We strongly encourage submissions from our readers.  You don't have to be the best writer in the world.  We edit everything, too, so don't fret too much.  However, if you'd like to make our job easier, here are some tips and guidelines for better writing.  We're not the grammar police and I, personally, had a terrible public school education.  Everything I know about grammar and sentence structure I picked up on my own after the fact.  Still, there are some basic rules you should follow that I also try to follow in my writing.

Make every sentence a complete sentence.  This means every sentence must have a subject, a verb, and a predicate.  For example, read these two sentences:  "The CRKT Cruiser is a solid, dependable knife.  A real workhorse."  The second sentence sounds like it flows logically from the first, but it's a fragment.  The sentences shoud read, "The CRKT Cruiser is a solid, dependable knife.  It's a real workhorse."

The simplest way to determine if you have a complete sentence is to ask yourself, "Could I theoretically agree or disagree with this sentence?"  The statement, "A real workhorse" is an incomplete idea – you can't agree or disagree with it because without the rest of the paragraph you have no idea what it means.  It's like me saying, "A purple car."  What about it?  If, instead, I say, "I own a purple car," you could theoretically agree or disagree, if you had more knowledge about my car.  More importantly, you understand what I'm trying to say in the second sentence, regardless of whether it's true.

Some sentences might appear, at first, to be incomplete, but that's because they contain an unspoken "you" that completes them.  "Choose wisely" is a command, the unspoken component of which is "you."

Quotation marks are double unless you're quoting a quote, and they go outside of other punctuation.  Don't use single quotes unless they're inside double quotes.  For example, "She called my magazine 'a disreputable, wretched rag,'" is correct.  Notice that if there's a comma or a period at the end of a quote sentence, it goes inside the quotation marks, not outside.  "This is a properly quoted sentence."  "This is not", by contrast.  Never 'quote like this' unless you're quoting someone else's quotation.

Never use "upon" unless it means "up on top of something."  "Upon" is one of those words that gets abused frequently.  You can almost always substitute "on" for it.  "Upon" is only appropriate if you're describing something resting on top of something else, and even then in a lot of cases you can simply use "on."

Don't use "since" when you mean because.  Don't use "for instance" when you mean "for example."  Since means "time," not "because."  "I've been studying Wing Chun since the school opened in 2002" is correct.  "Since I hate him, I rank his threads poorly" is not.  "Because I hate him..." is correct.  While we're at it, always say "for example" rather than "for instance."  It's just better.

Use "further" for abstracts, "farther" for physical distance.  People tend to mix these up, but further should be used when you're speaking abstractly, while farther refers to travel. "We can explore this issue further if only you'd be willing to move farther upstate."

Do not end sentences with prepositions!  This includes prepositions that are positioned in ways they should not be in the middle of a longer sentence.  For example, "That is the art he trains in" is wrong.  "That is the art in which he trains" is correct.  "The art he trains in is Wing Chun Kung Fu" is similarly wrong because the preposition is improperly placed even though it's not at the end.  "The art in which he trains is Wing Chun Kung Fu" is better.

A preposition is a locator in time and place.  Prepositions include the words about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, but, by, despite, down, during, except, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, onto, out, outside, over, past, since, through, throughout, till, to, toward, under, underneath, until, up, upon, with, within, and without.

A lot of people argue that ending a sentence with a preposition isn't an unpardonable sin.  These people are lying commies.  They'll use the example, "That is something I will not put up with," explaining that restructuring this sentence leaves you with the awkward, "That is something up with which I will not put."  Good writers simply rewrite such a sentence completely to read, "That is something I will not tolerate."

I'm going to start a gang of writers.  We'll carry switchblades and our jackets will read, "We are not the people with whom to fuck."

"Who" is a subject.  "Whom" is an object.  Use whom whenever the "whom" is the object of the sentence rather than the subject.  (The subject is the entity that verbs.  The object is the entity being verbed.)  "Who is going to the seminar" is correct because the "who" is the subject and is doing the "going."  "With whom are you going to the seminar" is also correct, in this case because the subject is "you" and you are doing the "going," whereas the "whom" is being "gone with."  And don't write sentences like "gone with."

Don't turn people into objects.  When you refer to a person, don't neuter them.  "These people, people that don't understand the martial arts, are silly" is wrong because you've used "that" to refer to living beings instead of objects.  The sentence should read,
"These people, people who don't understand the martial arts..."

Don't capitalize every noun in the article.   Some people have a tendency to capitalize, unnecessarily, ever other word they write.  If I'm writing about the Pistol I bought from the Factory that is down the road from me, and I'm talking about shooting some Game Animals with that Pistol, I've just annoyed my editor.

Hyphenate the term "self-defense."  Don't spell it like a Canadian.  "Self-defence" is wrong here in the States.  For that matter, don't be spelling "realize" with an "s" or "color" with an "our," either.  (Note the placement of commas in those sentences with relation to the quotation marks.)

Don't use a comma before the word "and" unless you're making a list.  If you're writing a sentence that uses the word "and," there should be no comma before it.  "I like to vote Republican and I like to kick puppies" is correct.  "I like to vote Republican, and I like to kick puppies" is also correct – but I prefer to break up long sentences into smaller pieces if they consist of separate ideas.  If the sentence is long enough that you need that comma in there, break it into two sentences instead and eliminate the "and" entirely.  Shorter sentences, as long as they are complete, lower the reading level.  The lower the reading level, the more accessible the text.  This is a technical writing lesson drilled into me by an editor at a previous job, who constantly scolded me for "doing comma-ands."

Don't start sentences with "and."  And I mean that.  Now, what is wrong with that sentence?  Nothing, really – people write that way all the time.  Avoid it, though. "And I mean that," when you think about it, could almost be a fragment because it seems like it should be connected to something else.  "I mean that" is a complete sentence by itself.

Always use the penultimate comma.  "Penultimate" means "next to last."  When writing a list of things, always use a comma before the "and" that caps the list.  "I study Wing Chun, Kali, and Silat" is correct – the bold comma is the penultimate comma.  "I study Wing Chun, Kali and Silat" is not correct because the comma is missing before the "and" that ends the list.  Newspapers often do not use the penultimate comma as a matter of style – it helps conserve space.  The Martialist is not a newspaper.

Don't use "and/or."  Make up your mind.  Choose one.  Usually, it will be "and."

Don't use "dependent" as in "is dependent on."   Say, instead, "depends on."  The sentence, "How this works out is dependent on many factors" sounds much better as, "How this works out depends on many factors."  For the love of all that is holy, never, ever say "...is dependent upon."

Use two spaces between sentences and after colons.  Again, modern style guidelines, particularly for newspapers, use only one space in order to save, well, space.  That's not how I do it because I was taught to type on a real typewriter.  We used correction tape and everything.  In your face, kid. 

Use paragraph breaks.  Do not indent paragraphs.  Nothing is harder to read than a really long paragraph that goes on and on.  Hit "enter" twice when you start a new idea to break your text into paragraphs.  Always use a blank line of space in between paragphs – do not use the old-fashioned indent or tab to make the paragraph break.  For the love of all that is holy, don't do both (meaning don't leave a line of white space AND indent your paragraphs – that's really annoying).

Do not use "it's" unless you mean "it is."  This is one of the most frequently abused terms in the English language.  "It's" means, always and only, "it is."  If you're using the possessive form of "it," you DO NOT use an apostrophe.  "It's the only way to do it" is correct.  "The monster drooled, its jaws working feverishly" is also correct.

Do not use apostrophes to pluralize.  This is so frequently done incorrectly that entire societies for the preservation of the apostrophe have been created.  "We sell stick's and staff's" is horribly incorrect.  When you pluralize something, you might use an "s" or an "es," but you will NEVER, EVER, EVER use an apostrophe.  Don't make me find you and slap you.

These are guidelines and, except for the bit about the prepositions, can be broken without committing serious harm.  If you adhere to them as often as possible, however, you'll turn out better text than if you do not.

Follow these guidelines and you'll make your Martialist editor's life a little easier.