How
to Use A Template to Create Your E-Zine
E-zines are sent as
plain old vanilla text files. By sending your e-zine as **text-only**, you ensure that not
only can you reach the widest possible online audience, but that your audience will see
your message the way you sent it.
Forget all the really cool stuff for now. You are going to send your e-zine as text:
the lowest common denominator on the internet. Why? So anyone, anywhere with any
e-mail program can read your message.
Since you may never have the opportunity to meet your subscribers or readers in person,
your e-zine will project your image. Naturally you will want your e-zine to look good on
the screen of each and every recipient.
Formatting
Guidelines:
 Use
a Text Editor to create your files.
A text editor is a program that you use to create a text file.. If you are a Windows user,
you can use Notepad.
If you do not have a text editor, go to download.com
and search for text editors. Type "text editor" in the search box and you will
get a list of available text editors - both freeware and shareware. Don't know which one
to choose? Start by checking out a FREE text editor called Super NoteTab Light. You can
download it at download.com. If you are looking for
a text editor with all the bells and whistles, check out Textpad at textpad.com. Textpad is a shareware program. You can
download a trial copy at the textpad site.
Use
Hard Returns to end lines at 65 characters
Press the ENTER key to end each line. Do NOT rely on word-wrap functions when creating or
editing your newsletter.
Use spaces for
indentation.
Stay away from your TAB key. The length of a TAB key is set by the recipient--your TAB key
might be set at 5, but your recipient's TAB might be set at 10.
Avoid
using ALL CAPS.
If you want to highlight a word or phrase, surround the **word** in asterisks. Your
readers will find it easier to understand the emphasis.
Basic Terms:
Line Length
and Word Wrapping
There are a couple of things you need to understand to ensure that your email message
looks the same on the screen of your recipients as it does on your computer screen.
Because of the variety of e-mail programs available around the world, you need to make
sure that your e-mail message can be read by all of them.
Two things to keep in mind are that some e-mail programs do not use word-wrap and yet
others can't display more than 70 characters on the screen. To accommodate the widest
range of e-mail programs, you need to restrict the length of each line in your e-zine to
65 characters and use a hard line break at the end of each line.
You can create a forced line break by pressing the ENTER key. Look at the illustration
below. Limiting your line length to 65 characters and using hard line breaks will prevent
most e-mail formatting problems. Without hard line breaks, your email message will wrap in
places that you had not anticipated and your message might look jumbled
Fonts: Proportional and Fixed Width or Monospaced
When you create your e-zine in a text editor, you will use a monospaced or fixed
width font for the text. Do you understand the difference?
Using a monospaced font will
help you count characters accurately to format your e-zine to the 65 character line
length recommendation. Try using a 10 point Courier New font. When you create the template
for your e-zine, place a grid at the top of your page to help you keep the line length at
65 characters.
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345
10 20
30 40
50 60
Template Samples for
E-zines
What's a template? A template is a predesigned page format which you use by loading the
file and then adding the text. To have an e-zine template delivered directly to your email
inbox, you can request it from our autoresponder at template1@e-zinez.com.
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