StrategyPage Articles Guidelines

Only in exceptional circumstances do we accept large articles. On the web, there are far too few people willing to read the longer articles. We do, however, seek shorter pieces. These are quite popular.

Just for the record, though, these are the guidelines for when we do accept that rare long piece.

Articles can be up to 10,000 to 15,000 words, but the main text (that appears when users first open that page) must be no more than 1,000-2,000 words (preferably under a thousand words). The reason for this is that people don't spend as much time reading a web article as they would a paper one (although some people hit the "Print" icon for each page and read off line.) Thus the main text is, in effect, a summary of the articles main points, with more detail made available via hyperlinks. The rest of the material is reached via hyperlinks in the main text. We can use one small illustration for the main page (under 5k bytes) If you have them, use plenty of illos for the hyper linked pages, although any illo larger than 10k should be itself hyper linked (because of the time to load.) Illos should be copyright free (ie, old ones or government owned.) For those of you who have read the articles in S&T (especially when I was editing it), you will recognize the same "main text and modules (or "sidebars") approach. Worked then, even before the web came along and made it even more necessary. If you can write the article in a hypertext editor, fine (we use Front Page 2000, which is as easy to use as Word 2000, and, in fact, shares much code with Word.) Otherwise, do it in Word and we can easily translate it to HTML. If you don't use Word, let us know what word processor you do use so we can advise you on how to go about it (just to save us time on the translation end.) We pay $200-$300 for large articles. After payment, you can continue to touch up your articles if you wish. Reader feedback may catch errors, or you may simply see some elements that can be improved. We encourage this. In some cases, especially for current events topics, we may commission extensive overhauls of an existing article. If you have an article idea, write to the editor  first to discuss it. Shorter Contributions (under 10,000 words) should try to follow the above guidelines as much as possible. Again, write to the editor to discuss any ideas you might have along these lines. We pay $20-$100 for smaller items.