Byline Generator — Multi-Author Credits for Reporters, Photographers and Subs
Shared bylines are where credit quietly goes missing, usually because whoever typed the byline was in a hurry and the researcher or the photographer was not in the room. The formatting is trivial and the omissions are not.
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Byline Clarifier & Generator
Add authors with roles to generate a correctly formatted byline string.
Add author names and roles above, then click Generate.
How it works
- You add up to six contributors, each with a name and one of four roles — Reporter, Photographer, Researcher or Sub-editor — and press Generate. Contributors with an empty name are skipped.
- Reporters are assembled into a “By …” clause with correct English list punctuation: two names joined by “and”, three or more as a comma list with “and” before the last.
- Photographers get their own “Photographs by …” sentence, using the same list joining, and sub-editors get a “Sub-editing by …” sentence.
- The three sentences are joined into a single string and shown in a read-only box with a copy button.
- Two behaviours to be aware of before you paste the result: contributors marked Researcher are merged into the reporter list, so they appear under “By …” as though they wrote the piece; and only the first sub-editor is credited, with any others silently dropped.
When to use it
- On a jointly reported piece, to get the list punctuation right and consistent across a series.
- When a photographer or picture contributor needs a separate credit line rather than being folded into the byline.
- When establishing a house convention for multi-contributor credits and you want one string format everyone uses.
- When crediting a contribution from another desk or bureau and the byline is being assembled at the last minute.
What it does not do
- This tool formats names into a string. It makes no editorial or legal judgement and is not legal advice.
- Despite the description used elsewhere on the site, it does not draft an editor’s note and has no field for AI assistance, sponsorship or a conflict of interest. Those disclosures are a separate exercise — use the AI Disclosure Checklist for AI use, and follow your own policy for sponsorship and conflicts.
- Researchers are credited as reporters. If your house style distinguishes reporting from research — and a contested story is exactly where that distinction matters — you must edit the output by hand.
- Only one sub-editor is credited. Add a second and the tool drops them without warning.
- It has no view of who actually did the work, no “additional reporting by” or “with reporting from” form, and no way to record a contributor who has asked not to be named.
More tools
This is one of the free tools on UK JournoHub. See the full tools index for the rest.