Articles should be around 1,000-2,000 words and MUST contain pictures that relate to the article — although, as the panel below indicates, there is a way round this for many destinations if you really do not have any pictures that are good enough. We normally like to publish a picture of the author as well!

What to include

Our brand of travel writing is not the same as magazine travel writing that concentrates on things like naming the best restaurant, bar or hotel, or of telling you the price of a cup of coffee, a beer or cab fare. We need something that is more enduring. We are looking for travelogues that give personal impressions of a place and its people, travel guides that tell tourists what is worth visiting at a particular destination, or accounts of adventure or themed holidays... plus information on what websites can help them find out more about the places you describe. The aim is always to help readers judge whether they would like to pay your destination a visit.

Strive to achieve a sensible balance between useful information and timelessness! (For example, see the following article about Seville.) Do not to be too specific with your information where this may become out-of-date. (The family run hotel or bar that was so great in 2006 may be completely different today!)

If your article is about a safari or cooking vacation, for example, it would be a good idea to include a link to a web site that can provide further details so others can follow your example - or perhaps of a great web site that provides more information about the region you visited. Don't include these links within the article, put them instead under the separate heading of 'COMPLEMENTARY WEBSITES' (see template below). We will decide how or whether to include them.

Show hyperlinks in the following format: "see 'London Tourist Information [www.londonpagesonline.com]', mentioned in Para 5."

You are encouraged to include references to specific buildings of interest such as churches, monasteries, chapels, gardens, theme parks, famous and well established hotels of note, but do not include references to less enduring commercial establishments or details of things that will change: such as actual admission fees. The aim is for your article to endure the passage of time as well as possible without becoming inaccurate.

What NOT to include

Do NOT include:

• Information that will become out-of-date

• In-text links (if you see them they are because we decided to add them)

• Articles slanted towards advertising; use your free ad for this and keep the article independent of your business or website or it will not be accepted - these are NOT advertorials

• Anything that might be judged to include: profanity, hate, violence, racial or religious intolerance, reference to illicit drugs or their association, pornography, adult or mature information, explicit sexual references, or anything promoting illegal activities or infringes the legal rights of others

• The use of inappropriate words inserted as keywords to falsely deceive search engines to improve the rankings of your page

• References to specific hotels, bars and other similar establishments that may change entirely from one year to the next.

Also, please do not feature locations listed on the EXCLUDE LIST shown in the left-hand panel of this page.

Picture Requirements

All articles should ideally include relevant photographs. They should preferably be 72-75 dpi in jpg format, but we accept most other formats and higher resolutions. Our preferred final size is just slightly larger than 450 x 300 pixels, allowing us to crop it to this size and remove any unwanted border edging or perhaps rotate slightly if the picture is askew (eg 460 x 310 would be ideal). We require this size in order to include one of your pictures in our gallery display — which pulls in readers from your picture alone! The large size is used for our 'click-enlarge' facility and we create thumbnail pictures for the article from this.

We invite you to include up to a maximum of 5 photographs within the body of your email so they are seen as soon as we open it; we may not publish all of these. (It is better to reduce the size of a large picture to the above indicated maximum dimension - say with PaintShopPro - than to reduce file size by compression techniques which might affect picture quality. Don't worry if you don't have the means to reduce a picture or cannot understand this.) If you have other suitable pictures it might be worth mentioning in case we consider ones you sent unsuitable.

We may or may not use your pictures, depending upon their quality and suitability, so ensure the text makes sense without the pictures! Do remember you must have taken the pictures yourself to ensure you own their copyright, or you should have the written permission of the copyright owner to use them on this website and tell us which pictures are involved.

If you do not have the facilities for converting your conventional photographs to digital format for attachment to your submission email, why not approach your local photographic dealer or film processing shop? They, or a PC-wiz friend, may be able to scan the prints into a digital format for you. If you ask, you can normally order a CD of your images when putting in a conventional film for processing and that will produce them in a suitable digital format for email attachment.

Include Picture Markers in the Article Text

[mypicture1.jpg - this is an example of how to mark a picture within a paragraph with its caption] Include picture markers within square brackets at the start of the paragraph to which they best relate, together with the picture filename and a proposed caption — as shown at the start of this paragraph. (If you use any iStockphotos in your article — see panel below — then show the iStockphoto page URL in your Picture Marker.) We need this information to know what the picture is and to which portion of the text it relates; you may know but we might not!

Ideas for Travelogues

We are looking for articles that major on travel information but which include your personal impressions and experience of the places you visit. So try to creatively weave in a little of this to make your article come alive. Check out existing Travellers' Tales articles to get the general idea.

Be aware of what has already been published. We are likely to consider new destinations on a much higher priority than repeated ones. If you can cover a major city, important tourist destination, unusual or exotic location, so much the better - and all the more interesting for our readers.

Here are a few ideas to get your mind working on how you might complement the basic travel information and add a personal touch (without any lengthy diversion):

• Enlightening conversations with locals or regular visitors

• Humorous things that went wrong

• Beautiful places not to be missed - and the impression they made on you - preferably illustrated

• Great trips you would recommend

• Adventure holidays: the ups and the downs (eg mountain trekking)

• Themed holidays: your failures and successes (eg cooking in France)

• Nightmare experiences: with some good bits as well, please

• Holiday romances (Keep it short - and clean!)

• Amusing incidents

• Unusual and exotic destinations

• The drama of Nature experienced first-hand

• Misunderstandings and repercussions

• Cultural contrasts

• Disastrous companions (real, but with fictional names, please!)

Ideas for Other Articles

Important or interesting cities, popular tourist destinations and new places to discover are what we are looking for. But don't submit a place already covered!

Winning Tips

The following aspects might just tip the scales towards the acceptance of your article for publication (as opposed to losing you critical MERIT points):

• The text meets the brief, is well written and maintains its viewpoint (eg 1st- or 3rd-person); if your article is a travelogue then it should be in 1st-person

• Existing layouts have been considered to minimize the need for editing; when we copy it from your email or attached text file, it should not prove necessary to reformat to remove unwanted line breaks or email formatting chevrons (paste article text from text editor into body of email or attach it as an 'rtf' file to an email that contains everything else)

• NEVER use manual line breaks, mid-paragraph; they all have to be removed to get back to 'joined-up writing'!

• If you are given the opportunity to check a Draft version of your article, it is not professional to use this as an opportunity to hone the writing: you should have done that before the original submission

• Interesting, clear and relevant pictures have been included and are easy to see and access

• Added interest is introduced by the inclusion of a colourful character

• One or two travel destination websites have been suggested as suitable complements to the article

• Any companions mentioned are labelled rather than included in a mysterious 'we'.

• The ideal article will have inherent authority about it — as if written by a travel professional!

FreeStyle Article Submission Template

Submit as many articles as you like via separate emails. Your article may be rejected without consideration if you do not use the template - or you may be asked ro resubmit it in the template format.

More than one article accepted gives you an Author Page - with the opportunity to promote yourself as a Feature Writer - if you contribute more than one Feature. Your article text may be within the body of the email or in an attached file saves in the '.rft' format from a word processor such as Microsoft Word.

If you paste the article within the body of an email from another source, please ensure this is free of formatting that prevents it being copied and pasted again without problems. (To test this, highlight it and then paste it into a simple text editor. IF there are line returns or interspersed characters within the middle of your paragraphs it is not acceptable. For example, if the text is copied from an earlier email it may contain unwanted '> >' symbols at the start of lines, all of which would have to be edited-out manually.)

Please ensure the attached article only contains the article text. Because it is time-consuming to access and download text attachments, please do not duplicate any of your pictures within the article attachment (they should be in the body of the parent email); ensure all the rest of the template material is within the body of the email for easy reference. Thank you!

Article Submission Procedure

For general queries please use the General Contact Form or our 'Normal Email Address' given in the 'Site Information' panel of our Home Page. No communications can be undertaken regarding submissions other than by email to the correct address. Paste the above template text into the body of your email or attached Microsoft Word (rtf-saved) document, then write or paste your article into the appropriate section of the template. Then complete the rest of the template end email your submission to the address given below (noting that a single 'underscore' rather than a 'hyphen' character is used after the name 'synergise'). The email title must be in the form: Article Submission:' followed by your article title (eg 'Article Submission: Dancing in Denver').

Article Submission Address. Please ONLY USE the dedicated email address given to the right for article submissions. These may include up to 5 pictures and should preferably include a head-and-shoulders picture of yourself.