Posting Guidelines

By Eric Watson (1/27/15)

For Authors:

The following is the process for authors with login credentials to post their submission on The Policy Wire. It is important to note, if you are not familiar with the Style Guide please read it before continuing! This will ensure that your submission is posted as quickly as possible.

Step 1:  Login with your provided credentials and select “Posts” > “Add New” on the left side bar

Step 2:  Enter your title and submission in the provided boxes, ensuring that your post follows the Style Guide.

Step 3: Under “Review Box Position” select “Bottom of the post”.

Step 4: Under “Categories” on the right side bar choose up to two Regions and up to two Subjects that are relevant to your submission. Do not select more than this! In addition, add up to four “Tags” to your submission. For ideas of what tags to use, consider tags that have already been used and are displayed on the main page.

Step 5: Under “Featured Image” on the right side bar upload an image to be posted with your submission. No copyrighted files! Please use images that are your own or are found through a creative commons search (http://search.creativecommons.org)

Step 6: Under the “Notifications” section in the center, select both “Chief Editor” and “Content Editor”.

Step 7: After ensuring everything is correct, select “Publish” on the right side bar. Your submission will be posted shortly later after an editor has approved it.

In addition, authors must set up their user profile with a standard biography and picture. Relevant links to LinkedIn accounts, Facebook profiles, etc. are welcome as well. These actions can be performed after logging into the site, under the “Users” section of the “Dashboard”.

For Editors:

When you receive an email notifying you of a post needing approval, please ensure that another editor has not already edited it by looking for emails that arrived later. While editing, please be conscious of what was outlined in the Style Guide and with the type of articles we would like to host on our site. Challenging, interesting, and occasionally controversial pieces are encouraged and personal biases should not lead you to reject an otherwise sound article.

Step 1: Click the link in the email to take you to the assigned article.

Step 2: Ensure that the title is properly categorized and the submission is free of spelling and grammatical errors.

Step 3: Use the “Editorial Metadata” to help you check off the requirements as you read. Not all pieces will need to satisfy all the requirements but all pieces must meet the “Check Content”, “Check Post Category”, and “Needs Photo” requirements.

Step 4: If further editing by the author is required please write detailed feedback in the “Editorial Comments” section and select “Respond to this post”.

Step 5: If the piece is ready for publication, select “Publish” in the top right. Thank you for your time and hard work!

Technical Editing Guidelines

Based on the YJIS Technical Editing Guidelines and the Chicago Manual of Style

In the case the piece begins with an abstract, quote, or question, it will be italicized and indented from the left only. In the case of a quote, the author’s name will be written immediately below it right justified without any attribution indicators (- or “by”). 

Afterwards, launch into the main text. Citations are not necessary for concepts or theory as most pieces should be argumentative in nature and tailored towards an audience well versed in both academics and Google searches. For quotes or references to other articles, including the work that is the inspiration for the reaction or opinion piece, a hypertext link in the text of said quote or reference is almost always recommended. These links should be colored red and without underlines.

Headings (if necessary) in bold, no Roman numerals

The first paragraph of any piece is never indented, nor is the first paragraph after a heading.

Spelling and Grammar

• All spelling follows Standard American. For easy editing, change and confirm the language at the bottom of the Word document.
• Names should appear in full (First name. surname) the first time they are mentioned and from then on referred to with only their first name. Exceptions are allowed in the case of individuals with the same surname, in which case titles or seniority should be used before reverting to the full name.
• Commonly known and used acronyms and abbreviations are acceptable (i.e. WWII instead of World War II). In the case of ones not commonly known or used, they should be fully written the first time they are used with the acronym or abbreviation in parentheses, and afterwards referenced to by their acronym or abbreviation. See below for common examples.

Numbers and Measurements

• Numbers between one and twenty should be spelled out (e.g. fourteen), and numbers above twenty should appear as numbers again with a comma to separate numbers above 1,000.
• Numbers below one or other numbers including decimals should appear as numbers and not fractions (e.g. 0.5, 78.4, 15.2).
• Numbers large than 1,000,000 are written as a mixture of numbers and spelled out units (e.g. two million, 27 billion, 37.5 billion)
• Calendar dates should follow American format without “-th” in any form.
• Numbers expressed as adjectives are never superscripted and should be spelled out fully (twentieth anniversary).
• Decades can be expressed either spelled out and lowercased as long as the century is clear (e.g. the nineties) or as a numeral with no apostrophe between the year and the “s” (e.g. the 1990s).
• When expressing periods of time follow the example “1993-1995”.
• When expressing percentages, the word percent is always written out and the symbol “%” is never to be used.
• In articles using currencies, dollars and cents should be written out.
• Abbreviations for commonly known and used currencies is allowed always while obscure currencies should be first written out fully with the abbreviation afterwards before continuing to be referenced through the abbreviation.

Punctuation

If more than two items are listed in a series, they should be separated by commas. Do not place a comma before the word that directly precedes “and”, (e.g. US, China and Korea).

Please remember and observe the differences between a colon and semicolon! A colon introduces an element or series of elements illustrating what preceded the colon. A semicolon is stronger than a comma but weaker than a period; its function is usually that of a period and joins two independent clauses. A semicolon may also be used as internal punctuation in a very long series or list (paragraph size).

While somewhat acceptable due to the non-academic nature of The Policy Wire, it is strongly preferred that authors avoid contractions and fully spell them out.

Single quotation marks should only be used to enclose quotations within quotations.

Romanization of Foreign Words

All foreign names and text should be Romanized; there should be no foreign characters in final pieces. All foreign text that is not a proper noun should be italicized.

When Romanizing please follow the most commonly used standard: Revised Romanization for Korea, Revised Hepburn for Japanese, and Pinyin for Chinese.

Foreign words and phrases familiar to most readers and listed in Webster do not need to be italicized if used in the English context.

Citations

As the majority of the pieces will be reactionary, argumentative or opinion there is no requirement for citation in the academic sense. However, in the event that a citation is judged to be needed by the author, the Chicago Manual of Style should be consulted for proper formatting and footnotes for both direct and indirect citations should be used.

Redundancies

The following are commonly overlooked redundancies that should be avoided to make the piece more professional. If the redundancy is a deliberate choice by the author, and is isolated, than it may be permissible.