Prepare Your Article

My friend, Susan, received a list of directions [see below] for a paper she is presenting in Orlando this summer. Her paper will be published in a book called "Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of Social and Organizational Informatics and Cybernetics."

Come again?

Susan is a doctoral candidate in Education Technology. I think that's right. In her free time, she teaches 7th grade German, two ESL university courses, plays the organ at church on Sundays, builds websites, travels, writes...You get the picture.

And here I was thinking that teaching a yoga class and food shopping constituted a very full day. That doesn't include making dinner, okay?

Occasionally, she sends me stuff like this because it makes my head spin and she thinks that's funny. Actually, it gives me heart palpitations. I would need night school to decipher this list. Susan, on the other hand, could do this with her eyes closed.

1) Prepare your article in single-spaced, double-column format, on letter size paper (8.5”x11” / 21.6 cm x 27.9 cm)

2) On the first page, the distance from the top edge of the paper to the top of the first line of type (the title) should be 0.79” (2.0 cm)

3) On the second and subsequent pages, the distance from the top edge of the paper to the top of the first line of type should be 0.59” (1.5 cm)

4) The left and right margins should be 0.75” (1.9 cm.)

5) The width of each column should be 3.22” (8.2 cm)

6) The distance between the two columns of text should be 0.55” (1.4 cm)

7) The distance from the top edge of the paper to the bottom of the last line of type on the page should be no more than 10” (25.4 cm)

8) Use full justification.
and so on...

I need to go lie down now.