COMMNotes

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COMMNotes is a weekday community email newsletter curated and published by NCA staff. Subscribers and all NCA members receive daily emails on the following categories:

  1. Conferences, Calls, and Announcements – Conferences, Calls, and Announcements consist of objective academic content about, for example, publications, conferences, invitations to be on panels, and personal announcements relating to professional awards or accolades.
  2. Obituaries – Obituaries are recognitions of a recently deceased person. Generally, obituaries reflect remembrances related to NCA members and other members of the discipline of Communication.
  3. Position Announcements – Position Announcements are posts about current job openings that NCA members and other readers of COMMNotes either could apply for or might wish to share. Position Announcements, then, advertise such job openings and information related to them.

Individuals are encouraged to contribute to all three categories via a submission process.

Submissions are free for all, except for position announcements. Though position announcements are free for NCA department members; institutions that are not NCA members can publish position announcements for a $100 fee.

 Subscribe to COMMNotes

Subscriptions to COMMNotes are free to all. Please click the button below to subscribe.

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 Submission Requirements

  1. Submissions must relate to the communication discipline and as such must be submitted from or on behalf of a communication scholar, educator, professional, department, office or student organization; no advertisements for unaffiliated individuals or organizations are accepted.
  2. All submissions must include a way for readers to contact someone for more details; anonymous submissions will not be posted.
  3. Event submissions must include the following: the name of the sponsoring/hosting organization, date, time, location, contact information, and a brief description.
  4. Duplicate submissions are not allowed within the same month.
  5. If you need to make additional posts on the same subject, you may do so only if the post contains urgent changes.
  6. All submissions must be sent before 8 a.m. to be published that day for the following email. Only posts that have been approved at the time COMMNotes is built will be included in the email edition. If your submission is received after 8 a.m., its inclusion is not guaranteed in the current edition.

 

 COMMNotes Regulations

  1. NCA reserves the right to refuse publication of COMMNotes submissions for any reason. If a refused post has been purchased (i.e., a position announcement), a refund will be issued.
  2. COMMNotes abides by NCA’s Credo for Ethical Communication. Any submissions that violate this foundational document will not be published. All submissions are subject to NCA's Terms of Use.
  3. COMMNotes is not a discussion forum, and no public discussion posts are accepted.
  4. Submissions run in COMMNotes email editions only once. Duplicate announcements are not allowed.
  5. Users who submit to COMMNotes are responsible for the legality, including but not limited to copyright laws, accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of submitted material.
  6. NCA is not responsible for the policies and procedures of any company, organization, institution, or individual posting announcements of any kind in COMMNotes. For NCA’s full disclaimer statement, click here.
  7. Content promoting student registration in academic courses is not allowed.
  8. Submissions are not edited for content, spelling, or grammar.
  9. Submitters are expected to abide by the NCA style guide when drafting their COMMNotes submission. Failure to do so may result in a submission being refused.
  10. COMMNotes is not sent when the national office is closed for holidays or for the NCA annual convention.
  11. COMMNotes submission requirements and regulations are subject to change.

 

 Style Guide

When composing COMMNotes submissions, it’s important to always review your post for correct spelling and grammar. It’s also important to keep in mind the standard NCA style guide to keep communications clean, consistent, and professional.

Date and Time

  • Events: For events that have a specific date, time, and place, follow this example: “The lecture is at 11 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 17, online.”
  • Dates: Don’t use ordinal endings such as “st,” “nd,” “rd,” or “th.”
  • Time: Always use “a.m.” and “p.m.” and place a space between the number and the abbreviation (i.e. 12 a.m.). If your time ends with “00”, omit the end: 8 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 9 a.m., etc. You should always use numbers instead of words to indicate time except in the case of “noon” and “midnight” (never “12 noon” or “12 midnight”).
  • Months: Use the AP rule for whether a month should be abbreviated or not: Jan., Feb., March, April, May, June, July, Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.

COMMNotes and Organizations

  • Always spell out your organization on first use (e.g., Southern States Communication Association). Acronyms may be used after first use for conciseness.
  • Subject headlines should never contain full organization names if they are longer than two full words. Instead use an acronym in the subject and spell out your organization on first use.

Punctuation and Capitalization

  • Comma in a series: Use commas to separate elements in a series, and a serial comma before the conjunction in most simple series: “The flag is red, white, and blue.”
  • Capitalization: Only proper nouns are capitalized. Words like “university,” “college,” “center” or “department” are capitalized only when using the official proper name (The University of Maryland, the College of Engineering, the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Oakley STEM Center). All other uses are lowercase (except at beginning of a sentence or bullet point).
  • Title Capitalization: When capitalizing the title of a post, or the title of an event or so on, capitalize all words except for “minor” words unless they are the first or last word of the title. Nouns are always capitalized. For example, “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
  • Personal Titles: Capitalize a person’s title only if the title immediately precedes a person’s name (President Phil Oldham, Professor Jane Smith). When following a name, don’t capitalize (Rick Steves, president of Hawaii Tech; Jane Smith, professor of mechanical engineering). “Dr.” is not allowed in front of a person’s name. To refer to someone’s terminal degree, place it after their name (Jane Doe, Ph.D.; John Miller, Ed.D.; Pat Smith, M.F.A.). Do not use non-terminal degree abbreviations with names.

 

 How to Submit

COMMNotes has two separate submission processes. This first section first applies only to Conferences, Calls, and Announcements and Obituaries.

 

Conferences, Calls, and Announcements and Obituaries

  • Submissions should be sent in the body of an email without unusual fonts or formatting, spacing, PDFs, tables, or attachments.
  • Send all submissions except Position Announcements to COMMNotes@natcom.org.
  • Include the following in your submission:
    • The category of announcement you are submitting
    • Your name and email (which will be included in the posting)
    • A subject line as you would like it to appear on COMMNotes 

 

Position Announcements

Position announcements are free for NCA departmental members. The fee for non-departmental members is $100 per position vacancy. Payment must be in the form of a credit card.

  • Departments may join NCA in lieu of paying the position announcements fee. Click here to view the benefits of Department Membership.
  • All position advertisers must submit their position announcements using NCA’s online portal. Please follow the steps below.
  1. Log in to your individual account. Click My Account at the top of the page. Click the Organizations tab. Click the blue Manage button next to the Relationship column. If you do not see a blue Manage button, contact COMMNotes@natcom.org. 
  2. You're ready to submit your position announcement. Click here to start the process.  
  3. Ensure COMMNotes Position Announcement is selected and click “Review & Checkout.”
  4. Fill in all required fields.
  5. Click “Next.”
  6. Ensure item price and total are correct (free for department members; $100 for non-members) and confirm email address to receive confirmation. Click “Submit.”
  • NCA is not responsible for verifying the accuracy of position announcements.
  • NCA reserves the right to refuse position announcements for any reason.
  • Announcements for a position may be posted only once.

​View the COMMNotes Position Announcements Frequently Asked Questions and Checklist for more information on position announcements.

The last Communication, Research, and Theory Network (CRTNET) listserv messages were sent on May 29, 2020. To obtain back issues of CRTNET, click here.