Journalism and Publishing Terms - Jargon Buster.md
This page is intended to be a glossary of old and new media terms of relevance to the practice of journalism. To edit or add glossary entries on this page, please click here or email your suggestions or questions to john at journalism.co.uk. Wherever possible when adding or editing items please include links to relevant sites. Your edits may take up to two hours before they appear live on this page.
Above the fold - A broadsheet paper folded in half for display. The top half of the page, above the fold, is held to be the most important real estate in the paper. A reporter’s ambition is to get an article on the front page; a reporter’s supreme ambition is to get that article above the fold. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Accountability - The requirement to explain decisions and actions.
Ace - an on-call reporter.
Active Proceedings (sub judice) - These occur in a criminal court of law when a person has been arrested, a warrant for his or her arrest has been issued, there are bail conditions (including police bail), a summons has been issued or a person has been charged (with a criminal offence).
**ABC - Audit Bureau of Circulations; a group that audits newspaper circulation figures.**
**ABCe - Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic - division of the ABC that audits traffic figures for online publications.**
**ACAP - Automated Content Access Protocol, a platform that would allow search engines to recognise the terms and conditions of specific websites.**
Add - Copy to be added to a story already written.
**Adobe InDesign - Desktop publishing program, now being used more widely in place of QuarkXPress.**
Ad impression - Term used to describe the number of times an advert is seen. Advertisers usually sell space based on the exposure per thousand impressions. This is called Cost per impression (CPM). Alternatively, they might sell on a pay-per-click (CPC) basis (also known as cost-per-click - CPC)
**ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line; high bandwidth web connection often just called broadband.**
Advance - A story outlining a future event. Also means to raise the priority of a story or an upfront payment for written work, particularly long articles or text.
**Advertorial - An advert in the form of a complementary editorial piece, usually labelled as an advert.**
AJAX — A bundle of technologies and techniques that allow a web page to do things quietly in the background without reloading the whole page. AJAX is not a programming language, but rather an acronym used to describe that bundle, “Asynchronous Javascript and XML.” AJAX provides much of the functionality associated with Web 2.0. One of the first big uses of AJAX was Gmail, which allowed it to be much more responsive than other web e-mail at the time. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survival Glossary)
Algorithm — A set of instructions or procedures used in order to accomplish a task, such as creating search results in Google. In the context of search, algorithms are used to provide the most relevant results first based on those instructions. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survival Glossary)
All Caps - A word or sentence written in all capital letters.
AM Mark - the symbol used for denoting the end of a feature story in a periodical.