The Dispatcher’s Office – Contribution Guidelines

Thank you for offering to contribute to The Dispatcher’s Office! We rely on the contributions of our members to make an interesting publication that everyone will enjoy. To make sure the production process goes as smoothly as possible, we ask that you review this document to help us better serve you.

The Dispatcher’s Office is created electronically, on Macintosh computers using a professional layout program called Quark Xpress. Because of time constraints, it is difficult to accept text that has been typewritten and we cannot accept any handwritten text. While we can scan photo prints, we prefer that images be submitted in digital format. Charts, graphics, and forms can be submitted as electronic files or hard copy.

We prefer to work with files that have already been keyed in, because they can be flowed directly into the layout. If you can only send a typewritten document, we may be able to character scan it but that will delay its production. Microsoft Word and Appleworks are both popular formats. Any text editor will work, too. Please do not embed photos into your Word file, but feel free to make notations in the text where specific photos should be inserted or referenced. If you are submitting photos with your text, please provide captions keyed to the file name. For instance, "12345DCS.JPG: An overall view of Goodman Street Yard." Please feel free to include a hard copy printout (or Adobe Acrobat PDF) of your text, including photos if you wish, that we can use as a guide. Please note we cannot extract text from an Adobe Acrobat PDF.

Color images preferred. JPEG or TIFF formats are preferred. The images must be at least 300 dpi at print size. At that resolution decent color images will have a file size of around 40MB or more, black and white images will be at least 12MB. When shooting digital images, try to shoot at 4 megapixels minimum (the higher, the better). If images are being scanned, please provide raw scans with no image manipulation.

If you are including examples of timetables, spreadsheets, or maps, or other line graphics, Adobe Acrobat PDF is the preferred format for submission. Many of the popular applications (CAD, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Excel) allow you to export a PDF right from the program. If you have pre-printed forms you would like to include with your article, please submit a hard copy and we will scan them.

Please email your articles or submittals to Editor Steve Benezra (email: editor@OPSIG.org).

Issue #1/10 (Jan/Feb/Mar) - Nov 1
Issue #2 (April/May/June) - Feb 1
Issue #3 (July/Aug/Sept) - May 1
Issue #4 (Oct/Nov/Dec) - Aug 1

Please contact the Editor Steve Benezra (email: editor@OPSIG.org) with your questions, and we will try to assist you in any way we can. Thank you!