All persons fictitious - where to place it?

Question

I've got an all persons fictitious disclaimer similar to the one mentioned at All persons fictitious disclaimer — ideas regarding modification? but where should I place it?

Bear in mind, this is a parody of a real-life magazine [could be considered fan-fiction of a real-life magazine, if you look at it that way], created for a Quark XPress tutorial. (not that Quark XPress matters here, any questions on that would be on stackoverflow or serverfault or sqa.stackexchange.com I guess).

Basically, it's fiction presented in the style of non-fiction (a genre mentioned in GCSE and A-Level English textbooks, for anyone reading in the United Kingdom, where I'm from!).

What would you recommend - where should I place the notice? In the header or footer, and on every page, or just after the front cover?

Thanks ;)

Answer 1

Normally this kind of statement would appear by itself at the beginning of your material. With a print magazine, there are a couple of options. One option would be to place it as small print in a footer on the cover. Another would be to place it by itself in regular print on the very first page inside the cover. The latter would probably be the best option.

Another option for the cover would be to place (A Parody of . . . ) beneath the title. That way you are informing the reader right up front that your magazine is not intended to be taken too seriously.

Answer 2

If you're creating this for a Quark tutorial, it's reasonable to assume that it will most frequently (if not always) be seen in the context of "someone learning Quark" rather than "accidentally winds up on newsstand or coffee table." So I don't think you need to put it on the cover.

If you are parodying a magazine, then a magazine has a colophon, which is a statement in fine print giving information about the authors, publisher, circulation, etc. If you don't want to go that far, at the very least your magazine should have a masthead listing all the staffers (whether they're real or parody is up to you). I would include your disclaimer in at least 9 pt. type in one of those two spots.

[This part is probably more than you need to know, but the best parodies are the ones which parody the most details, so:] A masthead is usually placed towards the front of the magazine, but not the first few pages (those are too valuable to waste on house material; they're usually ads). The masthead, and TOC, are usually in the first 10 percent of the magazine. The colophon can be at the bottom of the masthead or on the bottom of the last page, depending on whether your last page is featured content or the last of the small ads.