Kenalu Style Guide

The tone of Ke Nalu is friendly and full of passion for being on the water, so write as if you are talking to your surf buddies. There’s a lot of newbies in SUP, but don’t oversimplify your writing. Explain the context of complicated things but don’t kill the flow of your story with endless asides or digressions to explain a technical point. If it’s a critical point and it’s longer than two sentences, create a sidebar.

Edit your own stuff first

We don’t mind tweaking–in fact we take some kind of sick pleasure in it, but you should take a first pass and kill extraneous words or repair imprecise references or explanations. Don’t use the word “Stoke” more than five times per paragraph. OK, that’s a little joke, but manage your slang.

Worth a Thousand Words

Illustrating your article with pictures or an illustration is preferable. But you can paint a picture with words too. Use examples in your descriptions.

Be A Teacher

The readers expect to learn something from what you write–a new thing to try, a place to go, or something to think about. make your article as meaty as you can.

If you understand punctuation, grammar and sentence structure, that’s great. We don’t have a hugely formal approach other than following the Associated Press Stylebook whenever a question of writing style pops up.

Author bios

Each article is accompanied by a brief yet descriptive author bio. Once you have published an article with us we will retain your bio for future use, or you can submit a fresh one with each submission. The bio should be about 50-75 words and relate, however loosely, your SUP surfing or wavesailing life.