Guidelines for Mercury Contributors

In its original incarnation Mercury, the magazine of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, was first published by the Society in 1925. Mercury is now read by about 3,500 ASP members and at 350 school, university, and public libraries, observatories, and other institutions around the world. Formed in 1889 by a small group of northern-Californian professional astronomers, the ASP has grown to be the largest general astronomy society in the world. The ASP is a non-profit organization whose goal is to promote public interest and awareness of astronomy through education and outreach programs. Our members include professional and amateur astronomers, educators, students, and motivated non-scientists.

The ASP serves the professional community by publishing the technical journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, as well as conference proceedings. In contrast, Mercury serves the Society’s broader goal of communicating astronomy to the general public. Because of Mercury’s broad audience, articles written for the magazine must be accessible to non-scientists while containing in-depth, accurate information. Beginning in 2008, Mercury is no longer a print magazine. It is published electronically in PDF format.

An article should not focus solely on the research or history of any particular individual, unless it is of unusual importance. Articles should appeal to readers’ personal experiences and draw broader conclusions about how science is conducted. We encourage writers to be innovative and forceful, to devise clever metaphors, to walk out onto a limb. The ASP does not endorse anything our Mercury contributors say, but we believe in challenging readers and making Mercury a vigorous part of the marketplace of ideas.

Level of Articles

We encourage writers to read past issues to get a sense of Mercury’s style. Mercury strives for a conversational tone. As you write your article, envision yourself sitting next to a stranger during a long airplane flight. The stranger asks about your interests, and after you tell him or her that you are an astronomer or are interested in astronomy, the stranger asks you for more detail. The stranger is intelligent and inquisitive, and may have a basic knowledge of science and astronomy, but he or she does not have a formal education in astronomy. Write the article as if you are speaking to this person. And remember that most readers will be reading your article in their leisure time.

To help communicate science to a broad audience, follow these guidelines:

1. The first three paragraphs (the "lead") must grab the attention of readers and entice them to read the entire article. The lead must be written in non-technical language and it must establish the theme of the article. The lead can be short in details and specifics, those can come later. If the reader is bored or confused by the lead, it is unlikely that he or she will read the rest of the article.

2. Use active voice as much as possible, and avoid passive voice as you would avoid the Ebola virus. This means writing "Astronomers discovered a new planet" (active voice) rather than "A new planet was discovered by astronomers" (passive voice). You should write less than 10 percent of your sentences in passive voice.

3. Use active verbs as much as possible, and avoid using the most boring verbs in the English language — the various incarnations of "to be" — such as am, is, are, was, and were.

4. Vary the length of sentences, but keep most sentences short and simple. If you find yourself using many commas, colons, and semi-colons in a sentence, break it up into two or more shorter sentences. Few sentences should exceed 30 words in length.

5. Keep paragraphs short. Each paragraph should communicate a specific idea, and the beginning sentence of most paragraphs should act as a topical sentence for the paragraph as whole. Rarely should a paragraph exceed 150 words in length.

6. Use analogies relating to everyday life to explain complex ideas. In a recent Mercury article about frame-dragging (an extremely complicated effect of general relativity), the author used the following analogy to great effect: "To visualize frame dragging, imagine a bowling ball with something sticky on it. The ball pulls at a sheet as it spins. A marble rolling on the sheet not only curves around the ball, it also gets pulled forward a bit. Likewise, with frame dragging the region of space-time around a neutron star feels a tug."

7. Avoid jargon, needlessly complex terms, lists, and acronyms, except for common acronyms such as NASA. Acronyms make the author’s job easier, but the reader’s job harder.

8. Try not to leave unanswered questions lingering in the minds of readers. If something is not known, say so.

9. Whenever possible, include amazing and interesting facts. For example, if writing about neutrinos, mention that 100 billion neutrinos pass through a human body in the time it takes a person to read the sentence.

10. Think about what the typical reader is likely to know. Do not explain basic concepts while leaving more complex concepts unexplained. Make sure to introduce concepts in a logical order, so the readers are grounded in broad, basic concepts before moving to more difficult concepts.

11. Try to inject your personality as much as possible into your writing. Be creative, be yourself, feel free to inject humor, and try to have fun as you write the article. If you have fun writing the article, there’s a good chance the reader will enjoy reading your piece.

Length of Articles

Regular columns are 600 to 700 words long and usually include an image; guest columnists are always welcome. Features in Mercury generally run 2,000 to 2,500 words in length, include illustrations, and contain at least one sidebar (which is included in the word count).

Illustrations

We ask the writer to provide, help to obtain, or at least suggest photographs and illustrations. This ensures that the illustrations are what the writer intends. In many cases, writers have better access to illustrations than we do. We require images in electronic form as either JPEG or TIFF files. Image files must be a minimum of 500k in size, and preferably larger.

Fees

We do not pay for submissions or images. Writing for Mercury is a labor of love and good exposure for your ideas.

Queries

We do review unsolicited manuscripts, but if you have article ideas, we ask that you email the Editor first. In your letter, discuss the basic idea for the article, its general content, its relevance to our readership, and your relationship to the subject matter. The Editor tries to respond to all correspondence within a month.

Rights

The ASP asks that contributors transfer their copyright to the ASP, in order to facilitate electronic distribution and future reproduction requests (which we routinely grant free-of-charge). In return, we grant writers the non-exclusive right to reuse any part or all of their work. (What this means is that you give us the right to publish your work in Mercury or any other ASP publication, but you also have the right to publish it anywhere.) We have found that this arrangement avoids hassles, but if contributors prefer to retain copyright, we have no problem with that. Our concern is simply to protect ourselves legally. The minimum we can accept is worldwide first-appearance, non-exclusive print and electronic rights. You also agree that the work you submit is original and will not violate copyright laws.

Submission

To avoid transcription errors, we require electronic submission. We prefer Microsoft Word 6.0 (or later) format, but we will accept plain text. You can email the document to editor {at} astrosociety.org.

Deadlines

First drafts of all features are due 3 months prior to their publication date in Mercury. Those publication dates are early February, early May, early August, and early November.

Editing

When you submit an article, Mercury assumes that you agree to work with the Editor in preparing it for publication. Editing occurs in two stages. First, the Editor reads the submitted draft and makes suggestions for a revised draft. On occasion, the Editor may ask an anonymous outside reviewer for advice. In some cases the Editor may proceed directly stage two.

Second, the Editor copy-edits the revised draft for grammar, spelling, flow, style, and so forth. We make every reasonable effort to show writers the final, edited version of their articles while there is time to make changes. There is one exception: During layout, the Editor sometimes must condense in order to fine-tune length, eliminate widows, or correct errors noticed at the last minute. Such changes are usually minor. We usually do not have the time to inform writers of such changes.

Titles, abstracts, subheads, and captions are our domain, although we generally work from writers’ suggestions and include these elements in the drafts we return for their approval.

Spelling, Grammar and Style

Run the article through a spell checker before submitting it to the Editor. Make absolutely sure that all proper names are spelled correctly.

Mercury does not have footnotes or formal bibliographies. If acknowledgment has to be given, work it into the body of the article or the biography. Articles should not include a bibliography.

Mercury almost always uses metric units. Spell out the names of measurement units. Take care not to overstate precision. Normally, two significant figures suffice.

Biography

Following every article is a one-paragraph biography of the writer, written in third-person, including research interests, personal anecdote or factoid, and an email address if the writer desires to include one.

Contact

Should you have questions about a current or future submission, please do not hesitate to contact the Editor, Paul Deans, via email at editor {at} astrosociety.org

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