The Newsline Times style guide

Newsline Times accepts submissions to the blogs from its readers. Submissions can be broadly under one of the subcategories of commentary – on social, economic and political issues, book reviews of relevant books and Longform – where the author can delve into any issue of choice either with a series of posts or a detailed piece.

Contributors are requested to follow the Newsline Times style guide posted here. Compliance with the style guide will help us greatly in ensuring error-free posts with a consistent and meaningful style of presentation.

Commentary

Newsline Times invites contributions in the ‘commentary’ section on social, economic and political issues of the day. Submissions made in this category must be between 750 to 2,000 words. These submissions must be made exclusive to Newsline Times and they can be hosted on personal blogs only after a week of its publishing on Newsline Times.

Book Reviws

Newsline Times accepts book reviews of socially, economically and politically relevant books. These submissions too must be exclusive to Newsline Times which can be hosted on other sites after a week of its publishing on Newsline Times. Ideally, these reviews are expected to be less than 3,000 words.

Longform Pieces

Newsline Times welcomes original research output in the field of humanities, and would publish such works under the category of ‘Longform’. The author can choose to present his work either as one single article – in which case the article must not be more than 10,000 words or as a series of posts – where each post is no more than 3,000 words long.

General Guidelines

Do’s and don’ts

1. The argument should be made clearly and concisely.
2. Articles should not be or contain rants against an individual or an organisation; issues should be addressed and critiqued. Articles should refrain from ad hominems – focus on the argument, not the person!
3. Check grammar and spelling before submission – an article riddled with errors is just more work for our copy editors
4. Data and quotes must be cited. No article based on unsubstantiated source material will be published. If the source is private, mentioning it should be reconsidered.
5. If you can keep it short please do so!

Formatting

1. To the extent possible send us plain-text drafts. Submissions in other formats like .pdf, etc. makes our job of publishing your draft slightly difficult.
2. Use British spellings.
3. Single indent all quotations that are longer than 3 lines.
4. While quoting from a source, identify the source in clear terms and also provide a hyperlink if the source is available online.
5. All abbreviations – including the common ones must be expanded at its first occurrence.
6. Images used can be in jpeg, png or gif formats. Images must not be copyright restricted.
7. Provide a caption for all the tables and images used in the article.