Writer’s Guide

Table of Contents

Introduction

Welcome to mathNEWS! This Writer’s Guide aims to be a comprehensive yet digestible handbook for both new and experienced mathNEWS writers. It will cover:

  1. considerations of what content mathNEWS will publish;
  2. the submission process and timeline; and
  3. article formatting instructions.

1. Article content

The official purpose of mathNEWS is to:

  1. inform readers about events put on by MathSoc/WUSA/the faculty/the university;
  2. entertain readers; and
  3. provide a platform for Math students to express themselves.

This has resulted in the wide variety of content mathNEWS is known for, spanning genres, subject matter, and tone. There have been comics, artwork, political editorials, movie reviews, poetry, and satire.

Despite this, there are legal exceptions to what mathNEWS will publish. Among other things, mathNEWS will not publish libel, defamation, hate speech, or unsourced articles posing as factual journalism. Furthermore, mathNEWS will not publish paid advertisements, syndicated content, or wholly AI-generated material.

In addition, since all content is the responsibility of the mathNEWS editors, they retain full editorial discretion and reserve the right to reject or modify submissions for any reason.

1.1. Primary and secondary submissions

Starting Spring 2023, primary submissions have a length limit of 1000 words.  Once reviewed and okayed by the editors, primary submissions are strongly guaranteed to make it to the final issue. Starting Fall 2022, contributors will be limited to one primary submission per issue. Special, compelling requests for two or more primary submissions should be discussed with the editors directly.

Secondary submissions are limited to ~450 words. They should be indicated with a caret (^) at the end of their title (e.g., “Title of my Article^”). Although secondary articles have less of a guarantee of making it to the final issue, contributors are still encouraged to submit them, as mathNEWS requires them to fill space between longer articles. If a secondary submission is rejected for space reasons, it can be resubmitted for a later issue if desired.

2. Submitting articles

(This section assumes the possession of an account on the mathNEWS WordPress. To get an account, contact a mathNEWS editor at mathnews@gmail.com.)

2.1. Beginning an article

To start, log into the mathNEWS website, go to the menu in the WordPress dashboard, and click “Posts > Add New.” This will open up the WordPress editor. The body of the article will go in the large text editor in the centre.

The word count of an article can be viewed in the bottom left-hand corner of the main editor. On a page of mathNEWS, a column is roughly 400 words and a page is roughly 850 words (not including the title and the author sign off). Long, multi-page articles are discouraged. The longer an article is, the more likely it will be delayed for a later issue or rejected entirely.

A pseudonym can be specified in the “Pseudonym” field to the right of the main editor. If left unchanged, the pseudonym field defaults to the account nickname/username.

Although WordPress has autosave functionality, it is not reliable. So, while writing an article in the WordPress editor, the “Save Draft” button should be used periodically to save progress.

Do not click the “Submit to v…i…” button until the article is finished, as this locks the article and makes it so that only editors can make changes to it.

2.2. Finishing an article

Articles must be completed and submitted for review by 10 AM Eastern time the Tuesday after production night. Any articles submitted after this time may not be reviewed in time for the upcoming issue. It is recommended to submit long articles and/or articles that extensively use special formatting well before (i.e., days) the deadline. This gives editors more time to review the article and reduces the chances of it being delayed or rejected.

It is highly recommended to proofread articles, especially for unclear wording and grammatical errors, before submission. Not only will this improve the quality of the article and save the editors time, this will also prevent editors from rewriting sections of the article to unintentionally have a different meaning than the original.

To submit an article for the upcoming issue, click the “Submit to v…i…” button. To submit an article for a later issue, go to the “Tags” field to the right of the main editor and tag the article with v###i#, replacing the #s with the desired volume and issue number, before clicking the “Submit to v…i…” button (the button will be updated to reflect the issue tag).

Again, once submitted, the article will become locked and only editors will be able to make further changes to it.

3. Formatting articles

Knowing what formatting capabilities mathNEWS supports and using them appropriately will help your articles stand out on the page and look their best.

A note about formatting and copy-pasting articles from Microsoft Word/Google Docs/et cetera: formatting problems can happen when articles written in external word processors are copied and pasted into the WordPress editor. For example, a common problem that can occur is that italics are lost in the final issue. To avoid issues with formatting, it is highly recommended to write articles within the WordPress editor.

3.1. Basic formatting

WordPress’s editor displays a variety of formatting options by default. However, not all of the options are supported by mathNEWS. The formatting options that are supported are detailed below.

The following inline formatting is supported:

  • Bold
  • Italics
  • Links
  • Code (must be applied through the “Text” editor using the <code> tag)
  • Strikethrough (can be applied through the “Text” editor using the <del> tag or through the “Visual” editor by clicking the “Toolbar Toggle” button and then clicking the “Strikethrough” button that appears)

(mathNEWS is unable to support multiple inline styles applied on the same text. In particular, if bolded and italicized text is required, use a formatting hint for “emphasis 2,” as in §Additional inline styles.)

The following block formatting is supported:

  • Quotes
  • Code blocks
  • Lists (ordered/numbered and unordered/bulleted)
  • Headings (but only Headings 1 and 2)

3.2. Advanced formatting

Among other topics, this section covers additional inline styles that cannot be applied through WordPress and instructions for special content such as images, code, or LaTeX.

3.2.1. Additional inline styles

mathNEWS supports four styles of emphasis, two styles of stress, and an article reference style that should be used to refer to titles of other mathNEWS articles. The following formatting hints can be used to apply them:

Formatting hint Style
[em1]text[/em1]
[emphasis 1]text[/emphasis 1]		 Emphasis 1
[em2]text[/em2]
[emphasis 2]text[/emphasis 2]		 Emphasis 2
[em3]text[/em3]
[emphasis 3]text[/emphasis 3]		 Emphasis 3
[em4]text[/em4]
[emphasis 4]text[/emphasis 4]		 Emphasis 4
[str1]text[/str1]
[stress 1]text[/stress 1]		 Stress 1
[str2]text[/str2]
[stress 2]text[/stress 2]		 Stress 2
[aref]text[/aref]
[article]text[/article]		 Article Reference

(Note that Emphasis 1 and Stress 1 are also the standard italics and bold styles that can be applied using the WordPress editor.)

3.2.2. Endnotes

Use [#] to indicate endnote numbers within the article, replacing the # character with the endnote number. Alternatively, # can be omitted to number the endnotes automatically.

For example, the following:

Put a pencil[1] to his temple,[] connected it[1] to his brain.[]

becomes:

Put a pencil¹ to his temple,² connected it¹ to his brain.³

Finally, in the postscript box beneath the main editor, endnotes should be inserted as a numbered list.

3.2.3. Images and artwork

To add an image, do the following steps:

  1. Upload the image to an external hosting site. We recommend Postimages. We explicitly recommend against Imgur or any CDN (e.g. for Discord, Matrix, etc.) since we will not be able to download them when editing. Note that while we used to recommend Catbox, we have recently discovered hosting issues causing images to break.
  2. Get the direct URL to the image. This URL will contain a file extension such as .png or .jpg at the end. For Postimages: right-click on the image and select “Copy image link/location/address” to get the direct URL.
  3. In the WordPress editor, click the “Add Media” button. In the dialog that appears, click “Insert from URL.” Paste the direct URL into the link field, then click the “Insert into post” button.

3.2.4. Code blocks and syntax highlighting

Code blocks are limited to a maximum width of 48 characters. mathNEWS uses an advanced line-wrapping algorithm to handle overflow, but it is recommended for authors to line-wrap their code manually for best-looking results.

Syntax highlighting can be enabled for code blocks by adding an options block before the rest of the code, separated by one blank line. This looks like:

:option1: value1
:option2: value2 (and so on...)

code goes here...

The following options are supported:

:language: <lang>
    Highlights the code block as if it
    were written in <lang>, where <lang>
    names one of the lexers described at
    https://pygments.org/docs/lexers/.

:lang: <lang>
    Alias for :language:

:linenos:
    Enables line numbers

For example, to highlight some Racket code, you might write:

:language: racket

(define pi 3.1415)

Syntax highlighting for a language can be previewed at https://pygments.org/demo/?style=bw.

3.2.5. Using R for graphs

ggplot2 should be used for R plots instead of the default plot utilities. R’s plot function is fixed at 72 DPI, while mathNEWS is printed at 300 DPI, which ggplot2 supports.

3.2.6. Writing LaTeX

mathNEWS LaTeX support is limited to commands that are valid in math mode.

Within the WordPress editor, inline math is delimited with the \( and \) delimiters. Display math is delimited with the \[ and \] delimiters, placed on a new paragraph.

The aligned environment may be used within the display math delimiters for aligned equations. For example:

\[\begin{aligned}
3 &= 2 + 1 \\
&= 1 + 1 + 1
\end{aligned}\]

3.2.7. Separating sections

Article sections are separated with ❦, i.e., U+2766.

4. Cover art

Submit cover art to our email! Ideally by Tuesday of the issue release week, but we’re always open to receiving art.

Please note, cover art should be greyscale since we don’t print in colour; keep in mind that the shades will become a little darker after being printed because of how printers work, so use slightly lighter grays than you normally might. The bottom corners will be obscured by the bar code and CC logo (see any existing issue for reference), so don’t put anything important there. Feel free to email us for a blank cover for reference, but do not draw on top of it. Minimum 300 DPI; 2710 x 3250 tends to work pretty well without any cropping on our end. Finally, use a lossless format (e.g. PNG), and make sure not to accidentally send it to us via a gated OneDrive or Google Drive link such that we can’t access it. Thanks for your generosity, and don’t forget to sign your work :D!

Conclusion

Congratulations! You should now be well-prepared to write and submit a mathNEWS article. Consider bookmarking this page or otherwise keeping the Writer’s Guide handy for future reference. Happy writing!

Last edited: March 3rd, 2026

Waterloo's Bastion of Erudite Thought