Taking part in SA4QE

You are very welcome to take part in SA4QE. There are very few (if any) rules, but the following forms something of a guideline to 4qating 4 Beginners. If you've already chosen your quotes and would just like to know how to get them to appear on this website, skip to the next bit.

1) Select your quote from the works of Russell Hoban.

2) Write (or type, print, etc) the quote on a piece of paper of your choice (the standard stock is yellow A4, but whatever takes your fancy, really - as Kleinzeit said, 'Cigarette papers? Backs of envelopes?').

3) Generally it helps to add 'SA4QE' to the sheet, so any curious finders of the quote can discover more about the event, but this is not obligatory.

4) Add any other information (e.g. your contact details, a birthday message etc) to taste.

5) There is no point 5.

6) Point 6 has been lost.

7) This point is under review.

8) Select the spot where you'd like to leave your quote.

9) On SA4QE day, leave your chosen quote in your chosen location. Please bear in mind SA4QE founder Diana Slickman's original guidelines: "I am a vehement hater of litter, so I would recommend leaving it someplace rather than just dropping it on the ground - a seat on the train, a table in the library, in the elevator at work, along with a tip for your waiter ..."

10) If you wish, take a photo of the quote in situ.

11) Congratulations! To use the correct terminology, your quote is now a 4qation. You have 4qated. You are a 4qater.

12) Walk away and fondly contemplate your 4qation, perhaps in a coffee shop, public house or bookstore of your choice.

13) Feel free to disregard any or all of the above (especially points 5-7). We encourage the use of real sheets of paper left in real places, but by all means tweet your quote (with the hashtag #sa4qe) or post it as your Facebook status. If you're feeling even more adventurous, there is nothing stopping you from, say, handing out yellow paper quotes to strangers, covering the Empire State Building in yellow paper quotes or turning yourself into a walking, talking, living yellow paper quote. Indeed, using your imagination is encouraged. Just please be kind to the environment and bear in mind that the officers of SA4QE and Russell Hoban's agents disclaim any responsibility for any trouble you might get into as a result of any such behaviour.

How to post your quotes to this website

There are two ways you can do this:

(1) email the details of your yellow paper drop to the webmaster at sa4qemail [at] gmail [dot] com

OR

(2) post the details of your yellow paper drop on the comments form which will be posted prominently on this website on the current SA4QE day (normally 4 February).

(Please note that the method introduced in 2009 of emailing your quote to the website via a "blogspot" address is no longer supported, as it was found that many of these were being trapped in the Blogger spam filters.)

When your submission is received by either of these methods a page will be made for you, or your existing page updated if you have contributed before.

Details of your yellow paper drop should include the quote itself, the book title/source, and location (town/city/country). Anything else, such as your name, a short personal profile, and the reasons why you chose your quote and the location, are very welcome and will make your post more interesting, but are entirely optional. If you wish for your contribution to be attributed to 'anonymous' please state this clearly in your message.

Members of The Kraken may also post their 4qations on the forum in the usual way, and these will be transferred to the website in due course. If you send it direct to the SA4QE website however, you will need to post it to the Kraken yourself if you wish it to appear there.

If you're not a member of The Kraken (the online Russell Hoban community), please consider joining! Everyone is welcome, it's free and it's the first place to find news about Hoban publications and activities. Simply go to The Kraken and click the 'Join now!' link at the top right.

Multimedia contributions

If you took a photo of your yellow paper drop you can attach this in the form of a jpg file to your email. If you have a Flickr account you can also upload the photo to your photostream and if you tag it sa4qe it will automatically appear in the image slideshow in the site sidebar.

Photos either sent direct to the site or found online will be added to the SA4QE site and the SA4QE Flickr stream, with full credit to you.

If you filmed your 4qation, upload it to YouTube and tag it both sa4qe and Russell Hoban, and include the link to the clip in your email.

Animations created in media such as Flash should be hosted on your own webspace and a link direct to it included in your message.

If you tweeted your quote, use the hashtag #sa4qe and/or mention the @sa4qe account


If you posted your 4qation to your blog, make sure you've got the keywords SA4QE, Slickman A4 Quotation Event or Russell Hoban in the text.

Please note: Every effort will be made to contact you to notify you of the usage of your content on the SA4QE sites and feeds, whether by reply to your direct email, as a comment on your blog or Facebook post, or as a reply to your tweet. However, please note that the Slickman A4 Quotation Event generates a lot of activity each February and as the site is currently run by one person, it is not always possible to respond promptly. Therefore, if you do participate in SA4QE in any way, and you have not heard anything from us via one of these channels, you are advised to check the site regularly for your content. If you object to its usage in any way please notify us straightaway on sa4qemail [at] gmail [dot] com.

The use of participants' content on this site does not imply any claim to it or its copyright. Unless otherwise stated, copyright in all content reverts to the individual participant identified on their page/post. This does not include quotes attributed to Russell Hoban, who does of course retain copyright in his work. Mr Hoban has given permission for the use of his quotes on this website.