Guidelines
Newsletter Article Submission Guidelines
by Kit Brown
Submit articles by the 15th day of the month before publication. The newsletter is published monthly around the 1st of the month. The editorial schedule provides the proposed themes for each month. Additional suggestions are always welcome.
For book and website reviews, see also the book and website review guidelines.
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact Kit Brown-Hoekstra.
Copyright Statement:"The Newsletter is copyrighted as a whole and does not require authors to transfer their copyright ownership to the IEEE. Permission to copy without fee all or part of any material without a copyright notice is granted, provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage and the title of this publication and its date appear on each copy. To copy material with a copyright notice requires specific permission; direct inquiries or requests to the copyright holder as indicated in the article."
Please do NOT submit articles as LaTEX files. They do not convert to HTML very well, and it's a major headache to ensure that text renders correctly. Also, turn off curly quotes if using Word. Acceptable file formats are .TXT, .DOC, and .RTF. Graphics can be .JPG, .GIF, or .PNG format.
Writing Tips: If you aren't sure how to construct the article, try using the 5-paragraph essay method. (Note: The 5-paragraph concept can be expanded to longer formats, so don't be overly literal about the five paragraphs.)
- Identify your theme and 3 main points in the introductory paragraph. This lead paragraph should draw readers in and make them want to read on.
- Use each of the 3 body paragraphs to discuss the one of the 3 main points you identified in the first paragraph. (discuss them in the order that you listed them in the introduction). Show, don't tell. Give examples. If you express an opinion, back it up with evidence.
- Summarize your thoughts in the conclusion paragraph and provide the reader with any actions that you want him/her to take. (The conclusion should not introduce new information, but should encapsulate what was said in the article and provide recommendations if appropriate.)
Guidelines: Please review the following information when submitting articles or regular columns to the newsletter:
- Submit articles electronically in MSWord or RTF format to pcsnews.editor AT ieee.org. These formats are more easily available to me than other word processing applications.
- Provide articles that are 200-1000 words in length. People tend to scan rather than read in an online environment. Short, well-written and relevant articles will be more beneficial to the audience than longer ones.
- Provide a short bio (~25 words) and contact information. Readers want to know about you. At a minimum, write a bio that tells your name, company, primary job title, email address and why this topic is of interest to you or what experience you have in the area you wrote about. (This doesn't count as part of your word count.)
- Indicate whether the article is time sensitive. Because of size considerations and editorial schedule, newsletter articles may not be published immediately upon submission, unless it is date critical (e.g., information about the upcoming conference or an article about a current event that relates to technical communication.)
- Indicate copyright information if applicable. If you own the copyright for an article, indicate this with your submission so that we can provide appropriate attribution. If you don't own the copyright, but think an article is interesting, provide the article, along with the contact information for the copyright holder and the name of the publication where it was originally published.
- Insert the URL into the text so that I can easily create the link. For example, if you want to reference the w3c, you would say "refer to the W3C (http://www.w3c.org) guidelines". Don't create the hyperlink in Word.
- Provide complete bibliographic information for references. Include author(s), title, date of publication, publisher, page numbers or URL, ISBN number.
- Use the (author, date) format for in-text references. Do NOT use footnotes.
- Use a friendly, casual tone. We want to invite people to read and to make the information as accessible as possible.
- Use 1-inch (2.54 cm) margins; don't indent paragraphs. I have to reformat the text so it's better to minimize the formatting you include. Instead of indenting, put an extra line between paragraphs
- Avoid using lots of formatting within the text. I will have to format the articles for the online environment, so don't put lots of bold and italic in the text.
- Use subheadings generously. Subheadings help the reader identify the information that is important to them. Subheads are especially helpful in orienting the reader in the online environment.
- Use active voice and short sentences. At least 40% of our audience is outside of N. America. For many members, English is their second (or third) language. Short sentences and active voice are easier to absorb and understand than complex sentence structures.
- Avoid jargon and "big" words when a simpler term will work. Approximately 90% of our audience is engineers who need to write effectively on the job. Avoid using writer's jargon, or explain the term in the context. By "big" words, I mean complicated, less commonly used words that may have the same or similar meaning to other, more commonly used words (e.g., instead of "obfuscate", just say "confuse").
- Avoid idioms. Idiomatic phrases are those colorful sayings we use to mean something else. For example, "once in a blue moon", "jump right in", "on the fly". Unfortunately, these sayings often have no equivalent in other languages, and can be difficult for non-native English speakers to interpret.
- Submit graphics as JPGs or GIFs. Web graphics need to be in one of these formats for most browsers. SVGs and PNGs are not yet universally accepted. If you want graphics included in your article, you need to give me the JPG. Don't just embed it in Word.