Best way to first reference high schools?

Yeah, it's only in a very local reference where you'll see a school referred to sans city. You may not see the American Statesman call Westlake Austin Westlake, but just about everybody else does.

 

In this style, hypothetically, how would you represent a high school named after the two towns that populate it? Let's say the residents of Martinsville and Lawrence had a joint high school named Martinsville-Lawrence High School, would you call it "Lawrence Martinsville-Lawrence" to clarify that the school is actually in Lawrence, or would you simply call it "Martinsville-Lawrence" and not tell your readers which town the school is located in?

In our style, we would call that school "Martinsville-Lawrence of Lawrence" in body copy, or just "Martinsville-Lawrence" in agate. It might seem redundant, but I suppose the idea is to always make clear where the high school is actually located.

The same thing would apply if a high school was named after its county. For instance, Grantland High School might cover all of Grantland County, but the town it's in is Fucking Hollywood. So we'd call that school "Grantland of Fucking Hollywood." Again, though, it would just be "Grantland" in agate.

 

To be honest, I'm not quite sure, but my guess is go with the school name like you would with a school that shares the name of the town. I remember a school like that called Hampshire-Fannett (two small towns combined for a school) that was just called that. It was in Hampshire, but it was always just called Hampshire-Fannett (with the hyphen, which is part of the school name).

I remember county high schools giving the name of the town (usually a hamlet) the school was in. I even remember a school that combined kids from two counties an the town went first: Sour Lake Hardin-Jefferson High.

There are some odd exceptions I can recall. There's a part of Houston called Aldine that used to be a suburb but has since been largely annexed. But the schools -- which remain in the Aldine Independent School District instead of the HISD -- are still referred to as Aldine schools. It's "Aldine Eisenhower" and not "Houston Eisenhower."

There are also schools in the Houston suburban area of Fort Bend County that I used to hear referenced by their town name, like Sugar Land Willowridge or Missouri City Elkins. But now I hear/see them called Fort Bend Willowridge or FB Elkins. Not sure what's up with that.

 

I find that interesting, entirely because I'm a dorky copy editor who loves to learn the reasoning behind style decisions.

But the truth for the OP is, there are many good ways to do things. If it were up to me, I'd probably use a style that I think readers can most easily understand. In a case like BrianGriffin's example of Texas, I'd go with the colloquial terminology. In a vacuum where no style was accepted throughout the region, I might be included to go with Permian (Odessa) instead of Odessa Permian. I would use that style for all high schools unless the high school was named directly after the town. I would also be inclined to say that if you are on a state border, you should include states for all towns. So Permian (Odessa, Texas), for example. I would avoid going with the straight Associated Press styings they use for scores listings, though. Those can be unnecessarily long and they often are kept sloppily.

But the biggest thing is picking a style that is comprehendable and sticking with it. That means enforcing it across all stories, whether or not your egotistical columnist cares for the change. (Who hasn't had to deal with that in one style change or another?) It might sound crazy, but I've received reader criticism for high school styles in the past. Anything involving prep sports is a lightning rod; complete and total balance is expected. That means uniformity in all regards.

That way, when a Martinsville resident whose son threw a no-hitter for Martinsville-Lawrence of Lawrence calls in to ask why Lawrence is getting all the credit, you can explain your style rule to them politely, and if they're a reasonable person (they're not), maybe they'll understand. And when that egotistical columnist bitches about the fact that you changed his first reference from "Grantland" to "Grantland of Fucking Hollywood" despite the fact that it "completely threw off the cadence in my lede, bro," you can tell him to fuck off and build his stupid cadence to the stylebook.

 

On a related subject, can we agree that summary execution is appropriate for board of eduction members when they name their schools something like:

Stephen A. Smith Northeastern College Prep Institute for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

 

Screamin' Prep.

That is all.

 

I hate the UIL's treatment of schools at state tournaments when they put the school district's name before the schools name giving you the unstable "Lewisville The Colony" "Lewisville Flower Mound Marcus" "Lewisville Flower Mound" and "Lewisville Hebron."

 

For Alabama, the style seems to be to add the city only when the name is duplicated in the state. Thus Hillcrest-Evergreen vs. Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa or Lee-Montgomery vs. Lee-Huntsville. But just Murphy, Baker or Davidson (all in Mobile).

 

Any body cover Rocky Mountain High?

 

Hamshire.

 

Also in the Texas convention, Tyler John Tyler.

 

But media doesn't follow that, do they? I've never heard some of these references.

Of course, not all things are big in Texas and that includes my time working there (less than half a year) so my exposure was minimal.