Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013 Style Guide

Copyright

We are electronically publishing the 2013 Wyrd Con Companion Book as a PDF under a Creative Commons license. This license allows everyone, for free, to copy, distribute, and transmit the work under the following conditions:

• Proper attribution as stated in our table of contents
• No one may alter, transform, or build upon this work
• No one may use the work for commercial purposes. *
• This is a non-exclusive right; you can re-publish your article elsewhere, as long as the original publication (WCCB 2013) is listed.
• If you are submitting a previously published work, you must notify the Editors of this fact in your first query.
• Everyone must have all rights to their submission.

Document Format

• For text, we prefer Microsoft Word documents, but RTF or plain text is acceptable.
• If using MS-Word, use the “Insert Footnote” function for your footnotes, numbered continuously, at the bottom of the page.
• If you are not using MS-Word: number your footnotes and put them at the bottom of the page as best you can with the number attached. For academic papers, include a bibliography (ludography) of works cited at the end of the document.
• Use Chicago/Turabian style for citations.
• Articles should feature a maximum of 5000 words in length.

Hyperlinks

This PDF will be a hyperlinked document. The format for linking is:

next to the word or phrase that you want linked, put tildes, which is the ~ symbol (shift + key next to 1 on standard keyboards) on each side of the word or phrase. Immediately next to the second ~, put the full URL in fancy brackets; the { and } symbols.

Example:

Her essay in the 2012 ~Wyrd Con Companion Book~{http://wyrdcon.com/2012/12/21/2012-companion-book/} influenced the formation of the nation’s first traveling larp troupe.

In general, hyperlinks to the actual sources are preferable than footnotes. Avoid, if possible, both hyperlinking and footnoting. Make sure the URL is publicly accessible and not part of a registration-required service.

Language

• English language only, with American spellings, e.g., “parlor” not “parlour” unless the word is part of a group name or official title.
• The word “larp” is always lower case unless the first word of a sentence.
• “Role-playing” is hyphenated unless it is part of the phrase “live action role playing.”
• Periods are always inside quotes.
• Special terms should be italicized and defined.
• The following abbreviations are acceptable without definition: GM, PC, NPC, D&D, IC, OOC, OOG, IG.
• Authors should endeavor to spell out all other abbreviations the first time it appears in their essay only, e.g., AGP (after game party) or KP (Knutepunkt).
• Err on the side of defining abbreviations and other specific terms the first time it is used in your essay. Assume the reader is relatively new to the medium, but not completely unfamiliar with it.
• For the journal section, first person references and accounts are acceptable, as is profanity (to a limited degree). This is not, however, a forum to disparage harangue, slander, or harass others. Save it for the comments section and forums.

Images

• We encourage you to submit images to accompany your contribution. We cannot guarantee all images will appear in the final publication.
• Send your images separately from your text as full resolution jpeg or tiff. Color images will be in the PDF, but they will be converted to B&W for the print version. DO NOT EMBED OR PLACE IMAGES INTO YOUR TEXT!
• Make sure your images have a signifying title, not something like “IMG346_1.jpg”
• With the images must also be a separate document that lists each image by file name and includes your caption and who is to be credited for the photo. In parentheses, you can also suggest where you would like the image to appear, that is, what it is referencing in your document text. We will endeavor to follow your suggestion, but cannot guarantee exact placement.
• All authors must have full clearance to use pictures, with the name of the photographer clearly credited in a separate document. DO NOT SEND US IMAGES YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE OR WHICH ARE NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

Additional Media

We have some ability to include very small audio or video clips in the PDF, if less than 20MB in file size. If you are interested in embedding audio or video to your contribution, talk to your Editor. In general, it is easier to upload video or audio to an independent server, e.g., YouTube or Vimeo, and link to it in the text.

Bios

Each article should include a 100 word (or less) bio of the author(s). Links in the bio to personal pages are acceptable as well, following the hyperlink format listed above.

Editing

Editors reserve the rights to:

• reject a submission at any time
• adjust or request additions or extractions to the text
• correct spelling, punctuation, or grammar, or to request such corrections
• remove, crop, or otherwise alter the color/contrast of submitted images
• draw pull quotes from text

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* We request that accepted contributors DO allow Wyrd Con the right to commercial exploitation of their work in a very narrow sense: Wyrd Con, at their own expense, has the right to print a maximum of 200 copies of the WCCB 2013 and sell or donate at their discretion in a manner of their choosing. All accepted contributors will receive one printed copy as compensation. However, shipping costs, if any, are to be paid by the contributor—but we’ll do out best to get it to you via hand offs and travelers if you don’t want to pay for shipping. This primarily applies to our international contributors.