A contest is called a contest that is organized with the aim of rewarding a work or an activity. The term derives from the Latin word certāmen.
For example: “The winner of the literary contest will be announced tomorrow afternoon at an event that will take place in the municipal cultural center “, “When I was a girl I won an interscholastic artistic gymnastics contest”, “The dance contest will award ten thousand pesos as a prize ”.
According to DigoPaul, the contests usually consist of a demonstration of skills or abilities by the contestants. These skills can be reflected, in some cases, on different material or digital media: a text document with a poem, a sound recording with a song, etc. The people who choose the winner of the contest form the jury of the contest in question. These are usually individuals with authority on the matter.
Take the case of a novel contest. Participants must send their works to the organizers, who in turn make the material available to the jury. The members of the jury, in this framework, read the novels submitted to the contest and, after analyzing them and deliberating among themselves, announce the name of the distinguished author.
It is common for contests to reward the winner in some way. Often the prize is a sum of money in cash and an object of symbolic value, such as a medal or diploma. In the case of literature competitions, the prize often consists of the publication and distribution of the winning work.
The contests have different rules, each one its own, and they take place in several well-defined stages. It is important to underline the need to comply with the rules established by the institution that organizes them, since in some cases a small error is enough for a participant to be excluded from the contest.
Given the volume of people who can participate in some competitions, especially when they have an international scope, it is reasonable to frame them in a series of unbreakable rules; if each person were allowed to act in a different way, then organization would become practically impossible.
The first stage of a literature contest, for example, begins with the submission of the works by the prize applicants. Here, in turn, certain phases are distinguished for the preparation of the written material and the chosen shipping method. For example, it is common for one of the rules to send one or more hard copies together with one in digital format, and this is not optional.
This first requirement involves a monetary investment that in most cases does not have any benefit, since out of hundreds of participants only a few winners are chosen and the rest of the works are thrown into the wastebasket. Precisely, the need to spend money, both in printing and in binding and in sending the work, is one of the reasons why many people back down, decide not to participate, and this represents the first filter of the contest.
Another of the requirements of this first stage revolves around the way in which the documents must be presented: the work must be accompanied by a card with the author’s data, generally inside a sealed envelope to maintain anonymity until it is chosen the winner, since until then pseudonyms are preferred.
The announcement of the winners of a contest can be carried out in many ways, and depends on their importance. Typically, the statement is broadcast on television, or in the press, both print and digital.
