Editorial policy

The paper concentrates on events, which shape the Peninsula community: council, decisions and expenditures, commercial developments as well as activities of the community itself.
The paper is fiercely parochial, primarily interested in building the community of the Peninsula. There is enough happening on the Peninsula and involving the people of the Peninsula without us having to look outside its boundaries.
Names and faces are important. We need as many as we can. We are talking about ourselves. All stories should be as detailed and specific as possible.

GUIDELINES
All stories are to be factually accurate and fair, reasonable and balanced accounts of events.
Articles should be written as "press releases" - in the third person. For example, rather than saying "I would like to thank all who helped on the day", write your name - "Club secretary Mr Ian Jones thanked all who helped on the day."
Keep sentences short, simple and direct, with one sentence to a paragraph.
Make sure the five Ws are answered within the first two paragraphs - What, where, when, who and why.
All stories should be dated and sourced: eg Media release, June 9. Make sure the organisation name is in the story, not just on the letterhead.
For forum contributions, we will publish name and suburb, but author's name, organisation, contact details including address and telephone must be supplied. Anonymous contributions will not be published. Submissions may be published in an edited form.
No value judgement, endorsement, condemnation (editorialising) is to be included in any stories. The paper may occasionally express an opinion through an editorial under the paper's own banner, on the letters/forum page.
Don't use superlatives - extremely, very, huge - they don't actually tell us anything and take up valuable space.
Reports should generally be in the past tense.

STYLE SHEET
No full stops in abbreviations, like NSW or Mr JW Smith
Use vertical quotes and apostrophes, not curly ones. Use "straight quotes", not opening and closing quote marks, inserted by Microsoft Word's "smart quotes" feature (turn this feature off - Format/Autoformat/Options).
Don't use tabs or indents or try to imitate newspaper column layout. Use single word spacing, even after full stops.
Little t and big P for the Peninsula (and other proper nouns) but not in a peninsula.
Rd, Ave and St, not Road, Avenue and Street
Dates should be Friday, June 18, without a year if it is within the current, previous or coming year - say next year or last year as necessary.
Long names should be spelt out with the abbreviation in brackets on the first mention. Use the abbreviation thereafter, like Police and Community Youth Club (PCYC).
Position or role first, then name, like Umina High School captain Nathan Lakajev. Most positions are lower case, like mayor Cr Chris Holstein and Gosford Council's director of works Mr Stephen Glen.
Gosford Council rather than Gosford City Council
Lower case council throughout the story
Cr Debra Wales not Councillor Debra Wales (and not Clr either)
Say "Gosford Council decided ..." or "The meeting decided ..." rather than "Councillors decided ..."
Phone numbers in the format 4344 6543
A date range in the same month is July 19-23
Numbers 10 and above are numerals, from one to nine are spelt out.
Use a comma as thousands separator for 10,000 and more but no separator for 9999 and less.
Use "said" rather than "states", unless you are quoting from a written statement.
Use "more than" rather than "over"
Spell out BBQ, like barbecue
It's 10am, not 10.00 a.m.
It's one million or 2.57 million, not 1,000,000 or 2,570,000
Sentences should not start with numbers. If you have to start a sentence with numbers, spell them out.
And don't use don't - use do not (spell out other contractions too).
Avoid the use of semi-colons (;) and exclamation marks (!)
Placings: first, second, third ... ninth, 10th, 11th ... etc. Turn off ordinals in Word so that these do not print as 12^th, 13^th etc.

COMMON MISTAKES lead to the following advice:
No apostrophes in plurals, like under-16s and CDs
Use them for possessives, like team's success
Its does not have an apostrophe if it is possessive, only as an abbreviation of it is.
Some contributors seem to confuse tenses when reporting what a person says. If the words are quoted verbatim, they are surrounded by quote marks and the original tense is retained.
Eg. "This is the best thing since sliced bread," she said. (Note the comma goes inside the quotes.)
Otherwise the whole sentence should be put in the past tense.
Eg. She said it was the best thing since sliced bread.
Don't mix tenses and do recognise collective nouns.
said ... was NOT said ... is
the club will hold its ... NOT the club will hold their
It is EITHER ... Member for Peats, Ms Marie Andrews, said ...
OR ... Member for Peats Ms Marie Andrews said
Preferably the second.
(Note the commas - two matching or none)
Commas often go in pairs, surrounding a clause. The exception is, of course, when the clause is at the start of end of a sentence.
Australia-wide and self-funding have hyphens, but crisis line doesn't.
Things that and people who.
Use "who" for people and "that" or "which" for things, eg "the man who" not "the man that". Another example: The petition which ...." not "The petition who ..."