The Lightning - Editors' Guidelines
You are among the select few, appointed to the glorious task of being an
editor of The Lightning (which means, no pay, shitty hours, and a
co-ordinator always shouting at you :-)
These are a few guidelines:
- Deadlines
Deadlines must be kept. All relevant material for an issue must be in the
hands of the layouter, no later than the deadline (unless it's important
stuff, that is - then a financial agreement must be made with the layouter
:-) ...Seriously though, stuff received after the deadline will on most occasions
be archived for use in the next issue.
- Proofreading.
In order to minimize the amount of spelling mitsakes in the magazine, all
material should be proofread by the editor *and* by one other member of the
Lightning crew.
It is especially important to proofread *and* prooftranslate all sourcecode
that are to be used in the magazine. One of the things I remember from the
good old ZX-81/ZX-Spectrum days, was the frustration of weeding out all the
typos, after typing in a magazine listing. This is important!!
- Content
It is the job of the editors to check the contents of the material
submitted. This means you have to read through the stuff for the sections
you edit. In case something is wrong, try to contact the author, if at all
possible, in order to discuss it with him/her (are there any women at all
out there programming Blitz?). If it is not possible to contact the author,
either change the stuff yourself (be sure you make no mistakes, or else :-)
or archive the material for future use.
- Style
Every author has his/her own style. Don't try to break this style in order
to make the magazine look more uniform - diversity is good(tm).
However, the material we write ourselves should be kept under some
guidelines, providing we can agree on some... [suggestions please].