In journalism, there’s a space holder known as TK.
If you’re missing some information—someone’s name, a location, etc—you use TK as a temporary fill-in. For example: “Smith won the pole vault, just edging out Miller, who attended high school in TK, Georgia.” TK stands for “to come”—the K being used instead of C because the T and K side by side will is unusual and will always get caught by a spell check.
Back when I was a younger writer, I never used TK. Literally, never. I surely knew of its existence, but I was lazy, and disliked the idea of returning later to fill in a fact. I’d just write around the info; call a place “a hotel” instead of “the Holiday Inn”; say a guy is, simply, from Georgia, Town be damned.
At age 41, however, I’ve come to understand—and obsess over—the power of little details. It’s never merely a bottle of soda. It’s a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke, with a red label and little beads of water. It’s not just a house–it’s a English-styled cottage with white wood paneling and brownish-gray drapes. Little details show that a writer cares; that he took the time to not merely write, but report and dig and search. TKs now make up an enormous part of my professional life. Last night, for example, I sat at my laptop from 9:30 pm until 2:30 am filling in dozens of TKs into my next book. It’s no fun and sucky and mind-draining.
It’s also really important.
