New Skills for Old Hacks

The Freelance Division is delighted to announce a new subbing course with Charlie Harris* on Sunday 31st May.

The course – afternoon only – will be held at the New Cavendish Club, London.

This follow up course is in line with our aim to arm freelance journalists with skills that provide them with more choices in the workplace.

As well as the subbing course, we plan to run a marketing course in autumn and may also be able to offer a basic website course later in the year.

As those of you who attended our last subbing course found, there are many different ways of editing a story.

Feedback from the last course included the suggestion that we offer a course on ‘writing headlines for dummies’.

Taking that on board, Charlie has come up with the following proposals:

Headlines

• Crossheads, subheads and straplines
• The language and grammar of headlines
• Shapes, phrasing and visualisation
• Upper or lower case?
• Making heads fit: character counting, bastardising type
• Examples of good and bad headlines

Basic Layout

Principles of page make-up

Styles of design

Setting text

• Width
• Justified/ragged right
• Problems: blind turns, widows and orphans

Page furniture

• Text breakers
• Boxes and panels
• Rules

Typography

Glossary

Arithmetic of type

• Points, picas, ems, ens, m muttons and nuts
• X-height and appearing heigh
• Leading

Ocular laws

Founts

• Principles
• Legibility and readability
• Styles and their uses
• Text and display

Depending on time, we may also look at pictures and captions.

*Charlie Harris has been a journalist for 34 years, working on and editing local newspapers and magazines in north London, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire, and a member of the Institute for 33 of those years. He has been involved in newspaper production for most of his career, from the days of hot metal to Quark Express and the internet. He has taught subs in-house and runs subbing and journalism courses for the NCTJ. He served on the training council for many years and chaired it from 1989-90.

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BOOKING OPTIONS
Cost from £55 per head (£75 non-CIoJ members). The price includes refreshments.
You can email us at memberservices@cioj.co.uk or telephone 020 7252 1187 to book the course. We will ring you for payment details (credit or debit card).