Submission Guidelines

If you are interested in submitting material to Prayers4America, please read the following guidelines before sending the submission to submissionsp4a@prayers4america.org.  Because of the number of submissions received, notification of the status of your submission may not be possible.

Note that Prayers4America accepts submission of material for publication only via e-mail.  Prayers4America does not pay.

If you wish to submit an article, please keep use of quotations within Fair Use copyright guidelines.  In practical terms, this means keeping quoted material under two hundred words per item quoted, and substantially less if the original item is short.  We cannot reproduce copyrighted wire service photos, and we do not quote AP stories at all (in either blogs or articles).  Respect the intellectual property of those who provide the grist for your own thinking.  If you rely on the original reporting of others, credit them by name and include a hyperlink to the source(s) you used.

Articles provide analysis and new information on topics of importance to Americans.  We want to advance the national conversation with fresh insight.

Original material only

Prayers4America publishes previously unpublished material only.  We are not an aggregator of material already available elsewhere, including on a personal blog.  Authors are free to specify a deadline by which the article will be sent to other publishers, but please do not send articles that have been submitted to multiple recipients already.

Once Prayers4America has published the piece and it resides in our archives, subsequent literary rights become the property of the author, and the author may permit republication.  We request that AT be credited as the original publisher and hyperlinked.

Please observe the following guidelines for submission:

Introductory e-mail

Put SUBMISSION (all caps) in the subject line of your e-mail.

Put the title, your name, your e-mail address, and the date of submission at the top of your article.

A brief note should accompany the e-mail submission.  The note should state (in two sentences or fewer) an outline of the content of the submission.

Form for submissions

Submissions in MS Word are preferred — however, a submission may be sent as text in an e-mail if it conforms to the other requirements for publication.

General format

All text should be aligned left (not justified), with no indentations whatsoever — not even for block quotations, which will be offset for you.  Lines should be single-spaced with a return between paragraphs.

Font style

Main text should appear in Times New Roman.  Block quotations should appear in Arial.

Do not use boldface font or underlines for emphasis.  (These may be used for headlines within an article.)  Use italics sparingly.

Graphics

Please provide a featured image for your article, attach them to your e-mail as .png (preferred), .gif, or .jpg files.  Please note that we cannot publish copyrighted material without permission from the owner, so news service photos and the like cannot be used.

Tables

If you have any tables in your work, please use the table function in Microsoft Word.  Do not use the spacebar to create tables.

Links

Hyperlinking to a source (rather than using an endnote) is the preferred method for fact verification.  Source all your quotes and any important factual contentions.  Embed hyperlinks if possible, keeping the number of words used as the link to a minimum.  If you cannot embed, then the URL of the source should be pasted into the text following the word to serve as the hyperlink:

This link to Prayers4America (http://www.prayers4america.org) pastes the URL into the text.

This is a link to Prayers4America already embedded in a hyperlink.

Endnotes

If the source is not available as a link, an endnote can be used.  The endnote should contain (at a minimum) the title of the work, the author, the date of publication, and the apposite page number.

Author’s credit

The writer may include an “author’s credit” that will appear at the bottom of the article if the submission is accepted for publication.  This credit may include a link to the author’s website, blog, or e-mail.  The author’s credit should be no longer than 25 words.

Factual verification

Writers should source, verify, and then double-check all facts in their submissions.  Wikipedia, something you heard on the radio, and nearly all bloggers are not definitive sources.  Do not write speculatively about factual information.  Do not guess or approximate unless you have expert knowledge.

Style

Write in clear and direct sentences whenever possible.  Avoid run-on sentences.  Focus on fact and logic more than on your own opinions.  Unless otherwise indicated on this page, grammar and punctuation should conform to The Chicago Manual of Style.

Bombast

If there is humor, it should be original and witty.

Prayers4America will not consider material containing anything which could be construed as a threat or a call to violence, revolution, or any other illegal activity.  Our mission is in the realm of civil discussion.

Focus on the reader

Attention to the perspective and information needs of the reader is necessary for writing to be effective.  Presume that readers are impatient and have a world of choices a click or two away.  With that in mind, get to the point as clearly and economically as possible.  Tell the reader what the article is about and why the reader should care in the lead sentences.

Thank you for your interest in being published on Prayers4America.