When submitting stories to any magazine, always read their guidelines carefully. Many editors have specific preferences as to how and where they want submissions addressed. And ALWAYS make sure you manuscripts follow standard formatting. If you're unsure about how to format a manuscript, go here.

Directory of Magazine Publishers

Secondly, even after reading the publication's guidelines carefully, unless they specify otherwise (and some of these pubs have very specific methodology they want you to follow), if you want your submission to be read and not discarded unopened, include in the subject line the following:

SUBMISSION: SHORT FICTION. (TITLE) (AUTHOR'S LAST NAME)

Subject lines line, "Greetings" or "Would you read this?" won't get past the email filters in place that are used by most magazines.

Lastly, for security reasons, even if the magazine says they accept either DOC or RTF files, always use RTF. MS Word files can include embedded macros. Many times, these macros are detected by anti-virus software as malignant code and your precious story either gets blocked or shows up as ASCII gibberish. Some of the stories I've written looked BETTER as ASCII gibberish.

A Note on subbing by email: If you want your story to actually get read, follow the directions provided by the publisher on their site. In many cases, I have noted that you should review their submissions policies on their website. Common sense dictates that you would do that regardless of whether I tell you to or not. However, if you're reading this page, then chances are about one that you're a writer. And when was the phrase "common sense" and the word "writer" ever used in the same sentence in a positive context? If we had common sense, we would know better than to be writers, and we'd be as boring as the other goofs bumping into each other on the street.