MIM Notes & MIM Theory Style Guide

[We ask people submitting articles to MIM to read the following first. We do not guarantee publication of any articles but people who believe they are going to work with us on a regular basis should understand the following. Also, please do not send us documents on paper. We prefer email or documents on computer disk if they are sent by regular mail. We do not have extra staff sitting around to retype documents.]

Style guide and ingredients for MIM Notes and MIM Theory

Most of this style guide is applicable to both of these organs, and there are additional specific requirements for MIM Theory at the end of this guide. It is each writer's responsibility to understand which styles apply to the publication s/he is writing for.

Political structure of articles

The two most common political errors in writing for MIM Notes are 1) having no concrete information or a lack of such information which make it at best an article for MIM Theory or an encyclopedia some where, not MIM Notes, the newspaper of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. 2) having no theory or ideology that would distinguish it from liberal or Trotskyist drivel.

1. Each article for MIM Notes starts with a news item in the first paragraph, preferably indicating main actors and dates by the end of the second sentence. The criterion of a "news plug" is relaxed only for theory articles. If your article has no precise dates and names in it, or those names and dates don't show up in the article quickly, don't expect it to go in MIM Notes. Rewrite it instead to be more precise.

2. Each article for MIM Notes has to raise connections that only communists would raise. If the article could be printed in Mother Jones, the Nation or Worker's World, then it will not be printed in MIM Notes.

The easiest way to write such articles is to keep MIM's four cardinal principles in mind. Anything having to do with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" -- including separating the labor aristocracy from the proletariat -- will make the article more acceptable to MIM.

Articles discussing the gender aristocracy are also not found in the press. Articles should typically attack pseudo-feminism, the labor aristocracy, revisionism, reformism and integrationist strategy's reliance on the imperialist state. Such attacks do not have to be by name. If the article would outrage reformists, revisionists etc. that is usually preferable to naming every opponent explicitly. The exception would be circumstances when a reader would find it hard to believe any opponent could be so stupid or politically flawed. When a Green abandons the Green Party for Al Gore, names become important, because some Greens and sympathizers may not believe such a travesty. Likewise, when the Greens in Germany approved the bombing of Kosovo, it became necessary to give the party name of the imperialist militarist scum organization that approved the resolution.

We advise our writers that the principal contradiction is between the oppressed nations and imperialism. The principal task is to "create public opinion and the independent institutions of the oppressed to seize power." That means discrediting the state as it exists. Articles that place priorities above the principal contradiction and principal task will not go in MIM Notes.

GRAMMAR

Thanks to capitalist rationing and maldistribution of education, many people writing for MIM do not know what a sentence is. A sentence has a noun and a verb or maybe a subject, predicate and complement.

If any group of words could stand alone as a sentence, the group of words is called a clause at minimum. Clauses have to be respected with proper punctuation -- a period, colon or semi-colon at minimum.

The exceptions to this rule are as follows: a) two clauses separated by one of the three conjunctions "and", "or" and "but." b)condition words such as "when" and "while" that turn clauses into phrases that cannot stand alone as sentences. Below, "they don't honor contracts" is a clause. "When" added to that clause makes the clause unable to stand alone as a sentence, so no semi-colon, colon or period is necessary. Other words like "when" in this category are "while," "where" and "if." When "so" is used in its usual meaning as a condition and not an exclamation or pausing word, it also disables clauses into not needing semi-colon, colon or period attention. The following words demonstrate several principles of grammar nicely.

ERROR: Don't call people Indian givers when they don't honor contracts, that is absurd considering history, so reflect that in your writing.

CORRECTION: The comma after "contracts" is the tip-off to a run-on sentence. The words "that is absurd" could stand as a sentence by themselves. "That" is a noun in this circumstance, a great and difficult-to-avoid noun which by the way gives many weaker readers trouble because it can refer to objects or concepts. "Is" is a verb. Noun and verb combinations are often clauses.

On the other hand, because of "when," "they don't honor contracts" in the example above does not need a semi-colon preceding it. Also "so" is used as a statement about causation that subordinates the whole clause after it, so no semi-colon is necessary before it.

The phrase "reflect that in your writing" has an implicit subject noun of "you." By itself the phrase could be a sentence. Usually the noun has to be stated explicitly, but in this case and many others, "you" is implicit. "Go to the corner and sit!" is a command with "you" as the noun. Such a phrase is a sentence.

STYLE

. Do not use tabs in the text of your file; place one blank line (a carriage return) between paragraphs. Paragraphs should not be indented with the space bar either, unlike this paragraph.

Save document with 4 inch body as text file with line breaks. FTP and upload file. Each writer should figure out which things turn out funky and work at eliminating them. For instance, many articles get sent with ^E or some variation.

Use correct spellings - please spellcheck (Note: The editor does not care if you disagree with MIM's spellings. If you disagree with MIM spellings, you can struggle with MIM over that -- but misspelling in articles is not going to get your political point across, it is only going to irritate your editor and waste time that could otherwise be spent struggling over important aspects of line.) See MT11 or MT13 for more theory on language.

Protesters not Protestors

"It's" is a contraction meaning "It is"
"Its" is possessive. E.g., Imperialism has built its strength by plundering Third World resources.

Principle/Principal The principal in my high school was a real fuck head.
The principal contradiction in the world today is between oppressor nations and oppressed nations.
The editor is principally responsible for making sure MIM Notes exposes imperialism well.
The principal principle of Amerikan society is justice and wealth for the settlers on the backs of oppressed nations.
The principles of Maoism are universally applicable.
Struggle with your comrades in a principled manner.
If these are confusing, look in the dictionary.

Gender and spelling
womyn/wimmin
persyn/humyn
(persyn/humyn is mandatory in MIM lit)
gender aristocracy/gender privilege/gendered interests
First World wimmin are part of the gender aristocracy and are gendered male whereas they are biological wimmin.

Third World men are part of oppressed nations and are sometimes gendered female whereas they are biological men.

United Snakes and spelling
Black nation/Black womyn/Black youth/black jeans/black ink/black armbands
Black Nation - not Afro-American, not people of color or African American
First Nations - not Native Americans, Indians or people of color
Latino Nations - not Hispanic, Mexican American, Puerto-Rican American or people of color. Where possible, be specific about which Latino nation; otherwise Latino is preferable to Hispanic.

Amerika refers to the illegitimate settler nation that dominates North America. North America is the actual land/continent (though we can also use First Nation terms for the land.)

United $tates, United Snakes of Amerika, United $tates of Amerikkka, united snakes of imperialism, or other variations on the theme of pointing out the illegitimacy of the united snakes.

u.s. (adj.) i.e. u.s.-backed Ramos regime. Or u.s. imperialism.

Other spellings
CPUSA
Ok
Roh Tae Woo
Mao Zedong
Marxist/ism
south and north Korea or Vietnam or Ireland. (We don't recognize these divisions.)
Cultural Revolution or Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
"Little Red Book" is general and informal, otherwise Quotations from Chairman Mao
Azania not South Africa
"Communist Manifesto" is a pamphlet
The Russian Revolution (1917)
The Chinese Revolution (1949)
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76)
Statistical Abstract of the United States 1991
labor power (noun), labor-power (adj)
god/heaven
super-profits/super-exploited
petty bourgeoisie
white working class (noun); white-working class (adj) politics Ibid.
op. cit.
Numbers
Spell out one through nine.

Ten and up use the figure, except to begin a sentence.
Exception: 1990 was a great year for the Party.
Percentages as 3%.
Use commas where appropriate, but not in dates.

Money
Use $10 for ten dollars; do not write out dollars.
With two amounts use ($10-20) the dollar sign for the first quantity, not the second.
Write out 10 cents and $10 million.
Use commas where appropriate-$100,000 and $1,897.

Times
Use periods and numbers-7 a.m.
Noon and midnight, not 12 p.m. or a.m.
Hyphen between time-8-9 a.m.

Days
Do not abbreviate unless necessary for a headline.
Do not use in stating the date. Monday, February 13, 1997 is not necessary. 13 February 1997 is fine.

Months
Spell out with just month and year: February 1990-note that there is no comma.
Don't use ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, etc.). Rather, on Feb. 1, 1997 something happened.

Decades and years
Twentieth century, not capitalized.
1960s and 60s, not '60s or 60's, except for 1970's worst days. In conjunction with a month, there is no comma: October 1917.

6. Other styles

Citations
Always use cites, no matter how few sources.
Articles with only one source are:
Note: ITAL The New York Times END 23May1997, pp. A1 and C12.
There is no comma between magazine/paper and the date.
Each note ends with a period.

More than one source is as follows:

Notes:
1. ITAL Detroit Free Press END 1May1997, p. 2.
2. ITAL Zeta END July1990, p. 23.
Indicate the source in your text with the number in parenthesis, no space.(1)
Repeat numbers for the same source and page.
There is no super-scripting.
Do not use any footnote function.
Cite books thusly:
Author First Name Last Name, ITALTitleEND, City: Publisher, Date, p. #.

Abbreviations
Spell shit out on the first reference (and put abbreviation afterward in parenthesis), even if it seems common. "Ibid." refers to the previous reference.

No periods in acronyms with more than three letters: u.s. and CIA. Spell out state names, except when they are parenthetical or in citations, or in article lead-ins i.e. Detroit, MI, 28 February -- article (that follows). We do not say "US," because we use periods, as in "U.$."

Commas
Use in a series: Marx, Lenin and Mao (no comma before and). Commas may be necessary to separate clauses, but commas are not necessary in lists like the above.

Dash
Use like a comma, except that the expressed break is stronger.
Dash is not strong enough punctuation to set off an entire sentence.
(Dashes--a favorite punctuation of Faulkner to write novels in a single breath--are not used to enmesh sentences in newswriting.)
Dashes should be typed as .

Parentheses
Like a comma, except softer.
Like the dash, they are not used to enmesh whole sentences inside one another unless there is also a period or strong punctuation in the parentheses.
Do not confuse with brackets [ ] which are used for the editor to add things to text or quotes that were not in the original.

Hyphens
Use between times and phone numbers and in compound adjectives. (Mao used an all-in-one knife.)

Use as few as possible.

Ellipses
Do not overuse them. Usually should be used to indicate a portion left out or off the end. Remember that when an ellipses is between or after complete sentencesit comes after the period.

Quotes
Use for titles or articles, TV shows, poetry and songs.
Use single quotes within quotes.
Periods and commas always are contained within the last quote.
Terminal colons and semi-colons are outside quotes.
Question marks it depends if they are part of the quote or part of the sentence.

Italics
Indicate italics by typing ITAL before the text, putting at the end of it END. (Be kind to the MN/MT production staff: put a space between "ITAL/END" and the text.)

Use for books, movies, plays and magazines or newspapers.
Use for foreign words on first reference, but only if these are not in Webster's dictionary.
Do not italicize Ibid.
Italicize sic.
Capitalization

Capitalize regions such as Middle East and the South.
Capitalize semi-proper nicknames: the Blackbelt Nation and the Motor City.
Capitalize titles as part of people's names President George Bush.
(But: George Bush is president.)
Bush administration (always lowercase unless it begins a sentence).

Speaker ID and when to interfere with writing
Mark Hatfield (R-Oregon)
Formal name does not override non-sexist language unless it is the title of a book.
(Chairpersyn Mao wrote Chairman Mao Speaks To The People.) Also, when quoting others, we do not change the spelling of how non-MIM writers write to conform to MIM style politically. We may change the grammar of letter-writers and others so that correct grammar appears in the paper.

Spacing
The only time that there should be double spaces in news article writing is after a colon or semi-colon. There is only one space between sentences.

7. More tips in writing the proletarian way:

Singular/plural
Organizations -- governments, parties, mass orgs, universities -- are each singular. An organization is one entity: the people in it are many.

incorrect: BAMN! defends their actions by saying ...
correct: BAMN! defends its actions by saying...

When in doubt, don't use a pronoun, just use the noun you're referring to over again.

incorrect: MIM members argue its line on the white working class
correct: MIM members argue MIM's line on the white working class or
MIM's members argue its line on the white working class

Cliches
If you can replace three or four words with one, do. More words are clunky, especially if you use more than you need over and over and over in the same piece repeatedly.

incorrect: They took over the building in order to make a statement.
correct: They took over the building to make a statement.

Pronouns
When you use a pronoun, make sure the noun you are referring to immediately precedes it grammatically (and that you keep track of which noun the pronoun is replacing).

incorrect: Imperialists reap the benefits of Third World labor, steal
Third World natural resources and dominate their economies.
correct: Imperialists reap the benefits of Third World labor, steal
Third World natural resources and dominate Third World economies. or
correct: Imperialists reap the benefits of Third World labor, steal
Third World countries' natural resources and dominate their economies.

(By the way, note that the above is not a run-on sentence, because the subject noun does not reappear throughout the sentence. "Imperialists reap the benefits of Third World labor, imperialists steal etc." would be a run-on sentence.)

Passive voice: drop it except for theory
If all you know is that something was done, and you don't know by whom, then say that. The bourgeois press uses the passive voice to obscure the facts, to hide lack of investigation, to make the real actors in a story vague, etc. We write news to make the political situation clear to our readers so who did what (or the fact that we don't know) is important.

incorrect: Protesters were harassed at Saturday's demo.
correct: Pigs and a redneck mob joined in harassing protesters at
Saturday's demo.
Non-chauvinist language
MIM Notes emulates and develops proletarian language: it doesn't replicate the imperialist superstructure. Don't call people Indian givers when they don't honor contracts: that is absurd considering history, so reflect that in your writing.

When we talk about legal status at all, we refer to undocumented instead of illegal immigrants. Don't reflect the way that the pigs talk. It is only illegal for people from Mexico to be within u.s. borders because of the illegitimate laws which the illegitimate legal system set up to represent the interests of the oppressors in fortifying illegitimate borders.

8. MIM Theory

MIM Theory follows the language policies of the Party. On routine issues of style, MT will generally follow the style of MIM Notes. When MT reprints old articles, it will be up to the MT Editor to make sure that the reprints either conform to current MIM language policies, or that the exceptions to the policies are noted and explained if necessary.

MIM Comrades should follow these guidelines on style, and should pass them on to writers outside MIM. Deviation from these and other style principles means dumping your work onto the MT editor -- maybe acceptable in a pinch, but to be avoided normally.

All electronic submissions must be spell-checked. If you type in a prisoner letter or other hard-copy submission, make the corrections you want made but leave the things you want preserved (e.g., leave "i" instead of "I", fix "speach" to be "speech").

If you scan text, you are likewise responsible for spell-checking and otherwise making the text conform to MT style. If possible, send a hard copy of what you scanned to the MT editor in case questions arise in the editing.

MCs may submit copy to MT in binary file formats (e.g., MSWord or WordPerfect documents), if they are confident they don't have virus macros and the like on them, and if they have personal information removed from the summary data of the file. If outside people give MCs binary files for MT, transfer them to ASCII instead of sending the original file. Exceptions may be negotiated.

A few notes on specific style points beyond what is required for MN:

All submissions to MIM Theory should have a title. That includes letters, book reviews, and research articles. The name of the book you reviewed ("My Sex Life") is not a title for the review; something about the book ("Klinton Blames Feminism for Fucking up U.$. Government") is a title. Likewise, "Dear MIM" is not a title, "Prisoner Questions MIM on Focoism" is a title.

Letters to MIM Theory should have an identifier (e.g., "Maryland Menshevik") at the end and a date accurate at least to the month.

All content-less style features should be applied to sources we quote, even if the original publisher did it differently. For example, we always use "%" instead of "percent," even when the source we are quoting uses "percent."

Periods and commas go inside quotation marks at all times. Question marks and exclamation points go outside quotation marks if they are not in the quoted text, inside if they are in the quoted text.

Do not use all capital letters for emphasis. Indicate emphasis with ITAL before and END after (not like ITALthisEND but like ITAL this END). This also applies to submissions that come with capitals for emphasis (e.g., from email).

Long dashes are done like this: two- hyphens

Footnotes should contain publisher, year, and author, like this: MIM's Greatest Hits, MIM Publishers: Newton City, 1999. p. 1.

Internet references should contain URL as well as publisher and date, like this:

Amnesty International press release on mistreatment of MIM prisoners, 1 Jan. 1999, http://www.amnesty.org/save.mim.now