Lacessiveram editor

Re Qntra Style and Draft Content Guide :

Formatting for Submission

1. All submissions GPG encrypted. No plaintext material will be reviewed. No exceptions. Signed material will be credited to the respective signature, if accepted for publication. Unsigned material will not be publicly acknolwedged in any manner for any reason, ever.
2. No linebreaks within paragraphs. Two linebreaks between paragraphs. If your software thinks linebreaks are anything but \n throw it out.




3. Single space after punctuation marks. Logical quotes without exception (Right : He said "this sucks". Wrong : He said "this sucks.")
4. Link format is the text without other modifiers. Links to sources out of WoT and links to dynamic pages should be followed with a link to an archive.is snapshot of the page in the form (archived). Direct links to disreputable sources will be elided from the published piece in any case.
5. Quotes in excess of five words, with the possible exception of periphrase of common stylistics ("Sing, O goddess, the anger that burned Vuterin the Extraterestrian" etc) go in blockquote tags.
6. Straight quotation marks and apostrophes. No "Smart Quotes", "Fancy Quotes", Microsoft quotes etc.




7. Footnotes go inline surrounded by double parenthesis. No footnotes in the first (or only) paragraph of a submission.ⁱ. Use sparingly in any case.
8. Use strong for bold, em for italic, del for deleted (strikethrough). Do not abuse.
9. Images are acceptable if you own them, and if they are particularly relevant. If you are including images, bundle the article and the image files in a .tar.gz archive, and encrypt/sign that.

Acceptable content

1. Your piece must contain information. If you can not ennumerate the information your piece contains, it is not an acceptable submission.
2. Words are generally not information ("and then he said" is gossip not information, and thus in most cases uninteresting) ; empty comparatives ("bigger" ; "faster"), empty judgements ("acceptable" ; "good"), pointless adjectives and epithets are a waste of the reader's time, the editor's patience and of your own life.
3. Judgment calls and your own oppinions are only interesting if you are a reputed expert staying within the field of your expertise. If you are unsure whether this is your situation then it certainly is not. If you hope that it will be in the future, we wish to encourage you, but bear in mind that the path towards that future strictly and entirely depends on your sticking to actual information, as well as on your avoiding the pretense of expertise. Both of these.
4. The less you write and the more you pack into it, the better. Qntra's literary ideals are alligned closely with "for sale: baby shoes, never worn" ; we don't like Joyce or Proust, nor would we publish either.
5. Qntra is not a "professional" venue. It does not publish press releases. It does not abide by the "harm no one" policy of the rest of the English press - we intend to do harm. Broadly speaking if you can't think of any group or entity that would prefer your piece not be published, your piece really should not be published.

PS. Editor is the passive future imperative (second and third) of the verb to eat, in Latin. Just thought you might wish to know.

1. It ruins the appearance of pieces on the Qntra front page. [↩]