Since shortly after the introduction of the typewriter, publishers have required that submissions be typed, not hand-written. In the early days, a typewriter was an incredibly expensive machine. But budding authors either bought one or rented one if they wanted their work to be published. Try submitting a hand-written (or probably even TYPED) document to a modern publisher and you will get a polite response (which will include your unread masterpiece) that suggests that you read their guidelines and try again.
Just becuase MSWord has a 90% market share of the non-computerati doesn't mean that you must do away with submission standards and guidelines. I'd suggest that you write up what you expect and if a submission doesn't conform, it should be returned, unread, with a politely worded note explaining:
1) Why it was rejected. 2) Where to go to find the guidelines. 3) Hints on how to conform to those guidelines (Word's Save As.. text/html or similar.) based on the format submitted.
The internet should not be multi-cultural when it comes to simple content. All such content should be submitted as HTML, period. This is not a heavy burden, takes only a few seconds per document and the author has the greatest stake in getting it on the web.
Submission guidelines: Good enough for print publishers, good enough for web publishers.
Here is a thought to consider, the page I am typing in right now as I write this text contains submission guidelines. These guidelines include: the acceptable text tags, how to format URLs and even hints on how to be a good submitter. Everyone who has responded to you (and even you, yourself) have managed to follow those guidelines. I bet your customers can too.
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Since shortly after the introduction of the typewriter, publishers have required that submissions be typed, not hand-written. In the early days, a typewriter was an incredibly expensive machine. But budding authors either bought one or rented one if they wanted their work to be published. Try submitting a hand-written (or probably even TYPED) document to a modern publisher and you will get a polite response (which will include your unread masterpiece) that suggests that you read their guidelines and try again.
Just becuase MSWord has a 90% market share of the non-computerati doesn't mean that you must do away with submission standards and guidelines. I'd suggest that you write up what you expect and if a submission doesn't conform, it should be returned, unread, with a politely worded note explaining:
1) Why it was rejected.
2) Where to go to find the guidelines.
3) Hints on how to conform to those guidelines (Word's Save As.. text/html or similar.) based on the format submitted.
The internet should not be multi-cultural when it comes to simple content. All such content should be submitted as HTML, period. This is not a heavy burden, takes only a few seconds per document and the author has the greatest stake in getting it on the web.
Submission guidelines: Good enough for print publishers, good enough for web publishers.
Here is a thought to consider, the page I am typing in right now as I write this text contains submission guidelines. These guidelines include: the acceptable text tags, how to format URLs and even hints on how to be a good submitter. Everyone who has responded to you (and even you, yourself) have managed to follow those guidelines. I bet your customers can too.