As you may have experienced, articles may be rejected if the short summary is not original. A short summary should not be cut-and-pasted from the article you have written - especially the first paragraph. You should strive to summarize your whole article in a new way in the short summary. The short summary is there to give customers a brief overview of the information contained within.

This is their first look at your article. Make it count!

If you simply paste your first paragraph into the short summary box, when they get to the long summary, they'll have to read this information after they've already read it once. This is a waste of time for customers, who may pore over dozens of articles searching for those that fit the needs of their sites precisely. Not only that, but a first paragraph is often much lengthier than a short summary should be and doesn't always convey the central idea of the article. One to three sentences is probably the ideal length for a short summary - this will allow the customer to quickly get an idea about the article's pertinence to his or her needs.

A short summary is also where you would include any extra information that would be useful to the customer. For example, your article may include references or a table to illustrate your point, or be written to the customer's specifications. Don't, however, include any promotional language, as this is one practice that Constant-Content will not allow.

If you've got a special note to the editor - like "Article was previously submitted for a Private Request. The customer no longer needs this article, so I am submitting it for general purchase." - you can put it in the short summary as well. Prefacing it with "Note to Editor:" will help grab our attention.

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On Constant-Content, all titles must be capitalized correctly. What do we mean by that?

All words of your title, except for conjunctions and prepositions, should be capitalized. Obviously, you capitalize the first word of your title, even if it is included in one of these exceptions. Longer prepositions, like "around," may also be capitalized.

If you're having trouble, peruse recently uploaded articles to get an idea of what others are doing. If you're stuck on whether or not to capitalize a word, just ask yourself if it is one of the two above-mentioned exceptions. If it isn't, capitalize it!

Do not capitalize: a, an, the, in, at, to, etc.

Capitalize nouns, verbs, pronouns, possessive pronouns (even "your"), adverbs, etc.

Some examples:

• Walking Your Dog
• Into the Forest
• Making Mobiles out of Scrap Metal
• What Time Is It?
• Travel Around the World

The editors won't reject an article if you capitalize every word except conjunctions. However, if you've got words that aren't capitalized that don't fall into either exception category, there's a problem. Please be conscientious about your capitalization!

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Some conversations in the forum as well as a couple of recent submissions have prompted me to answer the question to which every writer needs to know the answer:

What is grammar?

Merriam-Webster (m-w.com) defines it as:
1 a : the study of the classes of words, their inflections, and their functions and relations in the sentence
2 a : the characteristic system of inflections and syntax of a language b : a system of rules that defines the grammatical structure of a language

Grammar is, in essence, the way words relate to each other in order to create meaning.

Call me unimaginative, but I can't think of any situation where grammar rules can be broken, except in dialogue.

It is true that grammar rules adapt to changing times--and some old rules may be best followed only in the stuffiest of publications. However, grammar is what enables us to communicate meaningfully to others who speak and read our language. If a writer neglects to follow grammar rules, their most important purpose--to convey an idea or message--has failed. If the reader can't understand what is being said, then they will go elsewhere for their information. Not following grammar rules can also imply lack of integrity, care, or understanding to the reader, whether or not these perceived qualities were present at the time the article was written.

Grammar is different from punctuation, style, or format. Those are separate issues; the word "grammar" doesn't encompass them.

To end this entry, I'm going to present a grammar challenge. What's grammatically wrong with the following sentence and why? Also feel free to make suggestions about how this sentence can be better written.

The jobs employers said they had difficulty finding applicants for, in rank order, were service, skilled positions, laborers, sales, and health related positions.

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