Write for the Tripod

Writing for the Tripod

As a student-run college newspaper, we accept submissions from anyone in the college community. This includes students, faculty, staff, alumni, and, in some cases, members of the larger Hartford community. We are always looking for new people to write for us and/or join our team.

You can, at any time, email an article to tripod@trincoll.edu. Please include your name, class year or relevance to the Trinity community, and a title for your piece. Articles should be 500-1,000 words and relevant to the Trinity community. If you are submitting an article for the News, Features, Arts, or Sports section, please include a photo to go along with your article. During the academic year, you must submit your article by Thursday at midnight in order for us to publish it in the upcoming Tuesday issue, although we cannot always promise immediate inclusion. During summer or winter break, we may publish your article online only, if you wish. Please send your article in a Google Doc with editing permissions open so that an editor can make suggestions and send the article back to you with edits to approve by Sunday morning. The Tripod follows AP style. Review the submission guidelines below in order to edit your article accordingly.

If you are a student and wish to join the Tripod‘s staff as a writer or editor, you must first write and publish three articles with us in order to become a Staff Writer and become eligible to run for editor positions in the future. Anyone who is interested in writing consistently with the Tripod should email tripod@trincoll.edu or fill out our interest form.

During the semester, we have open meetings in our office (Jackson basement, just above the Coop), every Monday from 6-6:30. All are welcome – bring a pitch, or just be willing to hear some story ideas!

Trinity Tripod Submission Guidelines (Fall 2025)

Introduction: The Trinity Tripod follows the Associated Press (AP) style guidelines. This document will outline below some of the basics of the guidelines, but should you have any other questions, consult a guidebook such as the ones in the Tripod office or in the library. For simple rules which may not be covered below, you may be able to find what AP calls for through a Google search.

Formatting:

Numbers

• Numbers should be written as Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) for dates, money, measurements, and ages
  • Numbers should only ever be spelled out (one, two, three, etc.) for the numerals one through nine that do not apply to any of the above rules – anything 10 or above is written as Arabic numerals
    • This also applies to ordinal numbers (i.e. first, second, third, … 10th, 11th, 12th)
• Roman numerals are okay only in the case of World War I, World War II, and people (ex. Henry VIII)

Dates

• The months of March, April, May, June, and July should be spelled out always, regardless of if there is a specific date that follows  (ex. “April 26, 2024” or “April 2024”)
• The rest of the months must be abbreviated only when followed by a specific date (ex. “Sept. 18, 2024”)
  • Abbreviations can only be used for full day, month, year dates (ex. September 2024”)
• Do not use words that are relative to when the article is being read, i.e. never use “yesterday,” “tomorrow,” “last year,” etc.
  • Always use the specific date
• Do not use ordinal suffixes (1st, 27th, etc.) in dates, just the number

Times

• If the time is on the hour, then it is written as “3 p.m.” instead of “3:00 p.m.” etc.
  • If it is any other time, it is written as “3:15 p.m.” etc.
• Always put periods for a.m. and p.m. abbreviations and do not capitalize them
• Do not use phrases like “o’clock,” “quarter past,” etc.

Media Titles

• Media titles have quotes around them regardless of the format – songs and albums, books and articles, etc., all use quotation marks
• Do not use italics for titles

Publications

• The one exception to the media titles rule is the name of publications (newspaper, magazines), such as the New York Times, which are always italicized. Weirdly, this also applies to the Bible
  • Never italicize the “the” in publication titles (No “The Trinity Tripod”)

Titles/Roles

• You will have to use a bit of discretion in deciding what is a title that should be capitalized versus what is a role
  • Titles should be capitalized when coming before the name (ex. “Managing Editor Jules Bourbeau”)
  • Titles should not be capitalized when coming after the name (ex. “Jules Bourbeau, managing editor”)
  • Roles, which include “professor,” should never be capitalized
    • If it is used as a noun, definitely do not capitalize it! (ex. “The president said yesterday that…”)

Names

• Use someone’s first and last name when referring to them for the first time in an article
  • After this, use only their last name
• Do not use honorifics after the first referral in the article (Dr., Ms., etc.)
• For students or alumni, put their year of graduation after their name like so: “Jules Bourbeau ’25”
  • You only need to do this the first time they are mentioned in an article
  • Note the direction of the apostrophe

Hyperlinks

• If you reference a source, hyperlink it like this in your article. Please do not cite it at the end as you would in an academic bibliography.

Grammar:

Punctuation

• Use only one space between sentences
• Do not use Oxford commas
• Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks
• A hyphen (-) connects words, for example, self-driving. It can also be used to reduce ambiguity. For example, “The patient recovered” versus “He re-covered the roof after the storm”
• An em-dash (—) signifies a long or dramatic pause, for example, “She sometimes — but not always — remembers the difference between em and en dashes”. 
• En-dashes (–) are never used in AP style!

Contractions

• Contractions are allowed, especially in quotes, but use them sparingly

Miscellaneous Common Issues:

• It is “email,” not “e-mail”
• An alumnus is one man, an alumna is one woman, and alumni should only ever refer to the plural
• Use the term “first-year,” not “freshman.”