Sail-World.com - Contributors Guidelines

by Al Constable on 14 Jul 2006 Sail-World.com has a large world-wide audience in more than sixty countries.

Our website encompasses all forms of sailing, including cruising. Whether it is racing in yachts, skiffs or dinghies, regattas, twilights or ocean races, there is always a story waiting to be told.

The Sail-World archives contain 40,000+ stories, one of the largest sailing news databases in the world, they are indexed by major search engines include Google and Yahoo and news feeds like NewsNow and are routinely searched by mainstream and sailing media.

Sail-World is happy to receive your articles.

Be it profiles of people and boats, cruising destinations, tuning, tactics, techniques, safety and seamanship, or indeed just about anything to do with sailing, we are happy to review and publish appropriate articles.

Guidelines: We accept upwards of 140 words. Many simple stories can be told in 300-500 words. An ideal feature length story is 1500 words or more.

Keep the story tight and punchy.

Remember that your title should be short and without a full stop or commas.

The header paragraph should contain information that is in the text of your article and it should be an interesting lead into the story.

Regatta, championship and any race reports should attempt to explain how the winners achieved the podium position. Better tactics and techniques, faster boat, better sails, combination of all, etc. Also include dramatic or significant events, breakdowns, collisions, recoveries from poor starts, tight finishes and any ‘names’ that have entered.

We need to know where the event was held, the organising authority, the Club that hosted the event, what the weather was like etc. Please give first and family names of the winning boat and crew (for up to three person crew, otherwise, just the skipper’s).

The easiest way to avoid longish paragraphs and to marshal ideas clearly, is to use the active, not the passive tense, ie. ‘The cat sat on the mat,’ rather than, ‘The mat was sat upon by the cat.’

Consider also the length of sentences, we sometimes have to break up 100 word sentences in contributions we receive. That is not good writing.

If you are having difficulty in constructing an article, make a list of all the pieces of information you want to convey to the reader, then number them in order of importance and start your story with the most important one.

In non-technical articles, it is always good to include quotes from information sources.

Style:

The best way of knowing how we like to things written is to look carefully at the articles on our website. Following are some pointers on the style we like to follow for consistency. It will take a lot of the time and effort out of the editing process if you follow this style.

Style Points:

When using a boat’s name in the text of an article, do not put quote marks around the name.

Do not put the boat name in italics or bold, neither of these methods, will translate to the web.

Two-man crews give both names as follows:

Over the Moon, a 470 sailed by Jim Moon/Fred Kwok, but in result details at the bottom of your article, initials only, eg. 1. Over the Moon (J.Moon/F.Kwok)

Use first names and family names at first mention in text; thereafter, the family name only.

Clubs, associations etc. spell in full at first mention, say Yachting Association of Sri Lanka, or Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club, thereafter abbreviate to - YA Sri Lanka and RPAYC.

Spell out numbers under ten in text, ie. one, two, three, all the way up to nine and then 10 onwards in numeric.

This is most important as it relates to placings in a race.

'XYZ rounded the windward mark 3rd, but faded to finish 4th' will be corrected to

XYZ rounded the windward mark third, but faded to finish fourth.

Abbreviate times, in race details, to hr m s.

Abbreviate dimensions. eg - m cm mm sq m.

Collective nouns: Associations, companies, countries, clubs, etc, are to be construed as singular. eg The Royal Hong Kong Yacht has re-elected its Commodore, not ‘their’ Commodore.

Use British/Australian spellings: gybe not jibe; gunwale, not gunnel, centre not center etc. if you are reporting in that area.

This does not apply to America or countries using American English.

Abbreviate 18ft skiffs, 16ft skiffs, etc, as detailed, not 18 foot etc.

Be careful with the nomenclature 49ers not 49'ers, OK dinghy, not Ok dinghy

Absolutely avoid constructions using ‘saw’ such as - ‘Sunday saw the start of the long race.’ Sunday cannot see!

Use ‘I will’ rather than I'll, and similar, unless using quotes or conversation style.

Don’t use &, use and, unless it is the formal name of a company eg. Smith & Sowersby Ltd. sponsored the Flying Elevens.

Offshore racing: Text and details should identify the designer or type of boats named as well as the owner. eg, ‘Bob Steel’s Nelson Marek 46, Quest, has won the Rolex Sydney-Hobart on corrected time.’ Include the yacht club the boat represents where possible in the story but do not overload an individual boat description with adjectives. We do not want to read about Bob Steel's blue hulled, CYCA, Nelson Marek 46 Quest.

Please supply detailed results for the first five places in major races in the following style:

Ragamuffin (S.Fischer), Farr 50, corrected time 23hr 1min 2sec;

Quest (B. Steel) J35, 23.01.01, etc.

If a defending champion does not finish in a top five place, also add his/her place eg. 8. Quest (B. Steel). That also goes for first regional crews placed in international event, if not in top five finishers.

Grammar and Punctuation: Proof read your article before sending – check grammar and please spell check. While we are happy to take contributions, if we see major spelling and grammatical errors, we will not publish your article. We receive upwards of 40 releases every day and do want to be presented with stories requiring a full edit, particularly if you are contributing in any kind of PR role.

Please take care with owners and sailors names. Contributions with the names misspelled are not considered well. Do not rely on memory, use the event entry list as a guide at least.

Remember spell checkers find misspelled words not miss-used words 'of' instead of 'off' etc.

While you may have a perfectly written story in your head, its ease to leave out a word or use a singular instead of a plural. So you stories do need editing, Often another sailors will find errors or ommissions in your copy.

One of the best ways to proof your story is to read it out loud.

FULL CAPS TITLES. It has been a long tradition that hard copy press releases had FULL CAPS TITLES as an attention-seeking device. However, in the electronic medium FULL CAPS = SHOUTING.

So all full caps titles have to be re-keyed.

Please submit headings, where possible, as follows: ‘Macky leads Bethwaite in Yngling event’

Remember no full stops at the end of the title.

Location:

Writers know the exact location of their yacht club and often write for local magazines without providing reference locations. Sail-World has readers in more than 60 countries around the world and content needs to be globalised, eg. An international audience will not know where RMYC is or where the Ao Chalong Yacht Club is - add a location, Pittwater, Sydney or Phuket, Thailand etc.


Beaufort Scale. While British and Hong Kong sailors use the Beaufort wind scale routinely, that is not the case with many parts of the world.

Many young American, Australian and NZ sailors will have no idea about the wind strengths in a story, if the wind is blowing at force 4. Please add the translation in knots (11-14 knots)

Presentation of Images:

The preferred image format is jpeg, although good quality gif’s can be used. Please do not send tif’s or bitmapped images as they cannot be used.

Caption your images and include the photo