Want to Write for Britpolitics? – Here’s our Style Guide

We offer the opportunity for people of all ages, ranging from academics and frequent writers to those who have never written before to have their views published on a political website.

If you are considering submitting an outline please take a look below, you can also download a print friendly version:

What we like to see…

• Informal first person articles with your views and some scattered useful statistics. You’re not writing an essay paper; it needs to be chatty
• Short sharp paragraphs to avoid the dreaded ‘wall of text’
• You should aim for around 750 words
• Good sub-headings so people can jump around the article or be excited about what’s coming next
• Short sentences are good
• A headline that suits search engines and social media. Your article needs to get people’s attention and look effective on short character uploads like Twitter and Facebook. This means it needs to be catchy and contain keywords where you can so it is picked up by search engines.
• Good quality English is essential. We welcome submissions from all over the world and appreciate English may not be your first language but it needs to be accurate and flow for our visitors.
• All articles should be accompanied by a short first person or third person biography. We don’t need a C.V just tell us who you are, what political issues interest you and, if you are, what made you study British politics or history?
• We prefer all articles submitted with a profile picture as it makes people relate to what you have written. Images (.jpg) should be high quality with no distinguishing features in the background such as people or wall posters. Also try to avoid the ‘magnolia effect’ sometimes this plain background of a house wall ends up looking an unattractive yellow.

What you should avoid…

• Heavy formatting in a word document such as embedded images and boxes. Although the effort on submission is appreciated it all has to be stripped out for publishing
• Too many posed questions. For example, don’t just say, will Brexit benefit the UK? Tell our visitors if you think it will or not.
• Giving our visitors a party political broadcast, they want to know what you think not a regurgitation of a political party press release
• Not explaining terms. We have visitors from all over the world; they may not know who ‘Cameron’ is and need the full reference of ‘David Cameron, former Conservative British Prime Minister’

And, what will not get you past the first contact…

• Anything considered offensive. We want you to foster debate and express opinions but not as insults to groups or individuals or aggressively attacking political views different to your own.
• An application or enquiry full of spelling mistakes, looks like you’ve lifted it from a different application or written it in two minutes from your phone. We appreciate you may be writing for free; but we still want to feel special.

Got an idea? Get in contact right now – what are you waiting for? : )