Advice to Contributors

by Mark Watson, and many others beforehand

Introduction and General Notes

Up till this point, to my knowledge, these notes were fairly generic, and in fact were not written by myself as editor. Partly, this was because the editorial and layout roles were previously separate; currently they’re both done my me. I’ve changed them to reflect the way I edit and format the magazine. I would expect, with a future change of regime, some of these guidelines to change as a result, so be warned!

Please remember at all times - the preparation of Slingshot is carried out by volunteers.

Articles

Article Formats

Slingshot is currently laid out using Apple’s Pages product (part of iWork 09). Like the latest version of Word, Pages has both a layout mode and a word processing mode. In both cases, my preference is to receive the document in word processing mode, with no implied layout (this is includes columns - please send one column layouts).

I can process the following:

Apple Pages (iWork 09 also allows document sharing via iwork.com - this is fine also)
Microsoft Word (including the latest .docx format)
OpenOffice or StarOffice - I can read these formats if necessary, and I’m thoroughly in favour of open source software, but really I’d prefer it as a .doc as I’m most likely to open it directly to Pages, which can’t open openoffice
Text files
HTML or XHTML files
Google Documents

If it’s a PDF I will have to extract the text from the PDF, possibly using an optical character recognition (OCR) package - I do have the technology to do this but please bear mind it’s more work for me.

In the case of other stuff like spreadsheets, embedded objects, draw files - I will end up either retyping them in or redoing them from scratch. I’d rather just deal in documents and images.

Media for Sending Articles

To best assist The Society wherever possible please submit your valued efforts on CD or send the Editor an e-mail with your file(s) attached. You can now send a file to the editor from the contact form on this website - go to Contact Us, set the topic to “Slingshot” and hit the attachment button.

Email (either directly or as described above from the website)l is the easiest, followed by CD or DVD form.
Sending something in paper form - someone (probably me) will have to retype them in, so its not my preference, but I don’t want to discourage writers on this basis.
Diskettes - I have to find a machine with a diskette drive in this case.

If requested, the Society will return any material sent. Supplying your work in this format saves the Society having to retype or electronically scan the material. The Society can accept a wide range of different formats, but if you have any queries please contact the Editor who will be happy to assist you.

Template Styles

When I get time to do so, I’ll upload some templates to the website. But I tend to use a fairly small range of styles, and if you have the same style names, the conversion is quite easy:

Body for most body text
Author for the author name
Heading 1 for the title of the article
Heading 2,3,4 for subsequent nestings of heading
Quote for quotations
Sling Notes for notes
Bullet Body Text for body text with bullets (eg lists)
Caption for picture and diagram captions

Style Guidelines

This is just to reflect the changes I typically have to make when editing. Fixing it in advance would save me a more than a little time:

Spelling should use British English unless taken from a proper name or brand - for example Command and Colors Ancients
I don’t use double spacing after full stops (or anywhere else). I generally have to go through and fix this first
Tabs - these generally don’t map well. Best to leave one tab between items, or indicate in the text that something is meant to be tabbed - eg the general|on a horse|20 points - in this case I’ll probably replace the | with a tab and then convert the text to a table so that the alignment is maintained
Footnotes should be marked with [1], [2] etc in the text and then listed under a Heading 2 of notes at the end. We don’t use “real” footnotes in Slingshot because it impacts so heavily on the layout process
I’ve noticed a trend towards Random Capitalisation. Proper names should be capitalised. Uncommon terms, or terms typically capitalised in games rules but not elsewhere unless in a proper name or title (for example, general or commander), should not necessarily be capitalised - if in doubt, don’t capitalise them.
Uncommon terms or terms from foreign languages might be italicised: e.g. velites. If you want to italicise them, fine, but try and make it consistent.
If you would like me to find a peer reviewer for your article before publication, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Article Length

Up to about 9000 words is OK for a historical article, over that length the article may be cut into two or more episodes and serialised

Gaming articles should run to about 5000 words maximum, same rules apply.

But in both cases I’m happy to make exceptions.

The page count for Slingshot is generally between 850 and 950 words per page, excepting the two boilerplate pages which we include and the contents page. The difference between 850 and 950 can be considerable when thinking about an overall issue, but I would assume about 900 words per page.

Notes on Photographs and Illustrations for Slingshot

With the introduction of the new format Slingshot (issue 258 onwards), we encourage contributors to submit photographs, diagrams and other graphics to illustrate their articles. A picture often speaks a thousand words! In order to reproduce these in the best light, the guidelines below may be helpful:

Some General Comments for Inclusion in the Article

Please indicate in the submission where a picture is meant to go, and what the caption is. My preference is not to have the picture within the document
Please provide the highest resolution picture you have.
I may drop pictures if I don’t think they add to the article (see below). I may also drop images for reasons of space.
Please identify caption suggestions and points in the document where the diagram would appear, and indicate priority in case I need to drop something

“Adding to the Article”

This really represents my view as editor. The biggest issue with pictures tends to be around pictures of wargame scenes, both of the players and the miniatures on the field. Although there is a grand tradition in wargaming books and magazines of blurry long shots of wargaming tables, they don’t really add too much. I’d go so far as to add that, when also involving the living room or kitchen furniture, and the occasional arm reaching across the table, they actually become a distraction. Similarly, mug shots of the real life generals may be a nice memory of the day, but tend not to be of interest to the overall readership. My strong preference for this kind of article is to have close up shots of miniatures, if well presented. Long shots of the battle as it develops might be better represented by a diagram or map (see below). If the miniature(s) is/are not well presented (and this may be controversial, but here goes) then I think it also detracts from the article, since in the readers mind the battle is occurring using brilliantly painted miniatures on beautifully modelled terrain (another issue with long shots - this tends not to be the case for the terrain either). Whether or not the miniature is well presented is going to have to be my call, and I will make allowances for scale (but I have some very nice pro-painted 15mm figures, so I may use them as a benchmark).

Photographs

Photographs taken with a modern digital camera should be sent electronically and, wherever possible, in colour. If not taken with a digital camera, then please send colour scans of original photographic prints. If necessary, prints can be sent and we will scan them. Please include SAE for return of prints.

Photographs used within Slingshot are reproduced at 600 dpi in monochrome. Original images in colour are preferred for these pictures as translation to monochrome often involves filtering different colours to achieve a good contrast.

Diagrams, Maps and Illustrations

The best I can suggest here is to either spend a lot of time making something sufficiently pretty, or don’t spend a lot of time, because I’ll probably redo them. So scribbling something clearly on a piece of paper and then scanning and sending the result is fine, as long as I can make it out. I don’t want to discourage you from doing something pretty though; I do use the maps as they come, if they look good enough, also and for the record I hate having to do maps!
Be clear on any specific dimensions I need to maintain, otherwise a redo will be approximate based on what I can see (note this is all readers typically need anyhow).
I can accept MS Visio and Omnigraffle Pro (which is a mac equivalent) for source code; at least that’s my preference. Anything else that I may have to redo, I’d probably redo from scratch. For image formats for diagrams a vector format (eg EPS) is probably best, because it will scale far better than a bitmap image (eg a JPEG).
I tend to make my maps in Omnigraffle, possibly in conjunction with Adobe Illustrator
As with photographs, bear in mind the content is usually black and white, so unless (and this is unusual) we plan to use the back cover for the illustration, please assume as much and don’t colour code the content.
As with the photos, please identify caption suggestions and points in the document where the diagram would appear, and indicate priority in case I need to drop something

Use of Images from the Internet or other Publications

The resolution of images from either the internet or from printed publications is generally low and such images will usually take up no more than a column’s width within Slingshot. Contributors should also respect the copyright of any such material.

General Notes

The Editor reserves the right to crop, change, redraw or discard any images sent to him. Images sent to the Society will only be reproduced in Society publications.

A note on copyright and sources

Contributors to Slingshot, and members thinking of contributing might benefit from the following advice:

The rights to most published work and all unpublished ones are protected by copyright law. This protection extends for some years after the author’s death, and applies to illustrations as well as words.

Copyright prevents extensive copying but still allows “Fair Use” of protected work. This is not precisely defined, but it may depend on how much of the copyrighted material is used and in what way. “Fair Use” should include acknowledgement of the sources.

Ideas themselves are not protected by copyright. However, it is normal practise in academic circles, and is certainly simple politeness, to acknowledge works that have influenced you, even if you are not directly quoting or reproducing from them.

The Society is an amateur body run by volunteers, and does not have the resources to set up a system of referees to check members’ submissions for any improper copying. We rely totally on the good faith of our members. Please do not risk embarrassment - or worse - to the Society by unfairly copying others’ work.

Your rights as an author

In general, you the author retain the publishing rights and copyright to the article’s content, in the form you sent it to us. If you need rights to the edited copy, let us know and they will almost always be granted (I say “almost” although I can’t think of a case where it would be withheld, but just in case there would be one). We would also assume that we can republish that particular issue of Slingshot in other forms, eg in the DVD. You can publish the article elsewhere, but you can’t grant the rights to its Slingshot form (i.e. you can’t say to someone they can just scan or copy Slingshot - we own the rights to the formatting we’ve done, for safety’s sake). I’d prefer you didn’t republish in the same year that the material appeared in Slingshot, since it diminishes the value of the subscription, but it’s usually your call.

There are various warnings about re-using other people’s material, set out above and contained in each issue of Slingshot under Contributor Guidelines.

Also, I’d generally prefer not to republish material already published elsewhere, notably including the Internet. I reserve the right to turn down contributions if this happens, although each case is treated on its merits. By and large, if an article has already been published elswhere, the author should indicate this to the editor when sending in their contribution; our preference is not to republish, in particular, material which is already widely available to Slingshot’s audience (for example, already published on the Internet).

As of 2009, the Society will be seeking direct permission of authors to reprint articles in media other than Slingshot, and you may find various committee members re-contacting author’s to establish whether permission to do so has been granted.