Newspaper Terms

Piggybacking off the "Why is it called Agate?" thread, I wonder about all the weird, goofy terms we've all encountered along the way. Strange/antiquated words for things specific to the sports department, list 'em here. You know, before everything moves to the internet and we forget them all.

I'll start. I wonder if this is giving away my location, but there's a guy at my shop who calls the Sunday circulars and coupon pages "the Wellingtons."

 

i always dug nut graph ... double truck ... copy rim ...

hey, does an upper-case "M" count as 1 1/2 or two?

 

I learned two. That and an upper-case W. Upper-case I's are one, everything else is 1 1/2. Lower-case i's, t's, f's and l's are 1/2, m's and w's are 1 1/2, and everything else is 1.

 

Living up to the username, I see. Yep. You hit every single one on the head there.

 

lower case j's are 1/2 as well. it was flitj, as i recall dimly.

 

Damn. I knew I was missing one, although I'm not entirely sure that was on the list I learned. I've also discovered that in some headline fonts, r's might as well be 3/4; j's might just fall into that group too.

 

Hed counting is a lost art in this modern "Fit Head" world we live in.

 

And certain (non-Quark, non-InD) editorial systems make it possible to "fit" heds of appalling length on a single line, if the user has absolutely no sense of hed-counting.

 

Refer.

 

-30-

 

Lede.
Lede? What's a lede? Oh, you mean lead.
Yeah, lede.

 

RTFP