This page provides guidelines for: writing community articles, submitting photographs and Letters to the Editor to our newspapers for consideration to be published; retrieving information; plus how to contact us, staff members and departments. Please visit us at our office. Articles about the community and sent only to this newspaper will be given higher priority than those generic and distributed to multiple outlets. Commercial articles will be published using the goleader Express serve. A clubs and organizations database can be viewed here. Organizations are encouraged to register and update their contact information here, We publish this from time to time.

Our newspapers, This Is Westfield, other publications and special features are available here. Most items are in PDF format. The Archives can be retrieved and can be Searched.  Archives  prior to October, 1997 on this site are not complete. Otherwise, archives of The Westfield Leader back to 1904 are available on microfilm at the Westfield Memorial Library. Archives of The Scotch Plains-Fanwood Times back to 1959 are available at the Scotch Plains Public Library. A century of newspaper microfilms exist. We are working to convert these to electronic form and provide them here.

The site menu as of 2007 includes:
MENU: *Home *Subscribe_Renew_ChangeAddress *Newspaper_Advertising_Presskit *Website_Ads *Search *Classifieds *Archives *Special_Features *Weddings *Engagements *Births *Obituaries *Press_Releases *Legal_Notices *Westfield *Staff_Info *Help *About_Us *Notify_Me *Contact_Us * Photos * Video * Upload * Inserts * This Is Westfield

The site organization has evolved since 1996, but generally there is  a conventional html page for each week with a link to download the newspaper for that week as a pdf file. Unique information is available at Features,  Photos and  Video. An example address is: www.goleader.com/05mar10 where the date of the week is Thursday, corresponding to our newspaper publication date. Site navigation methods have evolved, but they are generally self-explanatory and still active.

We conduct business using this site. You can see the details and pricing of advertising; see current Classified Ads and place a Classified Ad; place Legal Ads, Wedding and Engagement Announcements, Subscribe and Renew, submit articles and photographs, submit obituaries, retrieve the newspapers and search this site. Please use the site menu above for details. We welcome your input and suggestions. Please e-mail your comments to

Writing Community Articles: If you are in our service area (generally Union County, NJ), consider reporting on your favorite club, sports or community event. Please include the 5Ws (who, what, when, where and why), spell check and grammar check your work. If it is a sports report, please balance the article by reporting both sides. See examples here  (Word docs). Very important - Have fun! E-mail the article to the most appropriate department. We accept Microsoft Word files, otherwise, cut and paste your text into the body of the e-mail and attach color photographs.

Submitting Photographs: Most digital cameras today produce resolutions high enough for publishing in the newspaper (do not use low resolution, 72 dpi). Submit the photograph in color as a jpg. Do not crop or resize the photo. We will do this and make final contrast and color adjustments. Send with caption information stating the 5Ws – who, what, when, where, why.

Letters to the Editor: Your views are very important, and we encourage you to write (email to:  ). We verify the authorship of all letters before publishing; so, include your name, address and phone number for us to contact you. We include only the author's name and town with letters in the newspaper. Generally, letters are about 200 to 500 words. We may edit letters that are too long. We may edit grammar, punctuation, unclear wording, redundancies and spelling.

Submitting multiple files or a file larger than 2 MB may not make it through e-mail. For these situations, upload direct to our server (call or e-mail for username and password).

Please Use these style guidelines and quality checks:
General: Don't write in First Person (not, I did this and I said that). Write from the readers' perspective, not from the author's or organization's perspective. Consider that the readers are perceptive and our editors take a dim view of "Guised Infomercials." 
Headline: Suggest a Headline
Percent: Write it out: Do not use the % symbol (or other keyboard symbols). Use the number with percent.
Numbers: Write out 0 through 9 (one, two, etc.) For all others, use the number (12, 146, 1,345 etc.).
Mr. or Mrs.: replaces the first name of individual upon the second mention of the person in an article.
Time of day: morning or afternoon, write as a.m. or p.m. - small letters (not AM or not PM).
Dates: Write without subscripts or superscripts. Example: September 14 should NOT be written as September 14th.
Subscripts or superscripts: Don't use them (caution: Word sometimes does this automatically).
Capitalization: Only for proper name (Westfield Town Council); Use small letters for the borough, the council, the town, the board, etc.
List Commas: Do not put a comma before 'and' of a list. Ex.: Boy, girl and frog.
Spelling: Spell Check all documents with Word - do not have any red highlights shown.
Grammar: Grammar check all documents with Word - do not have any green highlights of grammar or punctuation.
Double Spaces: Eliminate them all (replace function helps).
Photos: Send with caption information stating the 5Ws – who, what, when, where, why.
Underlining: Do not use all caps, underlining, italics (unless proper for magazine titles etc.).
Names: Use full name only once with abbreviation: Westfield Board of Education (BOE); afterwards use only BOE.
Sentences: Keep them short, avoid run-on sentences; limit use of compound sentences.
Background and Attribution: Reader may be reading this subject for the first time; reference matters, don’t assume they know - when providing information and quotes, always attribute the source.
Story: Has beginning, middle and end.
Introduction: 1st Paragraph, list important happenings; Write about important items first, not chronological.
Copyright: Don't send us copyright material without permission.
Attribution: Attribute the source of information and statements.

Interesting Reference by Professor Jack Lynch of Rutgers on writing

Introduction - http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/

These notes are a miscellany of grammatical rules and explanations, comments on style, and suggestions on usage I put together for my classes. Nothing here is carved in stone, and many comments are matters of personal preference — feel free to psychoanalyze me by examining my particular hangups and bêtes noires. Anyone who can resist turning my own preferences into dogma is welcome to use this HTML edition. Feedback is always welcome.

I should be clear up front: I'm not a linguist, nor a scholar of the history of the language. (If you're curious about who I am, you can look at my CV and decide whether I'm worth listening to.) Linguists are wary of "prescriptive" grammars, which set out standards of "correct" and "incorrect" usage — grammars that usually insist correctness reigned in the good old days, whereas we've been on the road to hell ever since. Professional linguists are adamant that the language isn't "declining," and that many usages censured by self-styled grammarians are in fact perfectly reasonable, whether on historical grounds, logical grounds, or both.

And they're right. I reject any model of linguistic decline, in which the twenty-first century speaks a decadent version of the language of some golden age. I don't lie awake at night worrying about the decline of "proper" English. (In my grumpier moods, I'm convinced the whole world's going to hell — but then, I'm convinced the whole world's been going to hell since time out of mind. In my more sanguine moods, I wonder whether hell isn't such a bad place to be after all.) I know, too, that many things offered as "good" grammar or style have little basis in history or in logic.

* * * * *

Why, then, have I spent so much time on a prescriptive and fairly traditional usage guide? Because these notes may be useful in making your writing clearer and more effective. I'm not out to make definitive statements about what's right and what's wrong, and Lord knows I wouldn't be qualified even if I tried. I can, however, make suggestions on things that are likely to work — by which, as you'll see throughout this guide, I mean have an effect on your audience.

The entries here are of two types: specific articles on usage, and more general articles on style. The specific articles cover such mechanical things as when to use a semicolon and what a dangling participle is; the general articles discuss ways to make "proper" writing even better. The specific articles can be further divided into two classes: (1) grammatical rules and matters of house style, matters rather of precedent than of taste; and (2) more subjective suggestions for making your writing clearer, more forceful, and more graceful. The specific articles are intended for quick reference, such as when you have to find out whether which or that is appropriate. The general articles lend themselves to browsing and absorbing over time.

These general articles are no less important than the "rules." In fact, really bad writing is rarely a matter of broken rules — editors can clean these up with a few pencil marks. It's more often the result of muddled thought. Bad writers consider long words more impressive than short ones, and use words like usage instead of use or methodologies instead of methods without knowing what they mean. They qualify everything with It has been noted after careful consideration, and the facts get buried under loads of useless words. They pay no attention to the literal sense of their words, and end up stringing stock phrases together without regard for meaning. They use clichés inappropriately and say the opposite of what they mean.

I've tried to steer clear of technical terms and, wherever possible, have tried to explain grammatical jargon. This has sometimes meant sacrificing precision for convenience; more sophisticated writers and grammarians will doubtless see points to quibble over, but I hope these notes get the idea across to tyros. Every article on points of grammar — dangling participles, split infinitives — begins with a practical definition of the term, followed by some useful rules, and examples of good and bad writing. Sometimes there are suggestions on how to identify possible problems. The definitions and discussions are not exhaustive, just rules of thumb. If you need more detail, consider one of the books in the last section, "Additional Reading."