The judgements for the last Bardic cycle are nearly complete and should
be announced within the next few months!

However, we in the Fellowship of Bards have had to disqualify an
inordinate number of entries because of their non-conformation with the
official guidelines. Allow me to quote from the HELP BARDICS help file:

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How To LOSE with your BARDIC Entry - Guaranteed!
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Just copy and paste from Microsoft Word. If you have smart quotes
anywhere, then you'll be disqualified instantly!

Just use notepad, wordpad, or any other text editor. Or use Writer from
OpenOffice.Org, which is free and comparable to MS Word.

Or learn how to disable smart quotes in Microsoft Word. Look here: Tools
-> Autocorrect Options -> Autoformat As You Type, and then make sure the
box is UNchecked that says "Straight Quotes" for "smart quotes".)

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When entries are submitted that used smart quotes, they become difficult
for us to read, and we cannot post them without going through and
replacing each smart quote ourselves. Some of the entries are wonderful,
and could perhaps even win, but alas they receive a score of 0 due to
the violation of this rule.

Keep this in mind as you consider your submission for this coming cycle.



Penned by My hand on the 10th of Sarapin, in the year 473 AF.