Writers’ Guidelines for Arts & Sciences

Our publications

Arts & Sciences communications office has three publications that are open to freelancers: the print magazine Arts & Sciences and two Web-only publications, A&S Online and Oscar, an online guide to scholarship, creativity and research at U.Va.

Arts & Sciences is a 16-page, quarterly, four-color magazine. With a circulation of 100,000, the magazine is published for the alumni, students, faculty and friends of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. A&S Online comes out once a month and is delivered via e-mail newsletter to 37,000 people who have signed up to receive it. Oscar publishes new feature articles once each month and is delivered via e-mail newsletter to approximately 1,300 people who have signed up to learn about our academic research endeavors.

The common denominator among all our publications is that they feature interesting people in the Arts & Sciences community doing remarkable work. Our stories tend to focus on alumni, faculty or students of the College. The stories in Arts & Sciences magazine and A&S Online cover a broad spectrum of activity in and beyond the University, while Oscar stories focus on research, scholarship and creativity currently being done by faculty, graduate students and undergrads at U.Va.

The kinds of articles we like

Beyond the stipulation that our articles must relate somehow to Arts & Sciences, we are open to all ideas. If you haven’t worked with us before and you have a story to pitch, send a brief query to . Tell us who you are and what kind of article you’d like to write. We’ll respond quickly and let you know if we’re interested in the idea.

In Arts & Sciences magazine, the types of articles we publish include features of 1,000 to 2,000 words; brief profiles of alumni, faculty and students (Hoos News); news of happenings around the University (Around Grounds); and personal essays (Last Look). Past subjects of articles have included the balancing act of student-athletes; U.Va.’s multi-disciplinary work in southern Africa; the University’s Rare Book School; a first-year Astronomy student; a Drama alumna who’s lighting up Broadway; and the history of vacationing, as viewed by a history professor. Again, we are interested in just about anything as long as it relates to the University and, more specifically, the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

In A&S Online, we publish the same kind of stories that appear in the print magazine. In Oscar, the stories again are similar, but the focus is on academic work. In general, all of our publications have a common goal: to help those in the extended Arts & Sciences family — students, faculty and alumni especially — feel connected to the life of the College.

Before you begin working on an article for Arts & Sciences, read some of the stories we’ve published. You’ll get a feel for the tone in our publications; it’s informative but not ponderous, breezy but not irreverent. You’ll also see that almost all of our articles focus on people. By reading our published stories, you’ll also pick up on our idiosyncrasies of style. For instance, our style preference for the University’s abbreviation is U.Va. — not UVA or U.V.A.

Our readers are interested in the life of the University. They are active, educated, engaged. The implication for you, the writer, is that you don’t have to write down to the reader, or over-explain the subject matter. You only have to write clearly and directly.

Deadlines and payment

Arts & Sciences magazine is published in January, April, July and October. We typically assign the stories five months in advance of publication date and the stories are due six weeks later. For example, for the January issue, we will assign features in mid-July and the stories are due in early September. We usually ask for a story outline or summary a couple of weeks prior to deadline. You can send story queries at any time.

A&S Online launches a new issue at the beginning of each month. Typically we assign the stories a month and a half in advance and the stories are due two weeks later. So, for the March issue, we assign stories in mid-January and they’re due February 1.

Oscar also comes out once a month, and the editorial cycle is similar to A&S Online’s. Stories are assigned a month and a half prior to publication date, and writers usually have about two weeks to work on the stories.

The length of articles varies for each of our publications. With our Web-only publications, A&S Online and Oscar News, our assigned word counts function as rough estimates. Stories run 500-700 words. In the boundless world of the Web, we don’t have to worry about running out of space. In our print magazine we do have to worry about space, so word counts are precise, and our freelancers are expected to write to the count. Generally, department pieces run 50-600 words (Hoos News 250-300 or 550-600; Around Grounds 50-200). Print magazine features run 500-2,000 words, depending on the complexity and depth of the topic.

Our payment is generally about 50 cents a word. For stories in our online publications, we pay writers a flat fee of $250. We pay upon acceptance. We normally do not pay expenses, but we may cover expenses if they are essential to getting the story done. If you have questions about expenses, talk to us first. We buy all rights to the stories we acquire, and we request the right to republish the story in any U.Va. publication, print or online.

Matters of style

In general, we adhere to the Associated Press Stylebook, which you can order from this Web site.  Beyond our observance of AP Style, we have a few editorial idiosyncrasies particular to our publications. We find the New York Times Stylebook to be a useful resource as well.

Abbreviations

We use U.Va. as the abbreviation for the University. We abbreviate academic degrees without periods between letters. For example, BA, PhD, MFA. When we talk about degrees in the text of stories, we use the names of degrees in lowercase: bachelor of arts, master of arts, doctorate. This follows AP Style.

Academic subjects

We put academic subjects or disciplines in lower case, except for languages or ethnicities, which are capitalized. For example, She is taking courses in mathematics and psychology, but her major is English.

Acronyms

We introduce acronyms after the first use of a full name and use the acronym thereafter. For example, The Undergraduate Research Network (URN) is a collaborative effort. URN is designed to foster undergraduate research.

Alumni, alumna, alumnus

We use the word “alumni” to refer to a group of men or men and women who have graduated from or attended the University. For example, Hundreds of alumni from across the country arrived at U.Va. for homecoming weekend. “Alumnus” refers to an individual male graduate. “Alumna” refers to an individual female graduate.

Capitalization

We capitalize the word “University” when referring to U.Va. We do not capitalize the names of departments. We do not capitalize the word “professor” unless it’s a named professorship, such as the Edward P. James Professor of History. E.g., John Doe is a mathematics professor at the University. Jane Doe is the Edward P. James Professor of History at U.Va.

All story titles follow sentence case, not title case.

Punctuation

We do not use serial commas in our stories.  E.g., John Doe likes to study, attend class and tutor undergraduates.

Other assorted oddities

There is no “campus” or “quad” at U.Va. We have “The Lawn,” which encompasses the original Academical Village laid out by Thomas Jefferson, and the central grounds of the University goes by the name “Grounds.”

Also, we do not have freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. Students are called first-years, second-years, third-years and fourth-years. For example, John Doe is a fourth-year student in biology.

When writing about alumni in stories, we list their major and graduation year in parentheses after their names. For example, Jane Doe (Drama ’98) is starring in the Broadway musical “Annie, Get Your Gun.” Advanced degrees we denote like so: John Doe (MFA, English ’83) has just published his first novel. For people with double majors, we separate the majors by commas: John Doe (English ’80, MFA, English ’84) has been elected to city council.