Writing for Untold

How to go about writing for Untold Arsenal and/or the Arsenal History Society.

If you are writing an article for Untold here are a few hints to make life easier for the editors, and to enhance your chance of getting the article published.

First, and most obviously, please read Untold, to get the flavour and style of what we are.  An article originally written for another site is unlikely to be suitable for Untold – not least because of our title.  We publish views generally not read elsewhere.  Hence “Untold”.

Second, after you have read the rest of this page please send in your article to Tony.Attwood@aisa.org – but do make sure that you have been looking at Untold.  If I am away, that gets announced on Untold, and then you’ll need to send it to WalterBroeckx@hotmail.com

Third, please be aware of timing.  The regular writing team at Untold is producing articles all the time, and we might have pieces already scheduled, so your best bet, if you have an article that is responding to events, is to email to check we can get it in.   But generally if you have not written for Untold before you should try and start with an article that although topical can wait for a day or two before being published.

Format (this bit is vital)

The article should be in Word or Google’s text program, or as an RTF file, with your name as you want it to appear, at the top, along with your title.  (If you don’t put in your name at the top of the article, you may not get credited).  Please do note that we might edit your piece, change the title and so forth.  If we want to change the piece significantly we’ll come back to your first, but you have to expect minor edits.

Please have a spell checker tuned to British (not American) English turned on.

PICTURES

If you want to include pictures you MUST follow these instructions to the letter.

Send the text in Word etc as above, and where you want a picture put the file name of the picture in full, but do not include the picture

Provide the picture/s as jpegs in separate files – obviously showing exactly the same file names as are indicated on your text file.  Each picture must be in a unique file.

Please assert that you own the copyright to the pictures.  If the pictures are copied from elsewhere on the internet, then we can’t use them.

LINKS

Most Untold articles don’t have links within them, but if a link is essential, then please use Word to incorporate the link into the text.   Do not put the full URL within the text, or we’ll probably lose it.

COPYRIGHT

We need to know who you are, so please provide your full name and address.  This will never be published (we will use the name you provide at the head of the article).   And please acknowledge that the text (and pictures if included) is your original work  and has not appeared elsewhere, and is not currently on offer elsewhere.

The reason for this is fairly simple.  Untold gets between 500,000 and 750,000 visits a month, and is, we believe, the largest independent football blog in the UK – and perhaps Europe.  As such we don’t see ourselves as a second choice for articles, so please do not send us something that has gone elsewhere.

If we do use your article, you are then free to use it again elsewhere, but it absolutely must appear with a note to the effect that “This article originally appeared on the Untold Arsenal web site.”

CORRECTIONS

One of the easiest ways to annoy us is to send an article and then some time later send in a corrected version.  In between receiving it and getting your update we might well have spent half an hour editing it – and that has to be scrapped if you have sent in an update.   Please do check and double check before sending it off.  If you do send an update, we can’t guarantee to use it, and might still use the original.

WHAT WE DO IN RETURN

In return we’ll do something for you.  If we do reject a piece we’ll try and say why, and explain our position.  What’s more, although we can’t make this an open commitment, if you want some guidance on becoming a regular writer or even a professional writer, we will try and answer your questions.  This can’t be an open ended offer, because resources are limited, but we have helped a number of writers whose work we like, pointing them in the direction of where to go to get more exposure.  But please do note, this is only an offer to people who are submitting work to Untold – not to would-be writers who have not started yet.  If you haven’t yet tried writing for blogs etc our advice is simple: you learn most by writing.  Just do it.  You might then not submit your original, but remember, writing needs practice.  Do it, do it, do it.

BEFORE AND AFTER

If you want to suggest a possible article, or even a series, please do email in with details.  We do like regular series.

If you have submitted an article we normally can’t email you back to say it is published.  There just isn’t time.  So you have to keep an eye on the site.  But we do reply if the article can’t be used – although again this may take a few days.

And do remember, we cover football from an Arsenal perspective.  So it doesn’t always have to be about Arsenal.

HISTORY

Last point, we also run the Arsenal History Society blog.  We take history articles too – and by and large the same rules apply.

Tony Attwood