[ANSTHRLD] Penciled forms considered harmful

[tmcd at panix.com]

In the December 2009 LoAR, just e-mailed:

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    From Pelican: Submissions forms written in pencil

Local heralds and submissions heralds, please encourage your
submitters to fill in the submissions forms in pen, and not in
pencil. Pencil, especially soft-pencil, often does not scan
easily. Since I am an ocean away from Ragged Staff and the files, I
work exclusively from scanned paperwork. A number of the submissions
this month had forms written in pencil which were completely illegible
when scanned. Ragged Staff was able to confirm the missing information
for me, so there was ultimately no problem in these individual cases,
but she said that even the non-scanned versions of the forms were
difficult to read. As a result, I would like to strongly encourage
people not to use pencil to fill out their submissions forms. If the
forms are not legible when they reach Ragged Staff and Pelican, then,
just as with armorial forms which have color-shift problems that
affect the identifiability of the armory, the submissions may be
liable to return for administrative reasons. This is something which
we would prefer to avoid.