PHOTO OF THE DAY: STYLE POINTS
This week’s publisher’s column written by Jeremy Waltner includes a closer look at how things work — including seed points in prep athletics and the style used by newspapers. The column is as follows:
STYLE POINTS
I spent quite a bit of time Tuesday night studying basketball standings and seed points in anticipation of the region tournaments to come. The girls play next week and the boys the week after, and our local teams will face varying degrees of difficulties when they take the court.
As I was looking at the seed points, putting together my girls basketball region preview for this week and playing out various scenarios in my mind, I got to thinking: how many people actually understand how these seed points work? Heck, I barely understand them, and I’m in the business of needing to understand things.
Well, in the interest of information, here’s how it works in a nutshell.
Teams earn seed points for every game they play, win or lose. But there are significant nuances within that structure. The number of seed points awarded to a winning team is based on the opponents’ win/loss record. Had Freeman Public defeated Dell Rapid St. Mary (17-1) on Saturday they would have earned more seed points than they received after defeating Ethan (9-10) on Tuesday. And if a Class B team plays a Class A team or a Class AA team, that Class B team earns more seed points. And vice-versa for the Class A and Class AA teams playing Class B teams — they earn fewer.
That explains why a team that appears to be better than another based exclusively on their records can be lower in the standings. It’s all about fair competition.
This got me wondering what else readers might not understand about what they read. Why do newspapers abbreviate states differently than the codes used by the United State Postal Service? Why, in newspapers, is Oklahoma abbreviated Okla., and not OK? Or California Calif., and not CA.
(Speaking of how states got their two letter abbreviations, check out the hilarious comedy bit by Gary Gulman on Conan from eight years ago. Just search “Gary Gulman on How The States Got Their Abbreviations” on YouTube and it will come right up.)
The answer to newspaper state abbreviations — and hundreds of other styles and rules for newspapers to follow — can be found in what is almost universally accepted as the Gospel in journalism: The AP (Associated Press) Stylebook. It was first made available in 1953 with a more modern version coming 24 years later and has been the style guide for everything ranging from how to write out percent (% is accepted) to whether fundraiser should be hyphenated (it should not) to whether internet should be capitalized (nope).
While the AP modifies these styles occasionally, the lions share are set, and those who have been in the business for a while have just learned to know that, when using three elliptical dots in a sentence, you put one space in front of the first and another behind the last … like this.
Anyway, does any of this really matter? Probably not.
Unless you’re a basketball team figuring out the postseason, or a school AD setting a competitive basketball schedule. In that case, understanding it can make all the difference in the world.
