Submission Guidelines

In order to make life easier for everyone at Cockatrice – both the editorial team and the authors themselves, the editor has instituted a standard submission policy for all articles. We hope this will remove the need to track down authors to clarify points, and save time as we try to put the magazine together. We don’t ask for much, but it will help us out no end. Thank you very much.

The submission policy is:

• The first way to endear yourself to the editing team is: proofread your article carefully!!
• Ensure that you have not confused it’s (it is) and its (possessive use.)
• Make sure you used ‘that’ and ‘which’ correctly. If a comma precedes use which, if no comma is needed, use that.
• Keep your spelling consistant (i.e., always use s’s or z’s in words like organisation)
• Check that you haven’t changed tense halfway through your article.
• Do not provide a running commentary on your article in brackets after you say things (unless you are clarifying a point.)
• Check the length of your sentences. If they are quite long, consider whether it would not be better to turn one into two.

• Where possible, all articles should be emailed to Sabine or by posting a PC formatted disc (or CD) with your article on it.
• Make sure you give the article an obvious title if there is more than one item on the disc.
• Electronic copies save retyping, and the possibility of typographic errors.
• The editing team will contact you to let you know your submission has arrived.
• A receipt email does not necessarily guarantee publication.

• If you can include art with your article, please do. HOWEVER, please do not imbed your artwork into a word document. This wastes much of Sabine’s time as she has to cut your pictures out, paste them into PhotoShop and save them in a different format. Just include them WITH, not in, your article, and make a note in the text where you would like the image to appear.
• All images should be scanned at 300dpi and emailed. If this is not possible or practical then they may be sent to the editor via snail mail and the editor will return them with your gratis copy of Cockatrice.
• Make sure all images are properly captioned, with some indication of where you would like them to be placed in the article. For example:

  “Chaucer says that swords were cool.

  caption: ‘A very shiny sword from the 14th Century, on display at the British Museum’

  I would have to agree with him on that point and…”

• If artwork includes photos of people at SCA events, I will need a release form from them, giving me permission to reproduce their picture. That is, “I, the undersigned give permission for my photograph to be reproduced in Cockatrice, and have seen the photo to be included.” Sign and date. Electronic permission is also acceptable.
  In order to maintain a consistent style, and to prevent readers from referencing heartache I have the following requirements:

• All references to books/websites in articles should be credited as they are mentioned, and then properly referenced in the bibliography. For consistency, could ALL contributors please do this in the following way: “Blah, blah, blah… The new information says that ‘no one really had bubonic plague, it was all a misunderstanding’” (author, year of publication: page number) OR “Blah, blah, blah… However,it has also been suggested that ‘it was bucolic plague that did all the damage’” (web address). PLEASE DO NOT AUTO FOOTNOTE. My publishing software can’t cope. Endnotes are fine.
• Include a complete bibliography of all research materials used. Readers may then access material you have alluded to in your article easily. The method for referencing books is as follows:

  surname, initials. Title of Work publishers, location of printing, date of printing, ISBN number if you have it.

  For example:

  Geisel, T, Dr Seuss’s Sleep Book Collins, Great Britain, 1962. ISBN: 0 00 195752 x

• Websites require name of website, complete URL and date accessed. (Access dates help when people refer back to an article later and the website has disappeared. This way they don’t think you’ve got the URL wrong, just that they have waited too long.)

In this way you will make the editor very very very happy, and you will be contributing to the success of Cockatrice – something we are all striving for.