We welcome submissions from external authors. Please see below for our blog guidelines and pdf version.

1. General guidelines.

• Blogs should be no longer than 1000 words, and must be accompanied by images (see ‘image guidelines’ below for details)

• All sources must be cited as hyperlinks, and not footnotes or end-notes.

• Author affiliations should be declared.

2. Image guidelines

All blogs must be accompanied by one or more images (stock / graphics / maps / text / call out boxes highlighting key parts of the blog, infographics, etc).

• Blogs over 750 words should be accompanied by ONE photo

• Blogs of 750-1000 words should include at least TWO graphics.

• Images should relate to the content of the written piece.

The author should have permission to reproduce or publish the image (ie. The image was taken by the author, or if obtained from the web, should be labelled for reuse under Creative Commons.)

Preference is for highest resolution images (either .jpg or .png)

3. Other guidelines

• Hyperlinks should be included intext ie. Like this and not appended to a sentence like this [link: https://wordpress.com/view/abtassocgovernancesoapbox.wordpress.com].

• Hyperlinks should be minimal, covering few words, for example, ‘this report’ or  ‘this post’ rather than ‘this post illustrates that gender outcomes for women remain poorer than for men.’

• If a post is not explicitly referred to, the hyperlink should be attached to the relevant active verb in the sentence that refers. Eg. “Globally, women tend to spend ten times more time on unpaid care work than men.”

4. Punctuation guidelines

• We accept sentences starting with ‘And’

• Our preference is that adverbs of frequency precede verbs, e.g. ‘I regularly confuse…’  rather than ‘I confuse regularly…’

• Our preference is for English rather than American spelling. E.g. ‘S’ over ‘Z’ – as in ‘utilisation’, ‘harmonisation’ etc

• We prefer sentences that are concise, straightforward and forthright, and prefer use of the ‘active’, where the emphasis is on the ‘subject’ of the sentence, rather than ‘passive’ voice for this reason.

• Avoid use of anachronisms such as ‘whilst’ and ‘amongst’. ‘While’ and ‘among’ are preferred.

Happy blogging!