Preparing your Submission (Technical Details)

The are detailed instructions for author. Please note that web pages are not Microsoft Word documents.

• Write a short note explaining your submission.
• Tell us which category best fits your post. We welcome all categories category equally.
• Provide a suggested headline for the blog entry. See 'Headlines' section in the main article..
• Provide your text of your article in the body of an email message, in a plain text file, or in a Word or Open Office document.
• Provide the short description ("grabber") to use when posting the link to the article on Nextdoor or other site.
• Provide images separately, as named PNG or JPG files. (See Image Sizes below.)
• Provide diagrams in PNG or Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG format). Inkscape, Open Office Draw and other drawing programs can produce .svg files.
• Provide figure captions at the end of your document. Reference your file names if not obvious.
• You may want to provide a Word, Open Office, or PDF document as a reference to indicate where simple style and formatting is used.
• We can handle submissions in Word or Open Office documents, sans fancy formatting. If writing is submitted as an email message, it will be copy-pasted into a text document for processing.
• Do NOT provide an HTML-formatted file produced by DreamWeaver or any other WYSIWYG web editor.
• Downloadable supplements to your article can be provided, but should be free of viruses. Microsoft Word supplements will be converted to PDF for download.

Article Writing Style, Basic Formatting and Text Styles

All articles should try adhere to the following guidelines.

Writing Style and Authorial Guidelines

We reserve the right to edit, to conform to these editorial guidelines.

• Simple text with figures.
• Use figure references in your text, e.g. Figure 1.
• Credit sources and include attribution to contributions, including your own.
• Obtain permission for all quotes, photos, and figures made by others.
• Avoid libelous statements. No Ranting.
• Do not over-link your text. Endnotes and references can be a useful resource.
• Include useful references and links in a References sections at end. Format TBD.

Basic Formatting

• Paragraphs should be separated by blank lines (white space).
• Bulleted and numbered lists are OK.
• Sections with headings are good for long pieces.
• Do not embed images in your written portion. Refer to them as figures.
• The web guy is not obligated to preserve any fancy formatting you may apply.

Basic Text Styles

• Italics for emphasis and to cite book titles.
• Boldface used very sparingly, if at all.
• No underlining.
• Fonts may not be specified, other than teletype monospaced font.

Structure of a blog post

Certain things in order? What can we say here -- anything??

Image Sizes

You are writing for the web, not print. Images only need to appear nicely on a screen. Raw un-sized images from digital cameras (including the iPhone) usually have far greater resolution than can be displayed, and also takes more bandwidth, resulting in longer load time for pages. If you don't know how to re-size images, or determine an image's dimensions or its file size we can take care of that for you. We reserve the right to crop and resize.. Thanks.

• Small image: ~200x300 pixels, weighing in at only 26 KB. (KiloByte = 1000 bytes.)
• Medium image: ~480x640, measuring 100-250 KB.
• Large image: ~768x1024, measuring 1 MB to 2MB.
• Larger images are probably too large, and should have their size reduced by cropping or by saving (exporting) a smaller copy.
• The web guy will be glad to resize and crop appropriately.

If you don't understand any of this, but do know how to send images in email, then just do that and we will re-size for the blog.

Different Styles for Different Kinds of Articles

Each kind of articles could have a unique style and layout. The kinds of articles are:

• Expository Article
• Education/History
• Featured Story
• Neighborhood Resource
• Video - How should video be submitted and handled?
• Opinion - Must be a panel decision and consensus that an Opinion is useful and valid.

Expository Article or Opinion

Engage Audience. What kinds of Info bits are appropriate?

• Significant Safety Issues / NET
• Issues with College students, homeless??
• Education about what?
• Social Responsibility & Justice issues
• Local Environmental issues (Dogs, Pesticides, wildlife)
• Entertaining / Human Interest (eg Picnic report)

Education/History

Facts. Define range of topics? Style and aspect given here... (to be written)

Featured Stories

Define 'Stories'. Style and aspect given here... (to be written)

Neighborhood Resources

Define 'Resources'. Style and aspect given here... (to be written)

Video

Style and aspect. How is video prepared, submitted, and handled? (to be written)