Submitting Articles to Lorman.com
We are always looking for great writers, authors and contributors for our articles section. Submitting unique content to Lorman is very easy. Simply follow the guidelines set below when preparing your material. For questions or more information on guest writing or to submit your article to be included in Lorman.com, please email us at [email protected].
1. What We Are Looking For:
- Length: 700 to 900 words. More than 1,200 words is typically too long.
- Topics: Our content is professional and educational. View our industries we serve by looking through our website.
- Distinct message: We're looking for new topics, relevant to today's business professionals and educational.
- Actionable and educational: News, stories and articles that give advice, best practices and practical business tips are what our readers want.
- Reliable Info: Ideas and opinions and action items with reasons to why they should be used or applied.
- Trustworthy sources: Use reliable cited sources as much as possible. We typically like to see 3 - 4 external cited resources
To ensure you're offering an idea we will consider:
- Visit our site and look at our current content and continuing education courses. You'll find the topics that our customers, members and readers are excited for.
- Current news and information. Timely and relevance is what makes us want to post an article.
2. Before You Submit Your Work:
- Proof your article: If your piece is littered with typos and/or factual errors, it will not be accepted and most likely anything in the future will also be declined.
- Check our style guidelines below: We need all articles to follow these guidelines
- Link to your sources: Link to the original source to solidify the work.
- Interviews: If you interview someone, please see the guidelines below.
- Promotional Information: Any and all promotional material will not be accepted
- Third-party links: Any links to anything other than your direct website, blog or company will not be accepted. We are not a link service we are here to help you as a writer and a company. Links to supporting material will be removed and cited resources will be noted with a superscript numeral and added to the cited material section at the end of the article.
- Linked Content: You can include one link to your company in your bio or information section at the end of any article. Any links within the body of the content will be removed.
- Support your argument with multiple examples: Blanket opinions are not accepted. Support your thoughts and arguments with factual industry data and statistics.
- Timely content accepted faster: Articles with time sensitive material will be looked at first.
- Submit original work: Work you did not originally write will not be accepted and material previously posted but “tweaked” will also not be accepted.
For your author bio:
Submit a unique email address that will be used for communication. If you are an assistant or publicist who represents multiple authors who write for us, we will need a unique email for each author.
3. Once You Submit - What to Expect:
- It will take 2 – 4 weeks to review articles.
- If the article is accepted, we will contact you with approval information and any edit changes that we will require.
- Please note: Accepted articles will likely require revisions. We will likely have questions or suggestions.
- You will receive an email when your article is posted.
- Articles will be posted online for as long as we deem the information to be useful. Typically it can be listed for years.
4. Article Style Guidelines:
- Use correct punctuation: once the first punctuation mistake is found, we typically will throw the piece back for a one time revision. There is no second or third revisions. Commas and periods go inside the end quote marks. No double spaces after periods.
- Appropriate sourcing of quotes: Ex. "Yada yada yada," Mark Smith told me in an interview -OR- "Yada yada yada" Mark Smith said in an interview with the Journal Sentine Single quotes belong only around quotes within quotes and in headlines and subheads.
- Use one-sentence paragraphs sparingly: Two to three sentences is an ideal paragraph length.
- Percent is used as a word: Never use %, except in charts.
- Subheads (copy that breaks up long chunks of text) should have the same, parallel format. Don't capitalize the words in subheads, after the first word.
- "he," also use "she": Ex. Instead of "An employee has his job to do," make it "Employees have their jobs to do."
- A company or organization or government agency is an "it," never a "they." For the possessive pronoun, when you refer to possession by a single person or company, use "its," not "their." Similarly, when you write about a company's web audience, mention "the audience's members" before saying "them." An audience is not a "them."
- Be consistent: If you start with the pronoun "you," stick with it. Avoid mixing "we," "I," "he/she" and "you" all in the same article.
- Stick with the same verb tense throughout. Remember that the present perfect tense ("That company has followed the same policy for years") expresses ongoing, habitual action.
- Numbers under 10 are written out (unless appearing with the word "percent.") Numbers 10 or higher are written as numerals (unless they start a sentence). Years are always expressed with numerals. Use "more than" rather than "over" with numbers.
- Abbreviations and acronyms nobody else knows, spell these out on the first reference (followed by the abbreviation in parentheses).
- Names: For the first reference, use the full name: James Davis. For subsequent references, use the last name only.
