Cod Almighty style guide

by Various

1 January 2002

Rules, as Boston United have proved, are there to be broken, so if your instinct as a writer or editor tells you to ignore something on this page just this once, then hey, go with it. Although remember that your legs are there to be broken too.

For spellings not listed here, refer to Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Under no circumstances trust Collins. If you need clarification on a style issue and you can't find it here then try the Guardian style guide and let me (Pat) know about it. Cheers.

abbreviations
Avoid full points after letters so FA Cup not F.A. Cup. For organisations, normally spell out the name in full at the first mention followed by abbreviation in parenthesis – eg. Chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) Gordon Taylor – then use the abbreviation in subsequent mentions: Taylor said PFA members would never accept the offer. Exceptions: very well-known organisations such as the FA, FIFA. See also plurals and singulars

Adidas
not adidas. Poets are allowed to break the rules of language; global corporations are not

AFC
We don't go around saying Cambridge United FC or AFC Bournemouth all the time, so why would we say AFC Wimbledon or AFC Telford United at every single mention? Phoenix clubs are intended to continue the spirit of their predecessors, but if we routinely include the AFC then we're emphasising a discontinuity. We only need to use it if we're making a necessary, explicit distinction between a phoenix club and its earlier incarnation. So we'd say Charles Ademeno joined Wimbledon after leaving the Mariners but supporters formed AFC Telford United after the original Telford United FC were liquidated in 2004.

See also names

B team

Barrett stand
See also stands

Bastard Franchise Scum
On no account call the team which plays out of Buckinghamshire by the name they give themselves, or any label that implies legitimacy. In fixture lists and match coverage titles, leave their name blank. Where references are unavoidable, the others is fine, or as above. Bastard Franchise Scum is best reserved for contexts where you have explained why they are an execrescence on the face of civilisation: otherwise it can be jarring and serves to give them the identity we are trying to deny them.

bye-line

capital letters
Don't cap up things that aren't proper nouns, like second round or official site or job titles or roles such as director of football or supporters' liaison officer – there's no need. See also nicknames

Titles and subheadings should use sentence case rather than title case (which means you just cap up the initial letter of the first word).

Never cap up entire words for emphasis (unless in an ironic sense); prefer italics or, better still, good writing that doesn't need recourse to typography for emphasis.

Cod Almighty

Coldicott, Stacy

corner kick
no hyphen

Covid-19

counterattack

crossbar

cross-shot
Was it a cross? Was it a shot? It was a cross-shot, hyphenated

Croudson, Steve
not Croudsen, as his name is rendered in some versions of Chammy Manager

dates
Express dates as date month or day date month, with no punctuation or th orst etc, so Thursday 30 November or 13 April. Avoid the dd/mm/yy format in continuous prose; if using it in a table or graph then separate elements with slashes rather than colons or full points so 18/04/98. Don't use slashes to mark a period of time as in 13/16 November; use hyphens – or better still, write it out so from 13 to 16 November.

Refer to decades as the 1880s, the 1970s and so on (but idiomatic phrases like a sixties child are OK).

For football seasons use a hyphen not a slash so 1997-98, 1999-00; if abbreviating use one apostrophe so the '79-80 season.

Day, Philip/Phil

deliver
Postal and distribution workers deliver your post and packages. Footballers do not deliver results. Let us make Cod Almighty a sweet haven of rest, never besmirched by this brutal example of 21st-century utility-as-ideology.

Diary
When used to mean the Cod Almighty Diary, it should be capped up

Diary editing

Remember to put in a title - try and limit diaries titled "Enter title here" to no more than once a season
The front page summary should generally take the form In [Day's] [Name of diarist) Diary: 1st subject; 2nd subject; ... with capitalisation as shown. This will genrally be used by the tweet alerting potential readers to its publication as well as on the ffront page, so if there is something more effective to use as a hook, feel free to vary it a bit
If the writer doesn't work their diary name into the text, add [Name of diarist] writes: in italics at the beginning.
If the diary has a sign off (eg UTM.), give it a line of its own with a full stop afterwards

direct speech
Normally introduce it with a colon and use double inverted commas, with a comma, full stop, query or exclamation point immediately before closing the inverted commas so Town chairman Peter Furneaux commented: "Don't panic. Everything is going to be all right." Don't add further punctuation outside the closing inverted commas. Omit the colon if the speech 'flows' directly from the framing text as in which apparently tends to "endow the relationship with an intense karmic bond". Don't place quotations in italics (this is a peculiar quirk of Tony B which should not make it on to the site).

All of the above also applies to direct quotations from written text.

divisions
I'm not imposing an outright ban on the post-2004 Football League nomenclature; let's just say its use is strongly discouraged, for the time being at least. Sticking with Division One and Division Two for 'the Championship' and 'League One' could be confusing though, so instead they can be called the second tier and the third flight (and vice versa). 'League Two' can instead be called the fourth division, the bottom flight, the basement and so on.

Say the Premier League rather than the Premiership (which was officially discontinued as a title a few years ago).

In keeping with the non-commercial environment of CA, of course, we should not mention the names of sponsors when simply referring to the leagues.

In non-League say Conference Premier, Conference North and Conference South. Use this Wikipedia entry to find out the real, non-sponsored names of other leagues

Division One
...Division Two, Division Three (North) etc... but first division, second divisionetc. If using these terms, do so in their pre-Premiership sense, so that the fourth division refers to 'League Two' and so on; see also divisions

Dock Tower

Downey, Glen

ellipsis
Our style is three full points with no spaces between and no space before, but a space after... like that. Try to avoid the single-character ellipsis which Word often autocorrects to, keeping to three separate full-point characters instead

email

Eriksson, Sven-Goran

etc.
Don't use this. Yeah, I know I have on this page, but that doesn't count. Say and so on or and the like or something instead or, if you really must, et cetera. Bloody Latin. Gah.

exclamation marks
Use sparingly: we're not a messageboard

extremely
Usually avoid this word. It's just a bit rubbish as emphatics go, redolent of letters to local papers; prefer highly or something more specific like impressively – think about the context

Fans' Day

Fayed, Mohamed Al

feedback
feedback (noun) is what you give when you feed back (verb)

final third
No. Just say up front or something

first half
Don't hyphenate this when it's a noun (in the first half). Hyphenate it when it's a compound adjective (first-half stoppage time).

flyover
as in the thing at Riby Square – one word, not hyphenated

Football League
Don't say EFL and don't use the sponsor's name; they get enough exposure without us having to help, and it's just horrible the way the current phase of capitalism means everything has to have a brand name attached, don't you find? Keep League capped up if you're just abbreviating the organisation to the League (but refer to league games if differentiating from cup games); also non-League. See also divisions

Football League Championship
I think not. See divisions

footy
Some regard this term as an unacceptable nouveau fan neologism to be avoided at all costs, but anything we used to say in the playground at Old Clee First School in the late 1970s is OK to say on Cod Almighty. Spell it this way though, rather than the over-cute footie.

free kick
no hyphen

Freeview
is the name for the collection of free-to-air services on the Digital Terrestrial Television platform in the UK. It's unhelpful that Town's official website also uses this name for its free-to-view videos. If you need to refer to one of these videos, please don't reprise this mistake. Use a different word instead.

full time
Again, the noun/compound adjective distinction applies with regard to hyphenation, so the ref blew for full time but the full-time whistle blew

fundraising

futsal

go to ground
This phrase means 'go into hiding'. Please don't use it in the sense of 'fall over', 'dive', or 'make a diving tackle' (as bastardised by Ron Atkinson sometime in the 1990s)

goal line

goalpost

goalscorer, goalscoring

Grimsby Town Supporters Trust
Changed its name to Mariners Trust in 2011. Refer generically to supporters' trusts and a supporters' trust.

Grovesie
Arrived at by a majority split decision in preference to Grovesy

half time
see full time

halfway; halfway line

hapless
This is not a synonym for hopeless; it means unlucky, not incompetent or useless.

hat-trick

he/she, his/her
No need – just say their

headings
Write headings in sentence case, capitalising only the first letter of the first word

Hegarty, Nick
Si emailed the club to find out, so it must be right

hyphenation
See under individual examples. As a general rule, hyphenate compound adjectives but not noun phrases, so Santos's bone-crunching challenge, a second-round tie with Oldham but a tie with Oldham in the second round. A hyphen is not usually required when the first word is an adverb ending in ly as in highly rated, sorely missed, a typically direct Wycombe Wanderers side

When you're using dashes – as in a parenthetical clause, like this one – or to link two phrases (like this – it's quite commonplace), use the en dash character, with a space either side, rather than the hyphen character. Word usually autoformats it in, but it's obtainable by pressing CTRL with the minus key on your number pad. Alternatively you can get an en dash in the Cod Almighty CMS by clicking the 'Insert Special Character' button (the one that looks like this: Ω) and then clicking the en dash:

The 'Select Special Character' dialogue

You're welcome.

I'Anson, Charlie

iFollow

Ikea
Like that please, rather than all in caps. I'm not quite sure how it is that we mention Ikea so often that an entry in the style guide is necessary, but there we are.

inbox

incredulous
This is not a synonym for incredible; it means disbelieving, not unbelievable. Only people can be incredulous. You can't have an incredulous display of refereeing: you can be incredulous at an incredibly bad display of refereeing.

inverted commas
Use double inverted commas for direct speech and text quotation and single ones for other uses, so "The referee robbed us of 12 points," added Warnock but Sepp Blatter's (eponymous?) 'joker' transfer scheme. See also direct speech and titles

Also, if you're writing in Word and then pasting into CA admin, then please please please turn off the 'smart quotes' thing (under Tools>Autocorrect>AutoFormat As You Type or something) so that all apostrophes and inverted commas are 'straight' rather than 'slanted'

its or it's
its for possessives so Blundell Park sees more than its fair share of red cards; it's means it is or it has so it's heartbreak for Brian Laws; it's been a hard day at the office for Brian Laws

Jevvo

Kamudimba, Kalala, etc
You can say Jean-Paul Kalala or Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala, or just plain old JPK after first mention. The player's home nation is the Democratic Republic of Congo (Russell Slade please note)

Keep the Mariners Afloat
KTMA at subsequent mentions

keeper
doesn't need an apostrophe

last-ditch
Hyphenate this, unless you're referring to the final of a sequence of ditches

League Cup
Don't call it by the sponsored name unless you're taking the piss

League One, League Two, etc
see divisions

left-hand side, right-hand side
But it's better just to say left or right

line up
Players line up in a line-up

When you're listing a team (eg. in a post-match factfile), separate the keeper, defence, midfield and attack using semicolons, and list the defenders and midfielders from right to left, so Davison; McDermott, Lever, Handyside, Gallimore; Donovan, Groves, Burnett, Smith; Clare, Nogan

long-term
Hyphenate this as a compound adjective so Ashcroft was carrying a long-term injury but not as a noun so in the long term

look to
"Edwards looked to sustain a serious injury to his nose" (Town's official site). Was he hitting himself in the face with the corner flag? The phrase is often used in this way as a synonym for appear to (which is what the author on the OS should have said), but look to has some useful other meanings which may be lost if this shit, sloppy usage continues to gain a foothold. It implies conscious intention, as in Groves is looking to put the Belle Vue debacle behind him; or anticipation, as in Groves is looking to the home double-header as a chance to rack up points

Macca
This name should be used only to refer to Sir John McDermott. If James McKeown makes it to 754 appearances, we'll reconsider

Makofo, Serge

manager of the month

Mariners World

Mariners Trust
Town's supporters' trust adopted this name in 2011. It doesn't have an apostrophe. Refer generically to supporters' trusts and a supporters' trust. See also Grimsby Town Supporters Trust

match reports and post-match stats
Reports and factfiles follow a particular set of stylistic conventions, which include the following.

Set the report title and the subtitles Tony gives for the first and second halves in sentence case (eg You ran off home for your tea)
Use the full team names at the top of the report (eg Macclesfield Town 0 Grimsby Town 2). Use the Colour sub-header style
Subtitle the first and second halves like this: First half - Another fine mess. Use the Sub heading style
Don't use a comma in the attendance figure (so 2578, not 2,578)
Edit the page title for the factfile to include the opposition and home or away, in brackets, so it says eg Match stats (Colchester, a). This makes it easier to find in the CMS if we need to edit it later.
Try and find out which county FA the ref is affiliated to and place it in brackets after their name - eg Mr C Cohen (W Yorks).
For the 'In a word' bit right at the end of the factfile, place the word in italics
Don't give a position in the table before five league games have been completed

McLaughlin, Patrick

medium-term
see long-term

messageboard

Middlesbrough

mid-table

midweek

-minute
This follows standard rules for hyphenation, so a cross from Cas in the 43rd minute (noun phrase) but a 43rd-minute cross from Cas (compound adjective)

mis-hit

names
of players, managers, etc: normally write in full at first mention then use surname or nickname for subsequent mentions, eg. Talismanic forward Steve Livingstone is back in training after a life-threatening rupture of the spine. Livvo suffered the injury eight months ago...

of stadiums: where these are sponsored, use the previous name, so Bootham Crescent not Kit Kat Crescent; if there is no pre-sponsorship name, as with the grounds of Bolton and Coventry, then try not to use the name at all, or just take the piss, eg. by calling the Walkers Stadium the Bowl of Crisps

National League
No, not even without the sponsor. We retain the term Conference as a forlorn show of defiance against pointless rebrands, as a signifier of our resistance to modern football, and because Conference doesn't sound like a group of neo-fascists

nicknames
of clubs: put an initial cap on the nickname but not the article before it, so up the Mariners not up The Mariners. See also plurals and singulars

Don't use derogatory club nicknames unless the context justifies it. Think how tedious it is when you come upon sites that insist on calling us GRIMsby Town, and also remember that even clubs we don't like have fans we can respect, who maybe were supporting them before they became a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern game. If you have spent a paragraph explaining how a club with no centre of population behind it has no place in the Football League, a reference to Village Green Rovers may be justified (but should by then be unnecessary), otherwise not. This obviously does not apply to a team which plays in Buckinghamshire who you can call anything you like, except a legitimate football club, or by the name they give themselves.

of players: see names. Don't use nicknames for Town players without first having used their real names, because CA aims to be understandable, as far as possible, to supporters of other clubs

Nielsen, David

Neilson, Scott

non-League

Nottingham Forest
never Notts

North East Lincolnshire, North East Lincs
Use caps (and no hyphen) because it's an actual real area with boundaries and a council and stuff, as opposed to imprecisely defined areas such as north-east London and the north-east of England

nPower League
nPower my arse. It's the Football League. Don't encourage them, for God's sake. See also divisions

numbers
For numbers less than 10, use the word for integers or mixed numbers expressed as fractions, but not decimals, so three and three and two thirds but 3.14. For numbers 10 to 999,999, use the digits, introducing the comma after 999 (except when giving attendance figures in match reports and factfiles). Above this, abbreviate if possible to 1 million, 3.2 billion etc.

If referring to a decade or timespan, use digits (and include the century), but for a decade of life, use words. So when Paul Futcher joined in the early 1990s he was already approaching his late thirties. Exceptions can be made for idiomatic phrases like a sixties child.

One-nil to the Mariners, or 1-0 to the Mariners? For footy scores, words or digits are acceptable but we tend towards digits.

General exceptions: always write out a number in words rather than digits if it begins a sentence; always write digits when expressing odds or when the number is part of a percentage. Don't normally switch between words and digits within a sentence; stick to whichever was used for the first number in the sentence, unless it looks daft.

See also odds

odds
In gambling contexts, express odds as two numbers separated by a slash not a hyphen, so 15/2, 3/1 on etc. For more figurative uses, write out in full so Jevons' last-minute winner was a million-to-one shot

offside

Öhman, Ludvig

OK
not okay

one-two

online

Onuora, Iffy

organisations
see abbreviations or plurals and singulars

Osborne, Jamey

penalty kick
no hyphen

per cent
not percent or %. The % symbol is OK in graphs and tables but not in continuous prose.

playing positions
Hyphenate wing-back, left-back, right-back, centre-back, centre-half, centre-forward but not central defender, central midfielder, left winger, right winger. Also: left wing-back, right wing-back

play-off or play off
Two teams play off in a play-off

playmaker

plurals and singulars
Treat organisations as singular, so:

FIFA is considering proposals (not FIFA are)
the club has appealed to the FA (not the club have)
the BBC reports an approach (not the BBC report)

The important exceptions to this are football clubs and bands, which in UK English are treated as plurals:

Sheffield Wednesday are a very big club (not Sheffield Wednesday is)
the Iron remain in mid-table (not the Iron remains)
In the least surprising news of the year, Kasabian are still terrible (not Kasabian is)

People seem to be gettiing this wrong more often. Here is a spectacularly awful example:

Man City has now won 11 home league games in a row against Swansea – it has only had a longer such run against a side twice in their history [sportstarlive.com]

The example above begins by treating the club name as singular rather than plural (and therefore using has rather than have). If you do this, it means that when you refer to the team again using a pronoun, you have to say it rather than they, which is quite clearly monstrous. The author of the example above even seems to recognise the monstrosity and switches to their (rather than its), thus contriving to be grammatically inconsistent as well as dramatically ugly.

poised to
"The second leg is poised to take place on Wednesday" (Ceefax). Try and visualise that. Why not just say will be played on Wednesday? This daft piece of footballese should never be used where the subject is anything other than a person, and even then it's best avoided

political correctness
Do not play into the hands of bigots by using this moronic and dangerous term without lashings of irony

post-match; pre-match
So also: post-match stats

post-match stats
See match reports and post-match stats

pull quotes
Don't put a full stop at the end of a pull quote. It just looks better without. A question or exclamation mark is fine, but not a full stop.

It's fine to take liberties with the copy in a pull quote. If you spot a bit of text you want to use, but it's too long, you can chop a bit out when you pull-quote it without needing to use... ellipsis. If it's got a pronoun (eg. he) which wouldn't make sense in isolation, it's perfectly OK to replace it with its antecedent (eg. Buckley) in the pull quote without using square brackets.

So for example, a quote like this:

He knew I had to ask the questions and he didn't duck them, particularly. Even after the Oldham game I knew he would come up. It did get harder towards the end, not least because I had a lot of admiration for him as a player, manager and a person.

...can be edited into a pull quote like this:

Groves knew I had to ask the questions and he didn't duck them. I had a lot of admiration for him as a player, manager and a person

quality
Don't use a phrase like Town lacked quality in the final third if you can say Town's strikers weren't very good. The use of quality as a noun has become part of the pundits' lexicon of faux-specialist terminology, used to convince the world that they possess expertise and knowledge which sets them on a higher level than the mere supporter (and justifies their salary). Of course, this is bollocks. Lacked quality means exactly the same as wasn't very good. Saying the former rather than the latter doesn't actually make you any more knowledgeable than the fan sitting next to you: it just makes you sound pretentious.

The use of quality as an adjective is acceptable, eg Motson 1975 on Tony Currie for Sheffield United vs West Ham: "A quality goal from a quality player"

quarter-final

right-hand side

Rose, Ahkeem

Rosenior, Leroy

Rowan, Jonny/Jonathan

Santos, Georges
Soccerbase has it as George, but so does the Grimsby Telegraph and the French usually spell it Georges, I think. In any case, we're too far down the line to change it now

scoreline

seasons
see dates

second half
see first half

semi-final

Shahin, Jammal

shareholder(s), shareholding

short-term
see long-term

singulars and plurals
see plurals and singulars

six-yard box

slash
As in the punctuation, I mean. Normally prefer and or or in continuous prose so Grimsby and Cleethorpes area not Grimsby/Cleethorpes area

soccer
I used to get really annoyed by this word, but have since decided that the whole 'football not soccer' thing is a deeply clichéd and ersatz signifier of 'authenticity'. You know: you could imagine Tim Lovejoy using it. So call it what you damn well like. Except 'the beautiful game', obviously [cringes]

soundbite

sponsors' names
Don't use them at all if you can help it. See brand names

stadiums
stadia is more etymologically 'correct', but I'm trying to get away from all that Latin stuff. It comes over as a bit pretentious. So stadiums please

stands
Don't cap up stand, so Barrett stand, Pontoon stand, Osmond stand, etc. Exception: Main Stand

stepover

summat(s)
as in something – not somerts, Si. :)

supporters' liaison officer

supporters' trust(s)
See also Grimsby Town Supporters Trust and Mariners Trust

swearing
If you want to swear, and your piece is the better for it, then just fucking swear; don't be hypocritical and insulting to your readers by using fucking asterisks in place of some of the letters

tannoy
Don't try and be clever by capping it up

teammate

teasers
Write teasers and blurbs in sentence case, capitalising only the first letter of the first word. Don't put a full stop at the end

Teesside
not Teeside (the river whose sides are referred to is the Tees, not the Tee)

telly
Not tele. I really hate that. I dunno why. It just drives me bloody mad

ten Heuvel, Laurens

that or which
that introduces information that is essential to identify the subject, whereas which adds extra, non-essential information. The Guardian style guide gives this excellent example: "this is the house that Jack built, but this house, which Jack built, is now falling down"

there's
This is obviously a contraction of there is and there has, so don't write it before a plural: there are only nine players not there's only nine players

three-up, three-down

throw-in

time
Don't tell Lynne Truss, but we use a colon rather than a full point to separate hours from minutes, so 3:15; 8:45am, etc. It's OK to leave out the minutes if the time is 'on the hour', so 8am. It's also OK to write out these times in full with o'clock if you like, but if you do this then observe the style rules for numbers, switching to digits at 10, so nine o'clock but 10 o'clock.

titles
of films, TV programmes, magazines, books, albums, etc: set in italics and use title case (initial letters capped up except on little words)

of individual songs and poems: enclose in single inverted commas and use title case

of newspapers: no italics, no inverted commas, just capped up

Tondeur, John

touchline

trialist

T-shirt
If it were shaped like a lower-case 't' you'd never get your arms through the holes. Or something

TV
upper case

tweet; retweet; Twitter

two-up, two-down

under-21, u21 (international)

units of measurement
Use metric rather than imperial units please, except for distances on the football pitch (no-one is quite ready yet for the advent of the six-metre box).

unveil
Avoid this football cliché unless a new manager really is sitting there at the press conference covered with a large piece of cloth which the chairman is about to whip off

URLs
Don't spell out the URL if you're linking to a site from a standard feature article, Diary entry, or whatever – just make the words that refer to the site into a link. Exception: if your piece is actually about the internet or websites, like the online supporting page. When giving a URL, don't include the http://part

videoprinter, vidiprinter
Either is acceptable, but videprinter is not

wallchart

warm up
Footballers warm up during the warm-up

website

weekend

Weston-super-Mare
It's the same for the football club and the town

which or that
see that or which

while
not whilst

Wimbledon
We don't really need to say AFC Wimbledon any more, except in those occasional instances when we need to distinguish the phoenix club from the earlier Wimbledon FC. See AFC

who's or whose
who's is a contraction of who is and who has, as in who's got the crack?; whose is a possessive, so see whose name is under our finger. Easy, eh?

women's football
Never use the word ladies unless it's part of the name of a club

-year-old
two hyphens, so 31-year-old midfielder; his four-year-old daughter etc

Young's
(the seafood producer)

Yussuf, Adi
Adi is short for Abdillahie, but Abdillahie is never used

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Cod Almighty style guide

by Various

1 January 2002

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