Oxford Journals

Notes for reviewers

French Studies is published for the Society for French Studies by Oxford University Press. In the fifty years since its first publication, the journal has been a leading forum for the publication of ground-breaking work and for critical debate. Some twenty articles are published each year, as well as more than 300 reviews. These notes are provided for the guidance of reviewers.

The review
Copy
Spelling
Gender
Numbers and dates
Headings
Proofs and offprints
Copyright

THE REVIEW

The preparation of reviews for inclusion in French Studies is greatly facilitated by the co-operation of contributors, who are requested to use the following guidelines in preparing their copy for printing. Pressure on space in the journal remains severe. Care and economy in the presentation of copy will help the Editors to maintain as swift as possible a schedule for the publication of reviews. Reviewers are requested to:

write reviews in French or in English, using where practicable the native language of the reviewer;
adhere strictly to the upper word-limit given in each case, write less if this seems appropriate and contact the General Editor in advance if the work under review is thought to deserve fuller discussion than was originally suggested;
use as few paragraphs as possible and write reviews of 400 words or less in a single paragraph;
give page references for quoted passages only in cases where these cannot easily be located by way of contents page or index;
refer to the author or editor by surname only (except on first mention where a first name, or a personal or professional title, may be used in addition to the surname);
refer to works with which readers of French Studies may be expected to be familiar by their generally agreed short title, e.g. Grammaire générale, Dialogues sur l'éloquence, De la littérature (but A la recherche du temps perdu);
give references wherever possible to earlier French Studies reviews in which relevant bibliographical information may be found (such references should be in the form: see FS, li (1997), 537-38);
in references to periodicals other than French Studies, give volume numbers in arabic numerals;
exercise special restraint in reviewing conference proceedings and other collective publications (attempts at 'coverage' can easily produce unnecessarily lengthy reviews);
avoid repeating in the body of the review information already given in the heading (e.g. 'This work, the latest in the series "Perspectives littéraires" . . .');
avoid expressions of the type 'it is impossible in a short space to do justice to . . .', 'it is important to note that . . .', or 'it is the opinion of the present reviewer that . . .';
avoid listing chapter or section titles, except in cases where such a list provides a concise summary of the contents of the work.

COPY

Style conventions in the journal follow those of the MHRA Style Book, fifth edition (London, Modern Humanities Research Association, 1996), to which reference may be made (see sections 4-9 and 13 in particular).

Contributors are requested to submit an electronic version of each review. IBM-compatible MS Word documents are preferred, though it may be possible to translate other word-processor files. Revisions may be required of articles that are accepted and, when returning definitive copy, authors will be required to complete a submission form giving details of the operating system and software used.

Contributors are particularly requested to:

type or print copy using double spacing, with an unjustified right-hand margin;
ensure that all copy submitted is clear, correct and definitive;
give the title of the institution of the reviewer at the end of the review on the left-hand side of the page and the name of the reviewer on the right-hand side;
use the form of the title which the institution itself favours, e.g. University of Manchester, Université de Caen (but Université Blaise-Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand), University College London (but Trinity College, Dublin), omitting as a rule the definite article (but The Queen's College, Oxford);
provide an accurate word count for each review submitted (excluding the heading and the reviewer's name and institution);
submit two copies of each review.

In preparing copy on diskette, the following points should be borne in mind:

text should be typed double-spaced throughout using an unjustified right-hand margin;
hyphenation should not be used, except for compound words;
where possible, Times New Roman should be used for text, and Symbol for special characters;
new paragraphs should be indented using the tab key once;
only one space should follow a full point;
word-processing features may be used for italic founts and for subscript and superscript, as appropriate.

Contents

SPELLING

For preferred forms of spelling in English and of abbreviations, see The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981; second edition 2000). For verbs ending in -ize or -ise, the -ize form should be used (but analyse and its derivatives have s, not z). The possessive of proper nouns ending in -s or, in French, in -s, -x, or -z, should take the following form:

Descartes's optics, Marivaux's novels, Cixous's plays, Ross's translations

Note, however, that with names in Greek and Latin the possessive is indicated without the addition of an -s:

Odysseus' return, Catullus' metre

For place names and proper nouns, French forms (e.g. François I^er, Henri IV, Lyon, Reims) should be used as appropriate. Current English forms should otherwise be used (e.g. Virgil, Thomas Aquinas, St John of the Cross). Where words and phrases in French or in a foreign language are used, they should be given in italics (e.g. œuvre, écriture féminine, film noir, roman-fleuve, Nachträglichkeit, verstehen, verismo). Words which have passed into English usage should not be italicized (e.g. persona, milieu). In cases of doubt, reference should be made to The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.
Contents

GENDER

Reviewers may wish to avoid the use of gender-specific language. The preferred forms are 'he/she', 'his/her', 'him/her'. The use of he should not be qualified, however, where the material under discussion is clearly gender-specific (e.g. where reference is made, for historical reasons, exclusively to men).
Contents

NUMBERS AND DATES

For dates, the following form should be used: 26 September 1859. In approximations, circa should be abbreviated to c. (e.g. c. 1762).

Numbers up to one hundred should be written in words. Figures should be used for chapter, volume or page numbers, and for years. Page references to numbers falling within the same hundred should take the following form:

14-18, 53-54, 201-06

Numbers up to four digits are given without a comma (e.g. line 1672). In all multiple page references, the range given should be specific (references in the form 22f. or 44ff. should not be given).
Contents

HEADINGS

The following forms of heading should be used as models for the provision of bibliographical information and of punctuation:

Agrippa d'Aubigné: Histoire universelle. Éditée avec une introduction et des notes par Andr´ Thierry. Tome ix. 1594-1602. (Textes littéraires français, 458). Geneva, Droz, 1995. 434 pp. Pb 85 SwF.
Lines of Thought: Discourse, Architectonics, and the Origin of Modern Philosophy. By Claudia Brodsky Lacour. Durham, NC - London, Duke University Press, 1996. ix + 164 pp. Hb £43.95. Pb £14.95.
Notable Encyclopedias of the Late Eighteenth Century: Eleven Successors of the 'Encyclopédie' Edited by Frank A. Kafker. (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 315). Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1994. 424 pp. HB £64.00; $116.00; 640 F.
The Plight of Emulation: Ernest Meissonier and French Salon Painting. By Marc J. Gottlieb. (The Princeton Series in Nineteenth-Century Art, Culture and Society). Princeton University Press, 1996. xvii + 255 pp. 73 b&w ills, 4 colour plates. Hb £33.50; $45.00.