WRITER’S GUIDELINES

by ANS Staff

Updated November 30, 2025

Mission Statement of ANS

1. As ANS is dedicated to serving the audience with little or no astrological background, astrologers who write or present on ANS’s website are asked to not use astrological charts but rather speak simply about planets in Signs and the aspects the planets make to one another. 
2. ANS encourages writers and presenters to address their topics to matters in the news that the public is aware of and concerned about so the audience is drawn in to the ANS website by its meaning and importance. The writing and presenting should show how astrology is relevant by showing ” As Above, So Below,” or as the planets move, events tend to take place on earth.
3. ANS contributors should be willing to have their articles and/or presentations edited by the ANS staff to ensure that the material is user friendly and understandable by the general public. If there’s a question about the author’s intention, ANS staff will contact the author to clarify; if the issue is spelling or sentence structure, corrections will be made unless there are numerous issues, whereupon the article may be returned for the author to correct.
4. ANS tries to avoid astrological jargon whenever possible, so please use general terms as applicable. In cases where terminology is unavoidable, please include descriptors in parenthesis. For example, when referencing a square aspect, please include “(90 degrees)” after the term, so readers unfamiliar with astrology will have a reference point for the aspect.

Article Requirements

The successful submission will involve abiding by the below list of requirements, but as a general recommendation, we suggest you read any number of the articles from the last few years, as that will give you a feel for the tone and style of articles that are accepted. Once you do that, you will likely be able to edit any existing articles you want to submit, to mirror that tone and style and/or write new articles that fit in with this website. That said, read on and good luck!

1. In a nutshell, ANS articles should be 800 to 1,000 words (or less). The focus should be placed on the event. The article should have an objective perspective written in third person.
2. We suggest you familiarize yourself with the following style guides and references and follow their recommendations for sentence style, spelling, and other best writing practices:
   • Dictionary and Thesaurus: Merriam Webster
   • Style Guide: Elements of Style, by Strunk & White
   • Nine Basic Ways to Improve Your Style
3. Write out rather than abbreviate Zodiac Signs (Aquarius, Capricorn, Aries, etc.), and only use degree (9 Gemini, 12 Pisces) and drop celestial minutes completely. So for a planetary position of “8 Scorpio 03” or “8 Scorpio 50,” you would simply write “8 Scorpio.” As illustrated here, ANS prefers a “whole degree” approach, so please do not round minutes up or down, to maintain consistency sitewide; simply state the degree. Do not incorporate the degree into the text proper, but use parentheses to define it. So, it’s not “Mars at 8 Scorpio,” but rather, “Mars (8 Scorpio).”
4. Capitalization guidelines. For sitewide consistency we request you capitalize the words Sign, House, Angle; all ordinals (as in, “First House”); all planets and points (including North Node, Vertex, Ascendant, Midheaven, etc..); modalities (Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable) and elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water).
5. We encourage you to submit a title image to appear at the top of the article. Image must be:
   • JPG or PDF format
   • Landscape (recommend 900 width, 513 height, otherwise part of image may be inadvertedly obscured)
   • Original art encouraged, so there are no copywrite issues. Another option is to search for public domain or permissible use such as Wikimedia commons’ Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license or the images available at Pixabay. You must be able to provide a caption that contains either your name as original artist or documentation that any part of your image is in the public domain or its use is permitted by the original artist or photographer. —-> Example: If you wanted to use an image of American comedian Steve Martin, either as part of your image or as your title image, (1) Search for “Steve Martin Wikipedia” to go to that Wikipedia page, (2) click on an image of Steve Martin that you want to use on the page, (3) at the bottom of the image click “More Details” button, (4) click “Use this File on the web (to right of photo), (5) a pop-up will appear giving you various captions; copy the Attribution (e.g., “Davidwbaker, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons”) and use that entire string in your “Title Image Caption” at the end of your article, after your notes or references (if you have any).
   • In the last year or so, the current ANS writers have been extensively using ChatGPT to create title images, as you might notice from the Title Image Credit. You should try describing an image you would like for your article, to the chatbot at https://ChatGPT.com . You’ll need to create a free account, but using ChatGPT is a lot easier than you might imagine. Try it out.
6. If you require footnotes for comments and/or citations to reference material, use the Chicago Manual of Style: Notes and Bibliography system, enumerating each note in the style: “1.”, and in the text, indicating the footnote with “(1)” at the appropriate spot in the article. Do not use superscript or subscript.
7. Submit your finished article, any notes or references, author bio (125 word limit), and title image caption that contains proper attribution in MS Word (recommended) or Text file to the ANS editors by sending it by email to astrologynewsservice@gmail.com . Attach your title image in JPG or PDF format to the e-mail (do not insert image into the body of the e-mail).