How many times do you read a newspaper or book and pick up inconsistencies? How
does it make you feel about the publication? It’s not just grammar, spelling and punctuation
that are important.
Author guidelines help to make writing consistent (especially when there are multiple
contributors as is the case with the GSV Ancestor journal). Without an agreed approach to
the expression of numbers, dates, addresses and use of capital letters, the publication
looks less professional.
Guidelines for references are more complex but essential to standardise the way that
authors cite sources of information. The GSV Ancestor team has carefully developed, and
recently updated, referencing guidelines that aim to provide the information a reader
needs, while not taking up too much page space. These can be accessed online at
GSV author guidelines.
The new additions include referencing vital records such as births, deaths and marriages
(BDMs) and church records, as well as clarification about referencing websites and
blogposts.
Consulting these guidelines is recommended before you start writing, particularly if you are
considering entering the 2025 GSV Writing Prize competition that opens this week, or
submitting an article to Ancestor.
Are there guidelines about the formatting of posts to this blog ?
As viewed on the GSV website, the present post actively resists being read.
Read as webmail, no longer drowning in a sea of superfluous site navigation links and with the body text no longer uncomfortably large, the post requires much less effort to absorb.
I recognise that the GSV's website software is a problematic beast and that recent work has improved the appearance of the site.
Perhaps some explicit guidance to authors about image size, sentence length, use of white space, and revising their work once it is posted could render these posts more inviting ?