Every article does not have to contain a history of the entire subject – for example, in an article on a women’s rights organization, you need not include a lengthy discussion on the world wide or all India wide women’s movement. That may be important for a class report, where you need to show your instructor that you did some background work. In writing for Manushi, you should instead restrict yourself to the particular topic you have researched, and about which you have some new information or fresh insights not easily available elsewhere.

Swift reviews giving names and dates of prominent people, without more than superficial generalizations about their mission, or the reasons they were honoured, do not make enough of a contribution to be worth publishing. You need to go into the person’s contribution in concrete detail that indicates what it is significant about the work he/she did.

A description of a movement or person should include enough specifics to insure that Manushi readers are not just reading a rehash of some survey article published previously elsewhere. The author should know the region discussed, have personal access by interview or participation with the persons and movement described.

The article should have some connected point or points to make in its conclusion; it should not end with a few paragraphs carelessly strung together, without a logical exposition. The points it wishes to make should be sufficiently different from commonly held views on the subject, be informative, useful and interesting to justify publication.