To allow the processing of the results with the minimum of manual intervention a standard format is helpful. It is hoped that this will also reduce the amount of work required by results teams.

Since most clubs publish their event results on their web sites, this is the preferred source of data and no separate list will generally be required. Where provisional results have been published on a website requiring subsequent correction, please notify of the modifications. This will save the need for recalculating all the course scores when perhaps only one, or a few courses have been affected.

If the events results are not being published on a web site, they should instead be emailed to as a text file. This is preferable to sending a paper copy, which would then need to be scanned and analysed using OCR software. While OCR software is a labour-saving device, it has limitations and often requires a degree of manual checking and editing. Most event results seem to be compiled in the following format:

i.e. six 'fields' of information. A field in this context means a contiguous set of characters separated by one or more spaces. It is fairly common for the age and club fields to appear in reverse order and this is acceptable. The preferred format for times is mins:secs (e.g. 103:45) although hrs:mins:secs format can be accommodated. Moreover, the separator between hours, minutes and seconds may be either a colon (:) or period (.). The forename field might contain either a persons complete first name or just one or more initials.

A manual check is performed on the club field so that only members of SWOA clubs are provided with a galoppen league score. This check is made much easier if the following standard SWOA club abbreviations are used:

Both upper case and lower case letters are recognised during the manual check.

The absence of a competitors age class will not necessarily prevent them being rewarded with their Galoppen points because they can often be traced using their name information in the current league tables. However, this can be problematic in situations where different competitors share the same surname and initials, therefore every effort should be made to include every competitors age class.

The spelling of surnames can also cause problems at events where competitors do not have to write it themselves. The SINS magazine periodically publishes a reminder to competitors recommending they check what is being written on their behalf.

Any queries should be directed to .