Editor’s Notes

Submissions

by John Hoover

Well, it’s been a dark and stormy night trying to get this changed over from Major Bill handling the compilation and printing of the Dispatch. I think I’ve finally got an idea and at least half a clue about how to handle this new task.

As some of you might know, during the April meeting I agreed to take over the Dispatch. Yes, I was in the room when this happened. Working with Joe Collins, member and contact at local printer, I’ve gotten the Dispatch set up in a reasonable electronic form and hopefully the future issues will require less work as time goes on. I would also like to thank Mike Hicks for our new cover design.

I’m sure many of you will wish to make comments and provide encouragement. I can be reached at johnhoover@hmgs-midsouth.org

There is always a need for additional submissions and reviews of new products. Please see the submission suggestions under the Dispatch heading on our web site. www.hmgs-midsouth.org

For those of you without easy Internet access, I’ll reprint the current information here.

HMGS MidSouth Dispatch Submission Guidelines

Looking for Regional and Time-Period assistant editors to submit/review articles. Would like to have a person or two for each time period (WWII, AWI, Ancient, etc.) and at least one person for each MidSouth region. You can write or just be willing to review for reasonable accuracy the articles submitted. If you’re willing and have the time please contact me.

Anyone is welcome to submit articles, reviews, battle reports, scenarios, or other material that the readers might enjoy. Typical item lengths might be:

    Item Range in 5.5x8.5" Pages
    Reviews 1/2 to 1
    Scenarios 3 to 6
    Battle Reports 1/2 to 3
    Regional Updates 1/2 to 1

Typical pages are around 700.words in 9pt Times New Roman with 1/4” margins. Page count should includes any images or pictures. You can go long or short, just not too far.

If you have something special that is going to take a lot of space, let us know. We’ll try to find a way to get it into print.

Manuscripts

Please submit your manuscript electronically. Files as plain text in the body of an email, a text file formatted single-spaced and flush left or Word documents are ok.

Important items on formatting:

  1. Do not break paragraph lines. (Carriage Returns at the end of paragraphs only please.)
  2. Place “image placeholders” in your text and number them and your images.
  3. If you’re submitting a Word Document, please use the template linked here.

Images

  1. Should be submitted as .jpg, .png, .bmp, or .gif format.
  2. Resolution should be in the 266-300 dpi range.
  3. Screen shots of 72-96 dpi are also acceptable.
  4. Remember, we print in grays, so images with lots of color may not look as you expect.
  5. Convert the image yourself to grayscale or it will get converted for you.
    Size Image Dimension (inches)
    Quarter page 2.4” by 3.8”
    Half page 4.8” by 3.8”
    Full page 4.8” by 7.6”

Images may be embedded in Word documents. Don’t worry about trying to get them in the exactly the right place, just have them the correct size, place them in the text left justified and everything should work out.

Evaluation and Editing

Submissions may be forwarded to a Time-Period editor for review. Some editing for clarity or reformatting may take place. If a significant amount of change is required the author will be contacted and allowed to make or approve of the changes before the submission is printed. And as always, there are no guarantees that anything submitted will ever see print. Time, space and other events may conspire against you, and your pet project may collect dust until the end of time.

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