Style & Tone Guide — Pitch Guide

We publish a range of materials with distinct frameworks and focus points, but there are some general guidelines to consider when working with us.

The most important rule, however, is that we hate AI. We will be very pointed and direct with you if we suspect AI was used in your writing—and we will usually reject this writing outright.

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Writing for BES

Pitch Guide

We only accept pitches for The Brief - Print Edition. The rest of our writing is done on a commissions basis. Send your pitches to The Brief to “editor [at] blackembodiments [dot] org” with the subject line “[Pitch] The Brief Print Edition”.

We like short and sweet pitches where you:

  1. Briefly introduce yourself (1-2 sentences)

  2. A 1-2 sentence summary of your idea (e.g., “I'm writing to see if you would be interested in a review/interview/essay about show/topic/person.”) Include exhibition dates when relevant and links when possible.

  3. 4-6 sentences summarizing why you think the topic is interesting and worthwhile within the framework of BES publications.

  4. Include 2-3 clips or links to previously published writing, if you have it. It’s okay if you don’t! We welcome unpublished writers.

Please do not send a complete draft with your pitch, and don’t forget to review your pitch for spelling and grammar.

Style Guide

The language and grammar choices we prefer are connected to the conceptual and political beliefs we have about the work of arts writing, especially that which concerns black artists.

This is a “living document.” Updates will be noted with the date of change.

Language & Grammar

Much of our guidelines generally follow those offered by the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. (We encourage all writers to get a subscription to the Manual and to generally make editing an intentional part of their writing practice.) We have included the most commonly used CMS rules here; you should consult with the CMS for situations and details you’re unsure about.

  • We use the Oxford comma, otherwise known as the serial comma.

    Independent clauses joined by words like “but”, “and”, and “so” should use a comma before that coordinating conjunction.

    Commas and periods are placed within single and double quotation marks. Colons and semicolons outside.

  • Lowcase

    We use the lowercase forms of racial designations such as “black” so as not to fix the terms as proper nouns that appear to have a common-sense definition and, with that, risk flattening the diverse experiences that coalesce around and inherent in the terms.

    We insist upon clarity in using and distinguishing among lowercase and uppercase forms—and writers are encouraged to add language that allows selected spelling case to take on meaning in context.

    Uppercase

    Racial and ethnic designations should only be capitalized when underscoring how the terms index particular and distinct political and political-cultural forces (e.g. Black Feminism, White nationalism).

    We use the capitalized form of ethnic and national designations such as “African American” and “Nigerian.” These proper nouns denote a particular thing, e.g. a category or a country, that cannot be constrained by a limiting modifier that would impose a restriction on the very nature of the word.

    Art historical time periods (e.g. Modernism) and artistic styles (e.g. Minimalism) should be capitalized when referring to distinct art historical contexts.

  • Titles of artworks and exhibitions should be in italics.

    At some point in the writing, when it’s first introduced or in image captions, you should include date of production and medium and, as relevant, installation info (e.g. “installation shot at X museum.").

  • We use endnotes and footnotes, depending upon the publication in question.

    Titles of books are italicized and essays, articles, posts, and the like are in quotation marks.

    We take a more descriptive approach to citations in writing for print and digital editions of The Brief, where the notes and bibliography system does not make formatting sense. We will encourage you to hyperlink cited materials for our Substack. For both print and digital editions, we will ask you to basically provide enough information that readers can find the source material on their own. For example, language like “In so-and-so’s 2025 essay X for Y publication, they argue XYZ.”

Content & Voice

We prioritize frank, punchy arts writing with clarity of voice and ideas. Sharp, propulsive, and honest in voice—meaning that the writing does not reach or strive toward a particular discursive trend or prevailing discourse just because it may be en vogue. We want writing that feels reflective of the writer’s own voice, particularities, flow, and energy.

  • Don’t forget to describe the art you’re writing about! Strive to include more formal, technical description of art than you think is necessary. Clear description of art helps readers to see, sense, and experience the work as best they can without being present with it, and provides the necessary scaffolding for readers to follow the writer’s ideas and interpretations of it.

    It is also important that you describe, in a sense, any conceptual apparatuses you may be bringing to your engagement with the work in question. Do not imply or assume readers are familiar with a critical framework or key concept you are bringing to the page.

  • It is important to write in your own voice and to be wary of adhering to the style of a prevailing discourse merely for the sake of sounding like part of that discourse. The voice the academic publishing world and of International Art English is often slower and more dense and dry than the style of writing BES encourages. Our editing works to parse the writers voice from the voice of the prevailing discourse

    Read your writing aloud (or use a text-to-speech application) while writing, editing, and revising and make adjustments where you do not sound like yourself. Consider moments when you falter or stumble while speaking, or where the flow of the text-to-speech is clunky, and moments when you’ve lost track of the beginning of the idea by the end of the sentence: these are areas that need to be revised.

  • We are not against jargon, which we consider to be terms, concepts, ideas, and references that are common sense within a particular community. The term “jargon” is typically pejoratively used to highlight symptoms of a larger problem that writers often face: an inability to write in their own voice.

    Our edits do not discourage writers from using jargon but require them to qualify their use of specialized language so that readers not “in the know” can participate in the writer’s ideas. Often, taking a few more words to describe an idea generates more interesting writing than relying upon another person’s idea.

  • There are many forms and formats of arts writing that BES does not typically publish and, if submitted for publication, we will conduct heavy edits to transform them—or encourage an entirely different submission at a later date.

    This includes writing that operates through reserving or excluding information (e.g. writing in community specific jargon and references and without explanation, using a framework of “opacity”), that freely experiment with punctuation and line breaks (e.g more poetic than traditional formats), and that tend toward self-excavation and memoir more than analysis of art in external context (e.g. historical, social, cultural, geo-political, economic, etc.)

  • We are wary of arts writing where it feels like the imperative to write about the art is an exercise in the writers memoiristic tendencies. There are many environments in which the writer is the most important person and subject in arts writing; incases where this kind of writing has been commissioned or planned in conversation with our editorial team, our style guides shift slightly. This also does not mean that we try to evacuate the writer or their voice or their experiences from the arts writing itself. We ultimately encourage writers to write with intentionality, and in the cases where in their experience is the primary objective analysis, our editing works to rationalize and justify and clarify and highlight that this is happening, Paul and Wyatt it’s happening, and toward what ends.

    By and large, we strive for balance between the voice of the writer and the art object, the artist and their real or supposed intentions, and the artist own statements about the work.

Agreements

Each of our publications has distinct editorial timelines that will be communicated upon contracting with you. Things typically run smoothly, and we build in some flexibility on timelines. We’ve got many moving parts, however, so there are some scenarios in which we need to terminate our agreement(s) with you. We offer a termination fee of 25% of the original commission, which will be instituted in the following circumstances:

  • Draft(s) and/or final submission(s) are 7+ days late without communication of unusual circumstances delaying submission

  • We’ve reached round 3 of revision, necessitating a 4th round, and editorial does not have capacity for more sustained engagement with the text

  • Writer is consistently over or under word count and editorial does not have capacity for more sustained engagement with the text