Style Guide Sunday: When and when not to tag

A little known fact: I was brought onto the Bitmob staff to clean up the tagging system. I was such a failure, that I was quickly demoted to Community Manager. I got through about half of the thousands of existing tags and could barely keep up with the dozens of new ones created every week.

Our tagging system is in dire need of help, and you can do your part by tagging correctly. For the selfish: By helping us, you're helping yourself for two reasons:

• The cleaner and better formatted their article is, the more likely we'll want to promote it to the front page, since it's less work for us.
• Proper use of tags will lead to your story being found when readers do inevitably click on those tags. If someone clicks on the official Bitmob tag for a game featured in a Video Blips, and you used the wrong tag…well, that person won't find your article!

You should only use a tag in one of two instances: the name of a video game and the name of a recurring article series. 

Here's how to properly tag a game:

• Use the full name of the game with its subtitle separated by a colon. No abbreviations!
• Capitalize correctly (marketing-inspired capitalization is OK).
• Always use numbers instead of roman numerals. Always.
• Tag any game you mention, even in passing (but make sure you actually mentioned them).

Hit the jump for some examples and some more tips!

Some examples:

The Legend of Zelda: Orcarina of Time
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Final Fantasy 13-2

If you have a recurring article series, you may use your own tag. That said, please make sure it's actually a regular series. Sometimes we have all intentions to write that weekly column, but one thing leads to another…and then six months down the road you still have just the one post submitted. Wait until the third installment, and then retroactively apply the tag.

Don't tag the following: systems (use the checkboxes in the article editor), franchises, your name, other Bitmob contributor names, other video-game journalists, other websites, company names, general concepts, and joke tags.

Please put anything that isn't a game or the name of recurring article series that you really, really want to tag in the Metadata Information Keywords box. That's there for you to go crazy (and to help search engines find your stories). In fact, I left a super-secret message in this article's keywords that nobody will ever read. Ever.

If you want more writing tips, why don't you check out our Bitmob Writing Tips tag?

See? It works!