A LITERARY PUBLICATION BY BUDDING WRITERS
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Submit your work to
SUBMISSIONS @ 1459LIVE.COM
 

We are looking for prose fiction, essays, poetry and comics.

You may be a struggling writer trying to find your big break but that doesn't mean we are going to take advantage of you. We will pay you SGD 15.00 when we print your work in the 14:59 publication. Sometimes our editors find some really interesting submission that don't quite make the cut for print. For shortlisted but unsuccessful submissions, we'll display it in the archive section on 14:59live.com.

Here are some of the things you have to take note of before submitting your work to us:

  • Adhere to the Style Guide
  • Ensure The Format Has Been Taken To Consideration
  • The Style Elements that you have to take note of

14:59 STYLE GUIDE

This style guide is provided for students submitting their work. It is for the benefit of both our editors and you, our appreciated contributors. Following this cool style guide will make you sound slick.

It will make you sound professional.

It will make you sound like you belong on a lectern whispering into the ear of a powerful head-of-state, with representatives of the G8 nations struggling to eavesdrop.

A man in Georgia who followed this style guide ended up winning the lottery. An old lady in the Ukraine followed it and the next day her roses bloomed with dollar bills. A young boy in Indonesia followed it and minutes later he could speak 17 languages.

USE IT'S POWER.



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Format VIEW FORMAT

Style Elements VIEW STYLE ELEMENTS

 
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STYLE GUIDE: Format



  1. Don't indent paragraphs. If you must, just tap the spacebar twice. Whatever you have been told, this has been out of favour for a pretty long time. Since about my dad's era in fact, and I'd point out that My Sharona was still on the Top 40 at the time.
  2. Save your work as a .doc file, or at least doc.x if you can't. Any other format makes Tinkerbelle cry.
  3. Use 9 point Times New Roman. Bold titles and use italics for emphasis. There's no real need for anything else. Please don't forget the title, otherwise we will have to create a title for you. This is very expensive, because we have to pay title-makers who charge millions, and not at all because we lack time to think up witty titles.
  4. Please use the pagination function. After ten pots of coffee and eyes gone red and watery from 50,000 submissions, we may get things mixed up.
  5. Remember to put your name / pen name / name-of-person-you-want-to-sabotage etc. on the document. Don't forget to include your school.
  6. Use U.K. English, and make sure the spelling is checked. Use U.S. English if you are American and proud of it (we'll change it to U.K. English for you because we know how much it hurts).

STYLE GUIDE: Style Elements



  1. Keep sentences as short as possible. In general, try to subtract about 10% of the word count before sending it in. Try to break up sentences that have more than a dozen words. Sentences that are too long are difficult to read because they tend to contain multiple clauses which readers cannot pick up unless they make especial effort and even then you could say the effect is very off-putting to them even when they are very experienced readers and besides it makes the whole thing hard to edit when we need to fit it into the page.

  2. Adverbs promote lazy writing. Most of the time, you can do without them. If you're wondering what an adverb is, it's any word that ends with "-ly". Basically, adverbs will probably needlessly and annoyingly add words redundantly, unhappily making the reader quickly and casually toss the lazily written article aside uncaringly.

  3. Cite your sources if you are going to make assertions or quote. Do this in a (Writer(s) / Title or Source Name / Date or page number) format. For example:
    • (This would be correct.)
      Editorial work is notorious for its harsh conditions; people in this line of work are so poor they "...sometimes donate blood so we can buy a packet of Maggi Mee" — Ryan Ong, On Suffering, 2010

    • (They're right, but we still need specific sources, aka citations.)
      Many people agree that editors are poor. — [lack of citation]

  4. Spell single numbers, type anything bigger. As in:
    • My cousin could endure eight packets of fried oysters but not 34 nights of diarrhoea.

  5. Ensure the tenses are right. Either stay in present tense or past tense, but don't juggle them around. In other words, look out for sentences like this:
    • I think I am a literature expert because I trusting this phrasebook I buy, but my work always reject
    Swap it for:
    • I thought I was a literature expert because I trusted this phrasebook I bought, but my work is always rejected

    — Don't repeat words too often. Try to find synonyms instead. Don't repeat the words too often because if you repeat the words too often it sounds like you are repetitively making the same points by repeating the words too often.
    — Don't restate the obvious. Re-check your sentences and make sure they don't read like this:

    • You've got a fast car, I've got a ticket to anywhere. Let's make use of that speedy car of yours right now.

    This can be changed to:
    • You've got a fast car, I've got a ticket to anywhere. Let's just take off, any place is better.
    Speedy means the same thing as fast, and it's already been stated that you own the car (which means you're not an editor)

  6. When in doubt, use the male pronoun (he, his, etc.) As in:
    • The good writer, when he is in doubt, looks up the 14:59 style guide.

    This is because we save money on ink by not having to print the extra "s" in "she". Or maybe I am just making that up, and suggest using the male pronoun because years of patriarchal tendencies have made it an accepted norm.

  7. Use active voice. This is an example of active voice:
    • My annoyed editor pushed me off the stairs.

    This is an example of passive voice:
    • I was pushed off the stairs by my annoyed editor.

  8. Using "which", "who" and "that":
    For practical purposes, "which" refers to events, "who" refers to people (duh) and "that" refers to objects. For example:
    • The 14:59 editors, who are all radicals, will make ideal test subjects.

    • The accident which occurred last week was caused by lack of flour, and maybe brains.

    • Those things that I ate were not Sushi, and I am going to strangle Carlos in a minute.

  9. Write the month when describing dates. For example:
    • The 1st of April is our director's birthday. Imagine the fun we have in this office.