking for content you have not published elsewhere. If you wish to republish content you contribute to Digital Journal, we ask that you wait 10 business days to re-share on your other platforms and tag Digital Journal.

Headlines and subheadings

Write headlines and subheads in sentence case, with only proper nouns capitalized. 

Headlines are ideally 65 characters or less.

Don’t add periods, exclamation marks or slashes in headlines.

For articles that are 800-1,000 words, break up your article using two or three subheadings. It makes your article skimmable and works well for readers on mobile devices.

What kind of content we’re looking for

We are looking for thought leadership content. You can write about your business or industry, but the key takeaways and insight should be applicable to everyone reading. 

This is not an ad for your company, and the more you showcase your expertise the more likely it is to resonate with the audience.

You can write about things you’re doing or learning at work, but focus on sharing insight, industry trends, and thought-provoking perspectives. Our goal is to foster meaningful discussions and contribute to the collective knowledge so refrain from promotional language or overtly sales-focused content, as our platform is dedicated to thought leadership rather than traditional advertising. 

Some questions you may want to ask yourself as you get started writing:

  1. Ask yourself what your professional experience has taught you, what topics or issues you’re passionate about, or what you have particular expertise in.
  2. Stay current. Pay attention to discussions happening in your field and identify gaps where your expertise could offer fresh insights and solutions.
  3. Find a new and unique angle by considering the specifics. Think about what sets your perspective apart and narrow it down to distinct examples where you can offer tangible and actionable advice.
  4. Gather data, statistics and specific real-life examples from your career to support your ideas and back up your points.

Location matters

Since Digital Journal reaches a global audience, stories can’t talk about what’s happening in “the nation” or “the country” unless it is perfectly clear which nation is being referenced.

Always specify your country if you talk about location.

Grammar and Punctuation

  • Canadian, American and British English are all accepted, but must remain consistent throughout the article.
  • Always insert a single space after a period, comma or other punctuation mark. No double spaces.
  • Avoid the use of exclamation points. Always.
  • Use a long em dash ( — ) with a space before and after to indicate pauses, not hyphens. 
  • The first reference to a person or subject should include their first and last name. Every subsequent reference should refer to them by their last name only. 
  • A ‘single-quote’ quotation is used in headlines. Single quotes are also used for quotes within quotes (i.e. “John Doe seemed frustrated when he said, ‘I give up,’ but I understand where he’s coming from,” he said). “Double quotes” are used inside the body of articles.
  • Commas and periods go inside the end quotation marks (tuck in your punctuation). 
  • Please use the Oxford comma. The Oxford comma is placed before the final “and” or “or” in a list of three or more items. For example, lists are done in this way: cats, dogs, and horses. 
  • Use the active voice instead of the passive. It makes your writing sound more confident and clear.  For example:
    • Passive: The CEO of the graphic design firm was hired by the company’s board of directors.
    • Active: The company’s board of directors hired the CEO yesterday.

Images

Every article requires a feature image that will be cropped into a 1600×900 px format. If the images are provided by you or your company, the images must be owned by you and include photo credit. If you do not have any images that meet our requirements, we will select a royalty-free image from a stock photo library to accompany your content.