Sending something in

Write an email. That is the whole of it — there is no account, no app and no website to log into. Send it to the address the person running your newsletter gave you, and it appears in the next issue.

Send it from your own address

The system recognises you by the address you send from, so it has to be the one you were added with. Mail from an address that is not on the list is quietly ignored — you will not get a bounce, so if nothing you send ever appears, that is the first thing to check.

The subject line becomes the headline

Whatever you put in the subject runs as the title of your piece. Short ones read best. Anything past about 50 characters is moved down into the opening of the article rather than being cut off, so nothing you write is ever lost — but a long subject makes for an untidy headline.

Write as much or as little as you like

Your text is never shortened. A single sentence is a perfectly good article, and so is several paragraphs. A short piece with a wide photo is simply laid out differently from a long one.

Bold and italic survive. Font sizes, colours and other formatting do not — the newspaper sets all of that itself, so every article looks like it belongs in the same paper. Links keep working.

One picture per article

If you attach several, the first one is used and the rest are ignored. Send the others as their own separate emails and each gets its own piece in the issue.

Pictures are resized and tidied up for email, so they arrive quickly on a phone and do not break anybody's inbox. Send the original rather than a screenshot of it if you can.

Pictures and words only

Video, PDFs, documents and other attachments are ignored. If something matters, describe it in the text.

You get a reply telling you what was used

Every submission gets an automatic acknowledgement saying what was received and which picture was used, so nothing ever disappears without your knowing. If that reply does not arrive, the email did not get through.

Everyone you write for gets it

If you send to more than one newsletter, your article goes into all of them. There is no way to aim a piece at just one. The way around it is to use a different email address for a different newsletter.

When it arrives

Issues go out on the schedule the newsletter's owner chose — weekly, fortnightly or monthly. If more pieces come in than fit in one issue, the extras wait for the next one, in the order they arrived.

Who can write

Writers must be 14 or older. If somebody younger has news to share, have an adult send it for them.

If something goes wrong

Write to support and a person will read it.