Writing for Vital Record

About Vital Record
What We Report On
House Style
Voice
Tone
Messaging
Guidelines
Specs
Content Types
Source Approval

ABOUT VITAL RECORD

Vital Record is the digital newsroom for Texas A&M Health that connects readers with industry experts, advocates of health, ambassadors of change, and future generations of health care providers, in the arenas of health, advocacy and scientific discovery.

Our audience is wide-ranging. We reach health care providers engrained in the industry, health policy hawks prescribing change, scientific gurus driving revolutionary breakthroughs, and even those that don’t know the difference between a femur and a tibia.

Content on Vital Record is submitted from contributors across the institution. As such, adhering to a house style to ensure consistent, clear messaging is imperative. This guide provides a general overview of our institutional voice and tone and outlines the process of writing for our newsroom.

WHAT WE REPORT ON

First things first, does your news meet the criteria for Vital Record? If you can answer “yes” to at least one of these questions, then the story may be a good candidate for inclusion in Vital Record.

  • Does the issue influence people’s lives?
  • Is the story about a key finding in a critical field?
  • If this is a grant awarding, is it at least $1 million?
  • Is the story about a newsworthy topic like cancer, human behavior or alcohol?
  • Does the story or situation draw any sort of emotional reaction?
  • Is the story accompanied by an exceptionally beautiful image or spectacular video?
  • Is the story related to a “hot button” issue currently circulating in the news?
  • Is this the first, the best, the longest, the smallest, the highest?

If the answer to these questions is no, the story might be better suited for an internal audience like in a college insider page or an internal newsletter.

HOUSE STYLE

In general, we use AP Style as the official style for the institution. While our editorial style guide answers in-depth questions related to institutional naming protocols, grammar particulars and general editorial guidelines, the following will ensure content written for Vital Record fits our unique personality.

VOICE

Vital Record’s voice is conversational. It’s personable and straightforward, but also knowledgeable and trustworthy. We aim to serve as the go-to resource for credible health-related information and expertise, for both lay and professional audiences. Our content should educate people without patronizing or confusing them.

Our voice is:

  • Engaging but not aggressive
  • Professional but not corporate
  • Clear but not condescending
  • Confident but not arrogant

TONE

While our voice remains steady, our tone changes based upon the genre of content. You might be witty when you’re writing a health tip for a general audience, and astute (but not pompous) when reporting on a scientific discovery.

MESSAGING

Always aim to convey—without stating verbatim—the institution’s core values, mission and vision in content.

  • Core Values: excellence, integrity, leadership, loyalty, respect, selfless service
  • Mission: Improve human health and quality of life—with a special attention to the underserved—across the state, around the nation and throughout the world by achieving excellence in education, discovery, clinical care and health promotion.
  • Vision: Become one of the leading research-intensive, innovation-driven health science centers in the nation, and develop individual institutes and centers that are transformative in their impact on human health.
  • Priorities: Innovation through engineering, rural population health and military health

GUIDELINES

When writing for Vital Record, follow the grammar and mechanics outlined within our editorial style guide. Here are some more general pointers, too:

  • Be conversational. Write like you are telling a story (you are, after all)—not issuing a press release. Where it’s appropriate, say “we” and “you’—instead of falling back on something impersonal such as “the college” and “the institution.”
  • Write for all readers. We write at the level of an educated 16-year-old. That’s still higher than many news media outlets (which write at a 12-year-old level of literacy). Remember, we reach a broad audience, so explain technical references or complex ideas where appropriate.
  • Be concise. While details add flair, be mindful of length. Long paragraphs of information are difficult to read online.
  • Put yourself in the readers’ shoes. Think about how you would want the information presented if you were them.
  • Use active voice. The subject of a sentence using the active voice preforms an action—it makes your prose sharper and more engaging.
  • Filter out the jargon. Synthesize complex issues into easy-to-digest health information.
  • Write positively. Use positive language rather than negative language (avoiding “can’t” and “don’t” whenever possible).
  • Don’t editorialize. Use meaningful quotes to explain points. Cite these expert opinions, not your own.
  • Cite your sources. Use links back to the original (reliable) source for external statistics. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and articles published in recognized peer reviewed journals are all safe bets.

SPECS

Headline:

50-65 characters, including spaces. Sentence caps. Give the main point of the article as concisely as possible, and feel free to be clever if the article’s subject matter calls for it. No need to use “Texas A&M,” in the headline (as we would in a standard media release), as that will be obvious from the placement on our site. Note that when turning a Vital Record story into a media release or pitch, whoever is doing so will add “Texas A&M” to the headline at that point.

  • Not good: Texas A&M researchers look into how muscles use energy
  • Better: Muscles ‘ask’ for the energy they need

Subhead:

160 characters maximum, including spaces. No periods, only a question mark if needed. Here, you have a little more room to elaborate about the main point of the article. For example, what did the researchers find? Or if it’s a health tip, what’s the big takeaway for the readers?

Examples of good subheadings:

  • Why underserved groups use the hospital emergency department instead of a primary care provider, and how we can fix it
  • Female firefighters, but not males, have higher divorce rates than their peers in other professions
  • Adrenaline fuels the hair-raising sensation that accompanies anxiety and emotion

CONTENT TYPES

Research:

  • Timely publications, large grant announcements
  • Tone: Professional, with good analogies to distill science for lay audience
  • Word count: 800 or less

Expert Positioning (Point of View blog):

  • Opportunities for thought leadership among key individuals (Fischer, Pettigrew, Waer, Gibbs, Alonzo, etc.), based upon hot-button health/medical news
  • Tone: constructed like op-ed, or blog, written by thought leader themselves
  • Word count: 800 or less

Healthy Living:

  • Health tips and information for a lay audience
  • Tone: informative, yet digestible
  • Word count: 800 or less; if more than 500 words, divide into sections or Q&A style

Human Interest:

  • Focus on the person—a former or current student, faculty member or staff—to tell their story
  • Tone: evoke emotion in readers, tell the person’s story
  • Word count: 800 or less

Institutional:

  • New programs, new partnerships, new hires
  • Tone: news release style, with a news lede and inverted pyramid layout
  • Word count: 800 or less

Reactive:

  • Breaking health and medical news with faculty as experts (CDC studies, revision to vaccination schedules, etc).
  • Tone: informative, digestible Q&A (five questions or less)
  • Word count: 500 or less

Note: In no case should a story be fewer than 300 words.  This is the minimum for the page to rank for a specific keyword.

SOURCE APPROVAL

Vital Record news stories require source approval. This means anyone who is quoted and/or has provided information to the writer for use in the article is asked to review and approve the story draft prior to publication.

Sources are asked only to verify facts and ensure they are not misquoted. Their final approval must be obtained in writing, via email, and should be archived.

All other story aspects—headlines, subheads, leads, organization, sentence construction, and grammar, spelling and punctuation—are the sole purview of writers and editors.

Writers must ensure stories are source-approved* prior to submitting content to Vital Record, at which point our editors may make style changes. If changes are substantial enough to warrant additional source review, editors will notify the submitting writer.

*If covering an event, there is no need to obtain source approval for quotes from attendees.