A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

Contributions are invited for the British Go Journal on any topic related to Go. Submissions should be mailed to journal at britgo.org but it is worth letting the editor know in advance what you are planning.

Articles should generally be between 1-3 pages. As a guideline, one journal page is around 440 words.

The copy date for the next journal is advertised in the most recently published edition and is generally around seven weeks after that is published, check the news pages for the last date of publication. Articles received after the copy date are likely to be too late for the next edition. To help spread the workload evenly, please do not leave your contribution to the last minute.

We welcome submissions from anyone from beginner to professional. Please remember that you do not have to be an expert even to write a technical article. Articles on technical matters written from the perspective of a double digit kyu are interesting to at least as many people as articles written by a professional. Many of the best articles are written by beginners and improving players about recent insights which have made them stronger, or about some common mistakes they have seen when teaching weaker players. Articles can be about anything related to Go; some possible ideas are:

• Technical articles: a concept you have recently discovered, common mistakes you have seen, a joseki you have just learned, "revelations" that cause a leap in strength.
• Game reviews: Reviews of games between double figure kyus are as valuable as reviews of high dan games, and all are welcome.
• News reports: reports of club events, visits, inter-club matches, club tournaments.
• Travelogues: reports of experiences playing Go abroad, whether at a club or tournament.
• Book reviews: new books, or older books you have recently read. Further guidelines for reviews are here.
• Software reviews: software reviews are also welcome. Further guidelines for reviews are here.
• Club, tournament or personal profiles or obituaries.
• Comic or thought-provoking articles.
• Histories.

Photographs for use with news articles and for the front and inside covers are also particularly welcome.

For all contributors: The Editor will always send you a draft copy of the fomatted article, usually within a few days of submission.

Formatting

Articles can be sent as plain text files, with as little formatting as possible, or as a simply formatted Word document, since any formatting will be discarded while preparing the article for publication.

If you have photographs or graphics to be included with your article, these are best sent in .jpg format; games and game diagrams are best sent as .sgf format. A convenient way to prepare diagrams is with GoWrite.

Game Reviews

Game reviews can be submitted in .sgf format. It can be, however, a lot of work to convert game records into a form suitable for publication so there are several things you can do to make this job easier for the typesetter.

• It is helpful if the review begins with some context for the game, e.g. where it was played, whether a tournament game or friendly game, some background on the players.
• When referring to specific moves in the review, use, e.g. b[9] and w[10] to refer to black move 9 and white move 10 respectively. This is easier to translate automatically into the appropriate form for typesetting than, say, simply "Move 9".
• Suggest move numbers after which to create a diagram to break the game up.
• State which variations should be diagrams.

Conventions

Use proper capitalisation and never type a word in all capitals. Do not start a sentence with digits.

Double quotation marks should be used only to indicate speech. Use single quotes to indicate textual quotations, unusual terms, names of publications and in any other situation where some form of emphasis is required.

Go specific conventions

The word Go must have an initial capital. The same applies to the name of any other game.

The words Black and White must be capitalised according to whether the word is used as a noun or an adjective. Thus: "After Black 23, the white group is dead.". Sometimes this can be hard to resolve. If in doubt, refer to a well produced book - such as the Ishida Joseki Dictionary - to see how it should be done.

Japanese terms such as sente or joseki will not normally be emphasised as they are common currency in the Go player's language. Unusual terms or those being introduced, for example in an article aimed at beginners, should be set within single quotes eg 'Katte Yomi'.

'Nihon Ki-in' should be written with a hyphen (Ki-in rather than Kiin).

Grades are given as 'k', 'd' or 'p', to indicate kyu or dan or professional, e.g. 15k, 2d, 9p.

Lists of players should be separated by commas, with grade and club in brackets:

On four wins were Arthur Dent (3k Earth), Ford Prefect (4k Guildford), Zaphod Beeblebrox (5k Betelguese Five) and Dirk Gently (6k London).

When writing a Book Review, Personal Profile, or an Obituary - look in the more recent British Go Journals, for examples that have passed the rigorous proof-reading cycle for style, content and order.