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CyberArmy Academy's Library Article Guidelines
The Academy are often asked what is expected when submitting an article or tutorial for consideration. This guide should answer those questions.
Points to note
FIRSTLY: If you don't own (or have online access to) a decent dictionary and writer's reference, now is the time to look for them. If you don't fancy buying one, then your local library is a good stopping point. Find yourself a credible writer's reference and it will help you no end. Amazon Marketplace and eBay are fabulous places for getting books second hand, for next to nothing. Diana Hacker's Writer's Reference and Strunk & White's Elements of Style are good choices for American English, and Hart's Rules is a good source for Commonwealth (or "British") English.
There are also several pages you should familiarise yourself with before submitting an article for consideration, and these are:
It is also worth mentioning at this point that the Academy reserves the right to reject or edit articles for any reason, but most of the time heavy editing and rejections are due to a generally poor submitted product. Additionally, once you have submitted an article for consideration and it is published, we will not delete it on request. Whilst you retain the rights to the original article, CyberArmy retains the right to edit and publish the final product. If you are confused by this and require clarification, either of our editors (Halley) or (pixel) can be reached via cMs.
Do:
- Write an introduction and explanation of what you're writing about, with supporting links.
- Explain why you're writing your piece.
- Provide two or three examples of instances where it might come up, or if you're talking about something like "Child Safety on the Internet" for example, provide examples of things going wrong, and things going right, and say why.
- Be detailed. Two or three paragraphs does not make an article or tutorial.
- Look outside the box or "be original". If you're writing on the same subject as others before you might have, try and use something different in your examples and arguments.
- After the meat of your article/tutorial, tie everything up with a conclusion, with your opinion if appropriate.
- List your references.
Don't:
- Use smilies, or any form of emotive mark/speech.
- Use excessive signatures at the end of your piece. A link to your name is at the top of the article.
- Use profanity or slang. (This does not apply to anything submitted to humour, or something of a humorous nature.)
- Use decorative text symbols for example, '*~*~*' and the like.
- Use colour in your main body text. Some colour is okay for titles and highlighting, but your main body text should always be white.
- Plagiarise or parrot.
- Submit pieces of news. There are news sites for that.
If you've actually got a writer's reference, you know that there is much more to a writer's guide than has been written here. I have tried to give a basic set of guidelines for people to refer to, and in doing so, a bare minimum of what we expect from our authors. If you do not meet our criteria or are not willing to rework your material yourself so it meets our criteria, we will not publish it.
Nevertheless, we do not want to discourage you from submitting a piece for consideration. We are more than happy to advise on such matters, and can be reached via cMs or on IRC in #academy.
Helpful Links
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