PC AI - Writers Guidelines

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	Some things to know about submitting articles to PC AI Magazine

Introduction

PC AI has a large and varied readership. Our readers include AI novices, experienced researchers, and all levels of expertise in between. We want all our readers to be able to comprehend all our articles. Thus, readability is of paramount importance.

This does not mean that we don't address complex issues. On the contrary -- artificial intelligence is a complex field. The idea is to address the complexities in an easy-to-read manner. Our goal is for people to understand us.

For an excellent guide to writing see Elements of Style "Elements of Style" by William Strunk, Jr. For a list of useful references, such as Roget's Thesaurus, Webster''s Dictionary, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, etc. see the "Reference Shelf". Another good source for a dictionary and thesaurus is Merriam Webster Online. For a brief set of basic English guidelines, see The English Language in Cyberspace".

Style

Write in the active voice. This is particularly important when you write about intelligent software: If you write in the passive voice, it may be unclear as to whether the user or the software performs a particular action.

Write in the present tense.

Keep your sentences short (strive for 20 words per sentence). Keep your words short (aim for 1.5 syllables per word)

Feature-Length Articles

Our feature-length articles are 2,500-3,000 words. They deal with concepts and applications of AI.

Articles can include program listings, tables, and figures. If your article has listings, send the executable code (along with operating instructions). To make a listing-oriented article readable, write a sidebar that outlines the language features in your listings.

AI @ Work Stories

There is an "AI @ Work" feature in every issue. This is a collection of 3-5 successful application stories that relate end users' experiences with software solutions. These stories should be 500-700 words in length and include two screen shots. "AI @ Work" stories generally reflect the theme of the issue (see Editorial Calendar for themes).

Format

Organize your article by topics and subtopics. Use a main heading to start a topic. Use a subheading to start a subtopic. Main headings are bold. Subheadings are bold and italic.

Ideally, a main heading or a subheading should appear every three or four paragraphs. (They sometimes appear more frequently. They rarely appear less frequently.)

Openers and Closers

Begin your article with a paragraph of 50-100 words. This paragraph explains what the article is about. Begin the final sentence of this paragraph with something like "This article describes ... "

The first main heading of your article might be Introduction. The last might be Conclusion or Summing Up

Figures, Tables, and Listings

Your article should contain figures (i.e., diagrams, table, listing, or screen shots). DO NOT embed figures in a Word document. Kindly send them in a separate graphics-only file (.pcx, .tif, or .bmp formats are acceptable). Within your article, indicate the location of a figure, and refer to the figure within the text. Always provide a 2-3 sentence caption with each figure.

References

We've developed our own format for references.

After the end of your article's text, use a main heading entitled References. List your references in alphabetical order of the author's last name. Please follow the style and punctuation of these examples:

Budd, T. (1987) A Little Smalltalk. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Golin, E. (1991) Theory of Visual Languages. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 2(4), 309-310.

Gupta, M. and Qi, J. (1992) On Fuzzy Neuron Models. In Zadeh, L. and Kacprzyk, J. (Eds.) Fuzzy Logic for the Management of Uncertainty. New York: Wiley.

Ignizio, J. and Baek, W. (1992) An Alternative Neural Network Architecture and Training Algorithm. Technical Report, University of Virginia.

Cite at most six references. Unlike many academic journals, we're not interested in exhaustive literature searches.

Here are two ways to cite a reference:

(2) End a sentence with the author's last name and date in parentheses. For example: "Three models incorporate fuzzy logic into neural networks (Gupta and Qi, 1992)."

Do not use the author's first name when you cite a reference.

Submitting Your Article

Email your article to editorial@pcai.com. PC AI will get back to you within 3 weeks with further submission instructions.