How NOT to ask for freelance writing work

"I am a  student journalist and would like to be writing articles to be published in your presitigious magazine. I will therefore be very grateful if you could send me a copy to my postal address below so that I can go through and know the content and the format to follow in wrting and publishing of my ariticles."

If you're going to be submitting your writing to a particular publication, it's always a good idea to get a feel for the publication's style and format. So this correspondent gets full marks for initiative. What he also needs to do, though, before he even thinks about sending out any more of these emails is to:

1. Learn how to spell "writing".

2. Learn how to spell "articles".

3. Learn how to spell "prestigious".

4. OK, let's just say "learn how to use the spell checker."

5. Make sure that the person he's writing to actually publishes a "prestigious magazine". We publish a lot of websites, but no magazines that can be posted out to people, I'm afraid. (And even if we did, we'd want to make sure that the potential freelancers at least knew how to spell "article" before we'd consider commissioning them to write one...

Comments

[Misti]

Yikes. That has to be irritating on the receiver's end.

Of course, it also makes me wonder what the writer might be thinking that he'd do that.

[Katharine Swan]

The awkward grammar is a hoot! Even without the misspellings, his writing ability would still be suspect.