Articles

Here is a short guide for authors of articles and notes/short reports. Please bear in mind that the readership is varied, and may not be familiar with the language that we often get used to within our own working spheres. Jargon is to be avoided!

The best way to judge the style of the magazine is to look at past copies. Natur Cymru has evolved a distinctive voice. Its purpose is not only to provide authoritative, up-to-date information about species and habitats and their management, reporting on pioneering work and the latest discoveries; it also makes the connections between these environmental stories and the wider social and environmental agenda, presenting them in an interesting and readable way.

1. Personal details

Please provide your name, preferred title, and how you would like to be described. Authors of main articles please limit this to fifteen words eg. job title and brief biography or interests. For short articles/reports, your job title will suffice.

Please remember to include your phone number or email address so that we can contact you quickly if necessary.

2. Titles and headings

Please look for titles which excite interest, rather than trying to encapsulate a whole article in the title: ten words maximum. If you need any extra space, you may provide a sub-title. Equally valuable is a short, context-setting explanatory paragraph which can be italicised as an introduction to your article.

It would be helpful if you would consider breaking up the text by using sub-headings every few paragraphs, providing quotes which can be used in the margins, using bullet points or tables of information. This is not essential, but be prepared to see sub-headings in your text!

3. Capitals, acronyms and punctuation

Generally the first letter of common names of plants and animals should be in lower case (eg. lesser horseshoe bat, but Daubenton’s bat). Capital letters should only be used where they are clearly necessary.  If they form an acronym which is subsequently referred to, please enclose the acronym in brackets after the words in full. If acronyms become too prevalent, I may have to introduce a quota, or carry out an indiscriminate cull.

All forms of punctuation are welcome, especially the full stop. If you have a sentence longer than thirty words, think seriously about dividing it in two. Please limit the use of apostrophes to possessive nouns and abbreviations etc, and don’t let them get into your date’s!

4. Use of scientific names

There are several choices here. The scientific name in italics (without brackets) will normally follow the first use of the common name, but not be repeated. If there is no doubt which species a common name refers to (eg. fox), you may leave out the scientific name. The choice is yours. If there is no common name, the scientific name will stand alone.

5. Formatting

Please DO NOT use any specialised formatting, such as footnotes, which can cause us headaches. The magazine is set up using specialised software and any formatting that you put in a Word document will have to be undone by us. The exception is using italics for Latin names. If you need to use footnotes, please do so by entering the number in brackets in the text, eg (1).

6. Length and illustrations

Main articles are around 1500 words: one-page “regular features” are 6-700 words, and book reviews 3-500 words. If you have a good topic and need more space, feel free, up to about 2,500 words. Length is much less important than quality – a really fine article will hold readers’ attention whether it is long or short.

Please think about illustrations and provide suggestions, or, better still, send some illustrations with your article. These can be digital images, slides or prints for scanning in here. Tables, graphs, maps and logos are welcome, where appropriate. Please make sure you have full copyright permission for reproducing any images.

All digital images must be sent as separate files (jpegs, tifs etc). WE CANNOT USE IMAGES EMBEDDED IN A WORD DOCUMENT. We can use very simple tables set up in Word, but anything more complicated will have to be sent separately. The images need to be at as high a resolution as possible

7. Submitting your article

Articles can be sent in on disk or by e-mail. We use MS Word for Windows, but most programs are compatible, and you may like to submit in text-only format. Our email system can cope with images up to 10Mb, and we can accept WINZIP files. Text can also be sent through the post, in the form most convenient for you, and articles in copperplate handwriting are a pleasure to receive!

Artwork

We are always looking for contemporary artwork to feature on our covers, or high quality illustrations or cartoons for inside the magazine. Cover work needs to be bright and eyecatching - take a look at some of our Past Issues.