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The Essentials
The following represent our essential guidelines when composing an album review or article. In no particular order:
- Italicize album (film & book) titles with the <em> tag. You can italicize an album title like this: <em>Kind of Blue</em>.
- Place song titles in "double quotes."
- Place the first instance of a musician's full name in {{}}. We have over 144,000 musicians in our database, so if you do not get a hit on a common name, there's a good chance you misspelled it. Examples: {{m: Ted Nash = 14218}} or {{m: Ted Nash = 14218}} or {{m: Ted Nash = 14218}}'s. For other internal linking syntax (to cities, fellow contributors or venues or record labels, go here.
- For articles, always add the primary musician's name to the "Primary musician or band name" box. This creates an association between the article page and musician page. We'll also append an "About" (the musician) section as well as their upcoming calendar to the article page.
- Use the <h3> tag for subheaders within the article text box, like this <h3>Day 2</h3>. A paragraph break should precede the h3 tag but no breaks should follow it as the h3 automatically adds the requisite space.
- Link to internal articles or external articles like this: <a href="link" target="_blank">Album name or Article name website name</a> Example: <a href="https://www.allaboutjazz.com/coleman-hawkins-by-henk-de-boer" target="_blank">Coleman Hawkins</a>
- Avoid contractions.
- Avoid first person references (or over personalization). All About Jazz is not a blog.
- Avoid telling a reader how the music will make them feel.
- Place two line breaks (not one) between paragraphs.
- Always use spell and grammar checkers—and fact-check musician names and album info (label, release year)—before submitting your article. We recommend composing your articles using Google Drive Docs, so you have cloud backup. It includes a spellchecker. Also, install the Grammarly browser plug-in as a grammar checker.
- Do not refer to an album being reviewed as the artist’s "latest," "newest" or "most recent."
- Remember you are writing for a mix of fans and musicians, with expertise levels ranging from newbie to aficionado.
- Pullquotes at the top of articles do not need to be placed in quotes, as the pullquote coding will automatically add quotation marks. Similarly, automatic coding will add a dash ahead of the name of the pullquote author, so no need not add it.
