ARMA Writing Guidelines

We welcome submissions of articles related directly to the study and practice of Historical European Martial Arts, especially Medieval and Renaissance fencing. Contributions from members and colleagues make up a large part of the ARMA website's material. We have three general categories of content: General Articles (topics written in a neutral historian journalistic tone), Editorials (presenting a clear point of view or opinion on a specific topic), and research and training Essays (offering interpretations or views from historical sources). We avoid critical pieces addressing issues only marginaly related to Medieval or Renaissance fencing.

When offering submissions we have just a few simple requirements. The material must be original, must be pertinent to the interests of our readers and constituent members, must be positive and informative. We request items be kept from 1000-5000 words in length. For format, we prefer MS Word files or if not then .rtf, using the standard ARMA layout of Times New Roman 12 font, black, full left justification, with no indents or tabs. Note that article titles are in red Arial 14 point and author names are in bold 12 point Times New Roman.

Please keep your look clean and simple as we will format it to the website ourselves. Do not use table or excel files. Use only dash, arrow, or dot bullets. Use minimal bolds and italics but no use underlines. Be consistent in your format. Use italics for emphasis and for foreign words, avoid use of all-caps except for acronyms, use bold only for titles and subtitles, actual quotes go in quotation marks, and for short end comments or inserted clarifications use parenthesizes or brackets. Spell out numbers larger than 10 and for dates use forms such as 1500s or 16th century. For Hyperlinks make links active in blue text and list them in text simply as "www." and not "http://www." For Paragraphs keep the size down for online reading and limited to what is easily readable on a 900-pixel wide table. For Footnotes use Arabic numerals in 6 point font not Roman or letters. Above all, please spell check and grammar check your document at least twice! We can accept .PDF files but only after editing.

Always inquire by email to let us know your offer before sending us something out of the blue. Always send your files separately rather than zipped or compressed. Send any graphics as separate files, not imbedded in the Word document. The web is a visual medium, so include images when possible and use small images of approx. 50k or thumbnails linked to larger files of when possible no larger than approx. 150k. Unless absolutely necessary, please keep image file size to under 100k. If you send HTML files you must also send the images separately. Please include your full name in your byline and at the bottom give us your hometown and your credentials, whether it simply be "ARMA Free Scholar", or something like, "works as a…Has trained 12 years in… author of…. holds a degree in…", etc. For author info, less is more if you have nothing really important to state that addresses credentials related to your topic. Otherwise it just comes across like you are padding your resume and doesn't end up sounding very impressive. We will also need a simple non-costume face shot photo to accompany any article or essay, preferably in red shirt. A photo of 10-20k in size is fine.

Feel free to inquire about our interest in presenting a subject before you begin working on it. We purposely use a light hand in editing and prefer to allow the author's ideas and style to present themselves within the ARMA spirit. For historical research papers, we require you provide footnotes citing sources (but are willing to leave them off if you wish to protect your research, just so we can see them before). For material that is a critique or rebuttal of other authors or works, use must use quotes and cite sources as well as retain a professional tone throughout. For Book Reviews, we are conservative in what we accept, and prefer short and positive ones. Please provide all publication data (publisher, date, page length, price, isbn, etc.) It helps if you include a graphic scan image of the title's cover. We also do not usually accept direct rebuttals of either editorials or book reviews. All submissions remain the property of the author and may be edited at future time upon request. However, the ARMA retains the right to continue to present any materials. Also, know that we get a lot of submissions and depending upon what we have in the works and what is going on behind the scenes, it could take 6-12 weeks to get a new finished piece online.