AOF Online - Submission Guide

Submission Guide

We have a website, we have a newsletter. Both invite submissions from anyone. Anyone. You need not be an AOF member, nor even atheist or agnostic. But your topic should be within the broad arenas of freethought, humanism, skepticism, or secular (worldly) politics. It should be relevant, articulate, grammatical, spell-checked. AOF would prefer it to be in sync with our basic goal and mission – not to bash religious belief or push atheism, but to foster civil understanding, dignity and free discourse between churched and unchurched citizens. But really, that is between you and the newsletter committee. Work something out.

We like poetry, stories, essays, news articles. Hate literature is right out. Honest critiques, OK.

Please include your contact data with all submissions: name, postal address, “e-dress” and phone. Retain a personal copy please. AOF cannot always be able to return submissions, and sometimes we spill coffee.

The editors reserve the right to edit – that’s what they’re for.

Each newsletter issue comes out at about Day 1 of the month. Submission deadline is the middle of the third full week of the month before. If that seems too complicated, think about mid-month, plus a few days.

This website has no deadline. We’re easy. Submit anytime.

To send items by postal mail:
Mail to Newsletter Committee or AOF Website
PO Box 15182 / Sacramento CA 95851-0182
(Or simply bring it to a general membership meeting).

To send items by electronic mail (preferred):
For the Newsletter, email to: newsletter (at) aofonline (dot) org, Subj: Newsletter Submission;
For the Website, email to: webmaster (at) aofonline (dot) org, Subj: Website Submission.

Or use the Contact Page Webform.

News clippings, book excerpts, published writings
(hardcopy, scanned or copied from a source)

Original Material
(hardcopy, email, or on media like computer disk)

Please include adequate source information! Footnotes, footnotes, footnotes.

If reprint permission may be needed, please provide contact information.

If it's a news clipping from a daily newspaper, include title and publication date.

If from any other source (e.g., periodical), include in addition to the name of publication the volume #, issue #, page(s) #, and date of publication.

If from a book, also include publisher, city.

"Fair Use" rules respected, but try to be nice.

If sent by email, embed text within your email or send as an attachment.

If on disk or as attachment, best formats are MS Word, pdf, html, plaintext, or some major open-source text-like document.

Submit printed copy on standard paper, single sided, double spaced, with a readable font and a minimum of ketchup stains.
For electronic copy, use "vanilla" text. That is, limit formatting to standard paragraph tabs, center, bold, underline, italic & bullet points. Things like embedded tables, text-art and animations are just trouble.

Please try to:

stay to less than 700 words (this is flexible);
limit focus of submission to a single major issue or topic;
review spelling, grammar;
don't talk about Fight Club.

We will return longer pieces for condensation. Else if accepted, for the sake of clarity and/or length, our blue pencils may fly out and hack savagely.

Finally, we ask first-time contributors to include a brief self description, something of your background suitable for publication. A pic would be nice. Try to smile.

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Things to Read

AOF Events Calendar

Upcoming Events

Submission Guide

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