We prefer plain ASCII text, either in the body of an e-mail or as an attachment. Images and other items can be included in a tar archive with the main article or as separate attachments. If your e-mail system prevents you from sending us a large message, contact your editor for instructions on how to submit using our FTP site.

In the text of your article, notes or formatting information can be included within [square brackets], as needed. Put only one space after sentences, a blank line between paragraphs and don't indent paragraphs. Do not use any TAB characters, use spaces instead. Do not use any word processor special characters, such as "smart quotes". Use -- for an em dash. (—)

Feel free to include any other instructions for the editors, such as indications of superscript or subscript text, within [square brackets]. If the material you are writing contains equations or requires special formatting, contact your editor to determine a format that fits your needs.

Any sample code within an article should be 52 characters wide or less. If you number your lines, the line number and following space count as part of the line width. In general, we prefer that you use code excerpts that are short enough to make line numbers unnecessary. Use spaces instead of TAB characters to preserve formatting.

Send tables as plain ASCII text. We will lay them out.

Don't include URLs in the text of the article. Put them in a separate Resources section at the end.

Now that we've covered text, let's look at images.