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Gary Grossman's avatar

Regardless of quality, all work is automatically copyrighted to the author upon publication. There is no need to put the copyright mark on the work, it just shows that you don't know the law. However, that form of automatic copyright is limited in the damages that can be recovered if copyright is infringed. To be able to sue for full potential damages one needs to file an official copyright application with the US Copyright office https://www.copyright.gov/registration/

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Tom Barlow's avatar

I feel the same about poems using the courier new font.

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David Elliot Eisenstat's avatar

I’d call out center justification and colors before Courier New, which might be someone conscientious enough to follow William Shunn’s non-consensus poetry format.

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Mark Danowsky's avatar

There are many atypical "style" choices that I would not recommend.

Center justification tends to be a giveaway that the writer has not read much contemporary poetry. Not always true. Of course, an exception for Concrete Poetry (though I'm generally not a fan of it).

Color coding is a strange one...

"Copyright" seems almost symbolic of the many questionable choices made by writers in the submission process.

None of this results in an automatic rejection or anything like that but writers should be aware that these are "clues" that editors pick up on suggesting that the substance of the work is likely subpar.

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David Elliot Eisenstat's avatar

These are all shibboleths, yeah, and I'd worry about being biased at the margin if the words themselves weren't *uniformly* far from making the grade.

I think it's just very, very hard to become a writer good enough to get published in quality markets without doubting oneself to the point of reading a "why am I getting these form rejections?" checklist, which almost always will mention formatting choices.

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David Elliot Eisenstat's avatar

yuuuuuup

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Anita Lerek's avatar

With all respect, the inclusion of a (c) mark has nothing to do with trust or competence. It’s a perfunctory mark that saves a lot of trouble and cost later if questioned. It also provides a date.

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