Because we have had so many questions about electronic submission of columns, articles and other assorted things, we have drawn up some requirements to facilitate this. The bottom line: simple is good. We want as close to straight, unadorned text as possible. That means:

• No centered text, boldface, or any other typographical funny stuff, except for italics.
• No tabs, either at the beginning of paragraphs or anyplace else.
• Only put one space after a period, not two.

If the text does not come in the way described above, we have to spend a longer time editing it. If you submit your work to other publications, you will find that their guidelines are probably similar to ours.

Also, we have had trouble translating odd file formats, and sometimes that has meant having to type the article by hand, thus defeating the purpose. We have drawn up a list of acceptable file formats, listed in order of preference:

When you submit the article, do not use any file-compression schemes such as ZIP files for PCs or StuffIt on Macs. The biggest text files will be no longer than about 100 kilobytes, which shouldn't take very long to transmit.

Also, if you are submitting multiple files, please send them attached to separate e-mail messages. In other words, if you want to send three files, please send us three messages. (For some reason, we have had bad luck with multiple attachments.)

If there are problems, please feel free to call us. We would urge you to strictly adhere to these guidelines, but we know that sometimes exceptions must be made. If all goes well, this should encompass everyone's hardware and software capabilities.

Our e-mail address is editorial@catholicherald.com. Submissions on floppy disks or Zip disks are perfectly fine, too, as long as they are PC-compatible.

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