Constant Content

I just submitted another article (about surveys, in case the editors need to know that). This latest one has a Long Summary that's shorter than usual - a quarter of the word count rather than a third. I didn't want to include the next paragraph because it contains some information that I'd rather not let people see for free - "If they can see it in the summary, why pay for the entire article?" is my reasoning.

I don't know if this is OK or not; maybe I really don't need to worry about this. But I wanted to bring it up because I have another question. Does the long summary have to include contiguous text? Could I include parts of the article, maybe separated by ellipses, instead of paragraphs that follow one another? That might be a better way to go sometimes.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Peggy

For editing purposes and sales promotion, the long summary must contain a full one third of the article. This is determined by dividing the word count by three. You can break this up however you want. Some authors do indeed use elipses to prevent the salient points being revealed. Just make sure that you include enough of the meat and potatoes that a potential customer can see the point of buying your article.

Hope this helps,
Ed