Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter 
Summaries for the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter are typically 1-4 sentences each, with the exception being major news in the General Community News section.
In writing summaries, please remember to follow these content guidelines:
- Make your summaries present tense.
- Good: The author states
- Bad: The author stated
- We release on very simple wiki-based syntax and export to several formats, including text only, so please avoid:
- Hyperlinks in summaries
- Full justification of text
- Bold, italics, strikethrough
- Do not editorialize.
- Good:
- John Smith proclaims “the new release of Ubuntu is great!”
- This article explains…
- Bad:
- The new release of Ubuntu is great!
- This ‘‘great’’ article explains…
- Do not add facts or information that are not included in the article.
- You may know that Mark Shuttleworth founded Ubuntu, but if it’s not mentioned in the article, don’t mention it.
- Do not change the title text or quotes from what is written by the author.
- Grammar error in the subject of a blog post? We don’t fix it; we keep the title what the author intended (if we know the author, it’s acceptable to point out the error but if they don’t fix it then we don’t fix it).
- Try not to quote passages that have grammar or other errors. If you do, don’t grammar correct; a quote is a quote.
- Spell names properly.
- This is very important. Names are a very personal thing, and a misspelled name is quite disappointing. Please make every effort to ensure this does not happen.
- Make sure the summary tells us more than the title of the article
- Short summaries are fine as long as they give some hint beyond the title of what the article is about (this is why 1-4 sentences is suggested).
- Date formats
- Dates should not be shown in numerical formats such as 10/12/14 as the intended date can be interpreted differently throughout the world. Abbreviated months are fine as long as what is quoted is unambiguous.
- Do not try to make your summary a cliff-hanger
- ‘’‘Always’‘’ use ‘’‘double’‘’ quotation marks when quoting directly from a news article or blog post
- Always use the proper name of a website which is usually found at the bottom of the websites’s home page, e.g. ‘’‘OMG! Ubuntu!’‘’ not ‘’‘omgubuntu.co.uk’‘’.
And, for some specific grammar reminders:
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When listing more than two verb phrases, each verb phrase should be separated by a comma.
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Bad:
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George Smith reports on the user experience, options for customizations and changes in the upcoming release.
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Good (note the comma after ‘customizations’):
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George Smith reports on the user experience, options for customizations, and changes in the upcoming release.
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When listing only two verb phrases joined by a conjunction (and, but, etc.), no comma is needed.
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Bad:
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Bob Jones invites users to contribute feedback, and asks the community to install the application on as many devices as possible.
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Good (note the missing comma after ‘feedback’):
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Bob Jones invites users to contribute feedback and asks the community to install the application on as many devices as possible.
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If a comma is required (for whatever reason), then the following is correct (note the comma after ‘feedback’ and the addition of the subject ‘he’)–these are two complete sentences (both have a subject and verb) joined by a conjunction (and), therefore, a comma is required to separate the two sentences:
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Bob Jones invites users to contribute feedback, and he asks the community to install the application on as many devices as possible.
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The Oxford comma is preferred. This is the comma attached to the second-to-last item in a list (before “and”). This would be a correct usage of the Oxford comma:
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Joe writes about foo, bar, and baz.