Submit an Item

Publication Guidelines

It’s easy to submit an item for publishing in Brigada. But you can save us tons of time by using the following guidelines — and increase the likelihood that we’ll use your item, too.

1) Write the item in 3rd person please. (Don’t use “I”, “me”, “we”, or “us”.) We write the articles as if an editor is speaking… so it won’t make sense if you say “We can’t wait for you to come to our guest house.”

2) Keep it short and simple. In fact, with the new format, we’re trying to keep items at 55 words. It’s possible to do more — but then the email version will only contain an “excerpt.” Readers will have to click to see the entire item on the Brigada home page. Please don’t use a lot of upper case words or exclamation points. At the same time, please don’t use sentence fragments or “classified ad language”. For example, instead of saying, “Transfers accepted. Seating limited.”, talk in plain English please: “The school accepts transfers, but you’d better apply soon because seating is limited.”

3) If it seems helpful, feel free to provide an email address in addition to a web URL. Since we use automatic software that converts email addresses into formats that make it difficult for scanners to  harvest, we no longer “disguise” email addresses with parentheses and words like “(at)” and “(dot)”. In fact, when you include them these days, it’s just extra work to take them back out.

4) Remember you’re writing to an international audience (40% of our readers live outside North America).

5) We love web addresses (URLs); please supply the “http://” or “https://” on the front. We no longer put the URL on a separate line or inside of <pointy braces>. Please don’t send us the URL already encoded as a hidden “link” to an anchor word in your item. Our style calls for showing people the actual URL to which they’re being linked. (If someone copies and pastes — or prints — a Brigada, they lose the hidden link behind the anchor word(s)!) (In keeping with this approach, we don’t use “compression” URLs like tinylink. Some email sending services won’t even allow newsletters to do out if they include those anyway. The reason? Because the user has no idea where he/she is going.)

6) Please hit the space bar only *once* after a period (not 2 or 3 times).

7) By default, we mention only first names. You’ll thank us later when you decide you want to cleanse the web of your full name.

8) We emphasize items with broad appeal (as opposed to a narrow focus or single people group). We do publish mission opportunities once and awhile, but usually only those aimed at a *group* rather than a job opportunity for just one highly focused individual. We’re looking for items that interest the most people.

9) Sorry — we don’t publish appeals for support (at least 1/3 of our readers are missionaries, so we’d be preaching to the choir!).

10) Note that you can now collect instant feedback on your item. Just ask readers to click on the word, “Comment” below the item text. In this manner, there’s no need to ask people to email you with resources that you’ll compile – and then email back to them.

We apologize in advance: We simply can’t include everything that is submitted; we reserve the right not to print it all. Thank you for understanding — and thanks for being part of the Brigada family!

Note: We don’t charge any advertising fees for publishing your item in Brigada. However, if you’d like to pitch in toward the costs for our part-time assistant or dedicated server, we’d be so grateful! You can either click the Donate link at the upper right on the landing (home) page, or send your gift via real (“snail”) mail to:

Team Expansion (Brigada), 13711 Willow Reed Dr., Louisville, KY 40299