Instructions for Submitting Articles to Church of God News
NB: below are the instructions that Richard Nickels asked authors to abide by. We leave them here as part of the historical record.
Thanks for helping us, by formatting your file with these specifications:
Use Times New Roman 12-point font.
If you have section headings, center and bold face them.
Do not use ALL CAPS.
If your article has scripture references, bold and spell them out, and use Roman numerals for books, e.g., I Corinthians 15:1, “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel,” rather than 1 Cor 15:1. A common mistake is to place the comma or period after the ending quote mark, rather than as it should be, before the quote mark. In the example above, notice it is gospel,” and not gospel”,
At the end of the article, put your name, and if you wish, your E-mail address, with an emdash (a long dash), a space, and your name, right justified. In Word, you make an emdash by holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys, and press the minus key on the 10-key pad. Example:
— your name, your E-mail address
Do not put blank lines between paragraphs. Do not tab paragraphs, and do not put spaces to indent paragraphs (proper indenting takes care of that). How do you indent paragraphs? In Word, select the entire file (Ctrl A), then right click and choose Paragraph, then Indents and Spacing. Under Special, select first line, and enter .25. This creates a .25-inch indent at the beginning of each paragraph. With this formatting, you don’t have to press Tab to create and indent a paragraph, just press Enter.
While you are in Paragraph formatting, set Alignment at Justified, Indentation Left and Right at 0, Spacing Before and After at 0, and Line Spacing at exactly 12pt. More advanced Word users may set these formatting options in a Style, such as Normal Style.
Thanks for submitting articles to Church of God News!
Greek and Hebrew words should be italicized, e.g., parakletos.
Most usages of Church should have capital C.
Sentences end with a period, and sometimes a quote mark. E.g., “…for the edifying of the body of Christ.” NOT “…for the edifying of the body of Christ:” It doesn’t matter what the KJV text has: we end sentences in a period, period!
Commas are sometimes helpful to distinguish pauses within a sentence. E.g., “In 1976, the school moved,” rather than “In 1976 the school moved.”
It is mandatory that the last item in a group be preceded by a comma. E.g., apples, oranges, and bananas NOT apples, oranges and bananas.
Addresses: PO Box 123, rather than P.O. Box 123.
Many folks have fits with its and it’s. Instead of “horizon casting it’s long yellow rays,” it should be, “horizon casting its long yellow rays.” The reason is that it’s is a contraction of it is.
Emdash: Ctrl Alt — (the minus on the 10-key pad).
Soft Hyphen: Ctrl - (the minus on the regular keyboard).
Years are usually not possessive; they are plural. E.g. “the Philadelphia era began in the 1930s,” rather than “the Philadelphia era began in the 1930’s.”
The word Bible has a capital B.
We capitalize states, so MO is correct, rather than Mo.
It is E-mail, not email.
For editor only: Department headings should be left justified, in italics, followed by …