Help with DDXD/IDXD Formatting

From:
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 12:59:28 -0500
To: AM List Particpants
Subject: DDXD Template

DDXD-E MS Word Specs

Font: Times New Roman, 13 point
Margins: 1" all around
Tab Settings: .6 LEFT; .8 right; 1.7 right; 2.2 right
Hanging Indent: 2.2"

Please use appropriate punctuation, check your spelling and include your initials and state after each logging, i.e., (GL-NY). please do not use abbreviations.

Always include your name, listening location and listening equipment in your report, in this format: GL-NY Ginnie Lupi, Clifton Park - DX 398 and Select-A-Tenna.

When looking at the specs and typing your logs, turn on "non-printing characters" in MS Word so you can see spaces, carrier returns, etc.

Deadline for submissions is Wednesday, 9:00 AM.

A Sample Card is handy to have.


From: plsbcbdxer@aol.com
To: am@nrcdxas.org
Date: 04 Mar 2003, 07:19:37 PM
Subject: Re: [NRC-am] Sample reporting template for DDXD-E

There's no template as such for reporting to the DX columns in "DX News". As far as the format goes, just follow the sequence of information in the column to which you're reporting - they're slightly different for each of the three - DDXD-E, DDXD-W, IDXD - so that the editor doesn't have to delete unnecessary characters. Don't try to add spaces to duplicate the hanging indents in the column, though - just let your text wrap. Avoid reporting the same station more than once in a season, unless there's a significant change in the station's status. Report only DX - that 50 kW blowtorch one state away does not count as DX - but you'll have to decide for yourself whether or not the 1 kW station a couple of counties away is DX or not. Be sure that you include ID information in the report, particularly the call letters, or if you can't provide complete information, send it in as "presumed" or "tentative" if you can provide useful, new DX information. Include the date and time which you heard the station, of course, plus unique programming info - pretty much the same stuff, in condensed form, that you'd send to a station to try to receive a verification.

Perhaps this would be the proper place to add a few words about "vanity" DX - my term. 99% of all reporters have nothing to worry about if they neglect to include some significant information in a report or two. But I must warn anyone who continues to violate, willfully, guidelines which have been in place for years (long before I took over as publisher), they will lose their submission privileges. We've had to suspend several NRC members who continually, willfully, and even fraudulently continued to send in false, incomplete, or consistently duplicated loggings (we're talking the same stations over and over again, repeated in back-to-back submissions and even within the same mailing), or mass mailings to several clubs in which they expected us to guess at, extract, and rewrite loggings which they refused to submit any near where close to the target column's format.

Or ... in other words, try to make the column editors' jobs as easy as you can. As volunteers, they have a lot to do for nothing more than satisfaction of a job well done and thank-you's from members.

Dave, great question, and thanks for caring enough to want to get it "right".

-Paul Swearingen, Publisher, DXN

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