Overall Guidelines

Entries must:

  • contain sufficient technical, scientific, medical, or similar content to qualify as technical communication.
  • have been produced or substantially revised within 24 months preceding August 1, 2010.
  • have been originally prepared for and accepted for publication by a client, employer or publisher.

The FTCC reserves the right to reject any entry for any reason. If this occurs, the entry fee is refunded.

Entries must be suitable for public display. Entries containing classified or proprietary information or violating copyright laws are not acceptable. It is the responsibility of the submitter, not the STC, to determine entries do not contain classified or proprietary information and the holder of all copyrights has granted permission for submission of the entry.

Neither the STC nor anyone associated with the competitions can be held responsible for loss of or damage to an entry.

Materials prepared for STC purposes are not eligible for entry in the FTCC. Examples include STC publications and books; articles for Intercom and Technical Communication; and chapter and Special Interest Group (SIG) Web sites, brochures and newsletters.

Multilingual entries are accepted, but one of the languages must be English. Only the English-language portion of the entry is judged.

An entry must not have been entered in a previous STC competition. Entries submitted to the FTCC cannot be submitted to any other local or regional competition. Duplicate entries are disqualified.

Within the FTCC, entries may be submitted in multiple competitions. For example, a manual can be entered in the FTCC Technical Publications Competition and a corresponding online tutorial can be entered in the FTCC Online Communication Competition. In that case, the submitter must submit the entries separately for each competition, including all required materials, entry forms and entry fees.

Within a single FTCC competition, a submitter may enter only one entry from the same contributors and parent organization, unless entries are on significantly different topics. Entries substantially duplicating other entries are not eligible. This rule does not necessarily eliminate online communication entries for the same product or topic on different hardware platforms.

The submitter must certify the entry represents the actual work of those named on the Entry Submission Form and the entry has been cleared for submission. The submitter must also certify the copyright holder permits the submission of the entry.

NOTE: The submitter receives all official correspondence relating to the entry. The submitter is responsible for all communication with the contributors about the entry and for distributing any awards.

Questions? Contact us.