Article Components

Author info

Include a short description of the author(s) at the bottom of a story immediately after the text, with their name in bold and a link to their professional social media account or portfolio.

·        Nikki Potnick is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Philadelphia. Find her on Twitter @[HANDLE].

Bullet points

Use three or four bullet points to summarize stories.

Use full sentences for bullet points, and keep each bullet point to a single sentence.

Use double quotation marks if including quotes from the story.

For commentaries, the last bullet point should be the following disclaimer:

·        This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Don't use the bulletpoints to introduce information that doesn't appear in the story. Bullet points don't function as a first paragraph but as a summary.

Citations

Include citations at the end (before the feedback form link) in bullet points for any studies mentioned in the article.

Don’t cite reports such as those from NGOs, which in most cases aren’t peer-reviewed.

Use APA 6 format for citations.

Citation:

·        Holzner, A., Ruppert, N., Swat, F., Schmidt, M., Weiß, B. M., Villa, G., … Widdig, A. (2019). Macaques can contribute to greener practices in oil palm plantations when used as biological pest control. Current Biology, 29(20), 1066-1067. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.09.011

Use Google Scholar or Citefast to generate citations. Google Scholar is faster but won’t give a doi number, while Citefast does. Neither gives the doi link, however. The link is simply:

·        https://doi.org/[doi number] 

Corrections/clarifications

If a correction or clarification is needed, include at the end of the article. If a correction, include the date when the article was amended.

·        Clarification: This expedition uncovered the first living evidence of Vanzolini's bald-faced saki in 80 years. A survey in 1956 resulted in the collection of dead specimens

Use a gray box to offset the clarification/correction from the rest of the story. Use the following code:

<p style="border: 1px solid #0505f8; background-color: #ddddf9; padding: 1.2em;">Clarification: This expedition uncovered the first living evidence of Vanzolini's bald-faced saki in 80 years. A survey in 1956 resulted in the collection of dead specimens.</p>

Or use the "Add box" button that you will find in the formatting options of WordPress.

Place the clarification/correction box after the author info paragraph (or immediately after the text if the story does not include that element). 

Funding notes

If the story is funded by a partner or donor, add a text box at the top of the article disclosing this information.

Datelines

Datelines should be used for stories reported on location. Write out the municipality in caps, followed by a comma and the country. Exceptions include major cities that are recognizable by the city name alone (refer to the AP style guide for a full list of exceptions).

·        CHIANG RAI, Thailand — (text begins)

·        LONDON — (text begins)

Feedback form

Place your feedback jotform code after the citations (if included).

Headlines/subheads

Try to keep your article headline at or under 75 characters (including spaces). If it’s longer than this, it will be truncated in search engine results.

Minimize capitalization to only proper nouns, the first word of the title and the first word after a colon.

If you include subheads/taglines in your story, please keep them concise. Subheads/taglines should be bolded and sized larger than the body text (<h2> in the WordPress “Paragraph” formatting pull-down menu).

Subheads/taglines should not immediately follow landscape-oriented photos.

Most conventional copy rules don’t apply to headlines. So numbers one through nine would be 1 through 9; single rather than double quotation marks.

Always try to fit the relevant country or region into the headline. The easiest way to do this is to offset with a colon.

·        Mexico: Community finds Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

A better option is to work the country name into the headline for a more natural flow.

When using colons, the first word after the colon is always capped.

Avoid using a quote or statement followed by a colon or semicolon before the main headline. This takes up character space and doesn't add to the context of the story.

If a headline is attributive, you can go with either:

·        Study: Mangroves being lost at faster rate than first thought

·        Mangroves being lost at faster rate than first thought, study finds

Some article types get their own headline format:

·        Commentary: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet (commentary)

·        Podcast: Podcast: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

·        Photo essay: Photos: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

·        Video: Video: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

·        Interviews: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet: Q&A with Alfred Russel Wallace

Avoid headlines that are clickbait.

If a story makes a claim that’s been reported but not independently confirmed, make sure the headline reflects that this is a claim or allegation, not a fact.

Use puns judiciously. They work best with upbeat, light-hearted stories. Anything else may come off as flippant.

Many stories carry direct quotes that can be powerful or memorable. Use them.

Use single quotation marks if you include a quote in a subhead.

Hyperlinks

Include hyperlinks to your source material whenever possible.

Link to as many other Mongabay articles as relevant, as this boosts search engine optimization.

Photos

For landscape-oriented photos, size them to be at least 1,200 pixels wide.

It’s best to include relevant and interesting information in photo captions, such as a location description or more information about an animal depicted in the shot.

For images from a Mongabay staff member, adding “Mongabay” in the credit is optional.

·        Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

·        Image by John C. Cannon.

For images by a contributor on-location reporting exclusively for Mongabay, add “for Mongabay” in the credit.

·        Image by Sue Johnson for Mongabay.

For images provided by an organization, substitute “courtesy of” for “by” in the credit

·        Image courtesy of the Snow Leopard Trust.

For images taken from a published paper, cite the first author and year in the credit.

·        Image courtesy of Dinkley et al. (2019).

For images that are copyrighted, use the copyright sign, ©, in the credit.

·        Image © Christian Braga/Greenpeace.

For images from a Creative Commons repository (usually Wikimedia Commons or Flickr), include author name and links to the source and the license type in the credit.

·        Image by Postdlf via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Interviews (Formerly 'Q&A's)

Identify an interview in the title, as well as who was interviewed.

·        ‘GPS’ bird points to the sweet spot: Interview with honey hunter Eliupendo Laltaika

Include a short summary intro before the Q&A section describing the interviewee(s) and their work as relevant to the interview.

Questions should be denoted in bold.

·        Mongabay: How exactly did you summon the bird, and how did you reward it?

All answers should be preceded by the interviewee’s full name in bold.

·        Eliupendo Laltaika: We don’t use a musical instrument to call it — we just use some words.

If more than one person is being interviewed, precede their respective answers with their full names in bold.

Order of elements at the end of a story

1.  Banner image caption

2.  Author bio (optional)

3. Translation note (if applicable)

4. Co-publication note (if applicable)

5. Editor's note

6. Corrections

7. 'Read more' link

8. Citations

9. Feedback form

Specific examples of how these components should look:

1.               Banner image caption (options b and d work best with short captions):

a.     Banner image: Mother and baby orangutan in Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia. Image by Carine06 via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

b.     Banner image: Mother and baby orangutan in Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia, by Carine06 via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

c.      Banner image of a mother and baby orangutan in Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia. Image by Carine06 via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

d.     Banner image of a mother and baby orangutan in Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia, by Carine06 via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

2.               Author bio:

a.     Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a senior staff writer for Mongabay. Follow her on Twitter @ECAlberts.

b.     Justin Catanoso is a regular contributor to Mongabay and a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

3.               Translation note:

a.     This story was reported by Mongabay’s Indonesia team and first published here on our Indonesian site on July 3, 2023.

4.               Co-publication note:

a.     This story was produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund in partnership with the Pulitzer Center and ((o))eco.

5.     Editor's note: 

a.   Editor’s note: This story was powered by Places to Watch, a Global Forest Watch (GFW) initiative designed to quickly identify concerning forest loss around the world and catalyze further investigation of these areas. Places to Watch draws on a combination of near-real-time satellite data, automated algorithms and field intelligence to identify new areas on a monthly basis. In partnership with Mongabay, GFW is supporting data-driven journalism by providing data and maps generated by Places to Watch. Mongabay maintains complete editorial independence over the stories reported using this data. 

6.   Corrections:

a.   CORRECTION (01/17/2024): A previous version of this article stated that 11 countries had signed  Global Declaration for River Dolphins. The correct number is 9. We regret the error. 

7.               Read more link:

a.     Just the link, or

b.     See more from this writer, followed by the link

8.               Citations:

a.     Zemp, D. C., Guerrero-Ramirez, N., Brambach, F., Darras, K., Grass, I., Potapov, A., … Kreft, H. (2023). Tree islands enhance biodiversity and functioning in oil palm landscapes. Nature, 618(7964), 316-321. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06086-5

9.         Feedback form*: 

a.   FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page. 

*Here's a list of the available feedback forms for editors and writers that you can link to.