This page is for those who wish to write articles for Linux Gazette.
If you have any other questions,
see the Linux Gazette FAQ.
Linux Gazette is dependent on Readers Like You for its articles. Although we cannot offer financial compensation (this is a volunteer effort, after all), you will earn the gratitude of Linuxers all over the world, and possibly an enhanced reputation for yourself and your company as well.
New authors are always welcome. E-mail a short description of your proposed article to gazette@ssc.com, and the Editor will confirm whether it's compatible with the Gazette, and whether we need articles on that topic. Or, if you've already finished the article, just e-mail the article or its URL.
If you wish to write an ongoing series, please e-mail a note describing the topic and scope of the series, and a list of possible topics for the first few articles.
The following types of articles are always welcome:
We have all levels of readers, from newbies to gurus, so articles aiming at any level are fine. If you see an article that is too technical or not detailed enough for your taste, feel free to submit another article that fills the gaps.
Articles not accepted include one-sided product reviews that are basically advertisements. Mentioning your company is fine, but please write your article from the viewpoint of a Linux user rather than as a company spokesperson.
If your piece is essentially a press release or an announcement of a new product or service, submit it as a News Bytes item rather than as an article. Better yet, submit a URL and a 1-2 paragraph summary (free of unnecessary marketoid verbiage, please) rather than a press release, because you can write a better summary about your product than the Editor can. The submission address is the same as for articles: gazette@ssc.com.
Articles not specifically about Linux are generally not accepted, although an article about free/open-source software in general may occasionally be published on a case-by-case basis.
Authors retain the copyright to their articles, but readers are free to copy and distribute the articles as much as they please. LG's official copyright statement is at http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html.
Articles should be written in simple HTML. Please read the LG author's crash course in HTML and the LG author's style guide below.
Issue | Deadline for Articles |
---|---|
#78 May 2002 | Wednesday, April 24, 2002 |
#79 June 2002 | Saturday, May 25, 2002 |
#80 July 2002 | Monday, June 24, 2002 |
#81 August 2002 | Thursday, July 25, 2002 |
Since we're not a paper magazine, we don't have a certain amount of space to fill. So if you miss a deadline, don't fret; just send it in anyway and it will go into the following issue.
Create the file using any text editor. Put a blank line between paragraphs
and begin each paragraph with <P>
.
Place <H2>...</H2>
around section titles, with a
blank line above and below. You may use H3 for subsections, H4 for
sub-subsections, etc, on up to H6. H1 is used by LG for the article
title.
Place <PRE>...</PRE>
around program listings,
output, configuration file text, and anything else which must line up
vertically. <PRE>
goes on its own line above the block, and
</PRE>
on its own line below. Everything inside this block
will appear in a monospaced font, and indentations and line breaks will be
displayed verbatim.
To display a literal "<" in your article, type <
instead. For ">", type >
. For "&", type
&
. Otherwise, the browser will try to interpret them as
parts of HTML tags rather than displaying them. Look especially in program
listings since these symbols are frequently used in shell commands or
mathematical expressions.
There are other HTML tags (BR, EM, STRONG, UL, OL, DL, IMG) you may optionally use to jazz up the document; see any HTML tutorial for their syntax and meaning.
A complete HTML document requires
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>...</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>at the top and
</BODY></HTML>at the bottom. You don't need to do this for a Linux Gazette article because the Editor throws away your headers and footers and inserts the standard Gazette header and footer (with navigation bars).
Keep the HTML as simple as possible. Linux Gazette is read on a wide variety of graphical and text browsers, on new and old hardware.
Articles may be of whatever length necessary. 2-15 screenfuls is typical.
At the top of the article or in the accompanying e-mail, clearly state: title, author's name, author's email, bio. (See the Author Info section on the Back Page for sample bios. If you've already submitted a bio, you don't have to submit it again unless it changes.)
Name the article author.html (where "author" is the author's last name in lowercase ASCII letters). If you have images, program listings or companion files, place them in a subdirectory misc/author/ and have your hyperlinks point there.
If you have images, please include the ALT text, WIDTH and HEIGHT in your IMG tags. Proper form is:
<IMG ALT="Alterate text" SRC="misc/author/file1.jpg" WIDTH="140" HEIGHT="80">The ALT text is for text browsers, blind users and those with images turned off. WIDTH and HEIGHT allow the browser to display the article around the image even before the image finishes downloading.
If you have inline program listings a user might want to run without having to type them all in by hand, please place a second copy of each listing in a text file called called misc/author/program.language.txt and put a hyperlink before the PRE block, thus:
bla bla bla this listing: (<A HREF="misc/author/trip.sh.txt">text version of this listing>)The ".txt" extension ensures the browser will not try to do something funny to it. Since it's a text file rather than HTML, you should not escape your "<", ">" and "&" characters.
Avoid stylesheets, Javascript, unnecessary tables, excess <BR>
tags
and
entities, etc. Readers care about what you say,
not where it lands on the page. Stylesheets will be thrown out because the
Gazette has a standard stylesheet. (Well, it doesn't yet, but it will.) If writing in a
word processor, try to make it produce the simplest HTML possible: we don't need styles
and attributes setting the justification for every paragraph, etc.