Last edited 09 Feb 2021

ARCHIVE Competition archive

Add an article to Designing Buildings Wiki and you have the chance of winning a three week internship with world-renowned engineers Buro Happold in the summer of 2013 (location dependent on the subject you are studying) and being asked to write a blog about yourself for the Designing Buildings Wiki home page. Five runners up will be given a commendation and will be featured on our home page. All suitable articles will be added to the wiki.

Your article must be complete by 5pm on Friday 14th December 2012.

If you have any questions, email uk [email protected]uk.

1 Eligibility
2 How to enter
3 Writing style
4 Writing your article
5 Judging

[edit] Eligibility

You must be studying for an engineering degree or post graduate engineering qualification at a UK university, or have completed an engineering degree or post graduate engineering qualification at a UK university in 2012.
Your article must be on a subject within one of the following areas (these are general topic areas not suggested subjects):

Your article must be based on UK practice and written in UK English.
Your article must be between 500 and 4,000 words.
Your article must be a NEW article on Designing Buildings Wiki. That is, the exact subject you are writing about must not already exist on the wiki (but you can write about a specific area of an existing subject) – so submit your entry early to secure your subject. Editing an existing article will not be accepted.
Your article must be all your own work, it must not have been published elsewhere (although it may be something you have already written) and it must be free from any copyright restrictions.
You may submit up to three articles.

[edit] How to enter

Register as a user on the site and create a ‘page about me’. Your ‘page about me’ must include your full name, email address, place of study and course (or details of the qualification you received in 2012).
Log in. As long as you’re logged in, your user name will be recorded in your article history so we will know who wrote it.
Click on the link ‘Click HERE to create a new article’ that appears on every page and follow the simple instructions to set up your article.
Write your article then add it to the ‘Student Engineer Essay Competition’ category (just click on the tick box at the bottom of the article) AND NO OTHER CATEGORIES.
Save your article.
Click on PROTECT at the top of your article and change the protection to ‘protect from non authors’ so that nobody else can change your article.

[edit] Writing style

Familiarise yourself with Designing Buildings Wiki to see what we’re looking for in terms of tone, style and content.
Use a neutral writing style, never use the words ‘I’ or ‘we’. Treat your article as if it is for an encyclopaedia or Wikipedia.
Stick to a single subject.
Identify quotes clearly (put the source in brackets at the end of the quote).
Ask someone else to proof-read your article.
Need more information? Have a look at out quick style guide.

[edit] Writing your article

It’s pretty straight forward. Just type and then save.
Keep your formatting simple. The wiki does not have the complex formatting options of full-on word processors. Stick to simple headings, plain text, bulleted lists and numbered lists.
Use the pre-set heading styles rather than making your text bold or italics.
You can write your article in another application (such as word) and paste it into the wiki, but make sure the formatting is very simple, or paste it as plain text.