Style Notes For Contributors
- Work Presentation
- Copy Presentation
- Spelling and Punctuation
- Hyphens and Dashes
- Abbreviations and Initials
- Quotations
- Italics, Underlining and Bold
- Figures, Dates, Years etc.
- Article References for Journals
- Article References for Collections of Essays
- References to Other Texts Not Under Review
- Referencing Books Reviewed
- Names
- Journal, Serial, and Publisher Abbreviations, New Journal Titles, and New Publishers
- Style
The Year's Work in English Studies (YWES) is prepared electronically. Consequently contributors are requested to send attachments of their work to their Associate Editor, some of whom may require hardcopies as well.
Professor William Baker (Northern Illinois University), fax +1 815 753 2003 (attention Professor W. Baker)
Professor Kenneth Womack, Co-Editor (Pennsylvania State Altoona)
Professor Janet Beer (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Dr Kirstie Blair (University of Glasgow)
Dr John Brannigan (Trinity College Dublin)
Dr Doreen D'Cruz (Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand)
Professor Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam)
Dr Matthew Steggle (Sheffield Hallam University)
Dr Mary Swan (University of Leeds)
1. Work Presentation
Files should be saved in the appropriate program (Word, WordPerfect, etc.). Contributors should keep their own backup copy of all files.
2. Copy Presentation
All copy should be emailed to the appropriate Associate Editor, along with, in separate files: (a) a list of new abbreviations of publishers and journals, (b) your entry for the Table of Contents (name and institution), (c) an alphabetical list of all periodicals reviewed, with volume number(s) for the year under review. Contributors to chapters 4-7 should, additionally, include their nominees (if any) for the Beatrice White prize: the title of one book of outstanding merit in their sections.
- Paragraphs should be indented one-half inch, with no additional line spacing.
- Lines should be double-spaced and left-justified.
- Each chapter should carry a separate opening page giving chapter number, chapter title, and author(s)'s name(s), together with an introductory paragraph listing the sections.
- Section headings at the beginning of each chapter should be in roman type in all cases and not in italics.
- Section headings within the chapter should be numbered in Arabic and ranged left. Subheadings should be prefixed with lower case letter and brackets.
- In a series, commas should be included to and including terms up the penultimate (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley).
- Square brackets are used to denote Contributor Z's review in Contributor A's section e.g. [X.Y.Z.].
- Referring to a particular volume or chapter or part, the word (i.e. volume, chapter, part, etc.) should be without inverted commas, and the initial letter should be lower-case when denoting the particular (e.g. chapter 5), and when denoting the general ('In the opening chapter . . .'). However, when referring to a YWES chapter, it is upper case (e.g. See Chapter X in this volume).
- When referencing editors in text, use either full name or intials (e.g. Ulla Connor and Thomas A. Upton, eds., Applied Corpus Linguistics: A Multidimensional Perspective).
3. Spelling and Punctuation
For those words which have alternatives s/z spellings consult the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Please note that this means z as a rule although analyse, paralyse, advertise, advise, apprise, chastise, comprise, demise, despise, devise, enterprise, excise, exercise, franchise, improvise, incise, premise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise do not take z.
Words having alternative x/ct spellings should be spelt with ct (connection, inflection).
Words which have alternative e/ae spellings should be spelt ae (archaeology, encyclopaedia) except for medieval which does not carry the optional a.
Judgement, acknowledgements, etc. should be spelt with the e included before the suffix.
Words which have an option of single or double s before es, should be spelt with single s only (syllabuses, focuses).
Words ending in ix or ex which have an x or c option in the plural, should be spelt with x (indexes).
Possessives formed from proper names should follow as closely as possible the original name (Shakespearean [not -ian], but Chomskian, Aristotelean).
Where a prefix is added to a proper name, those that are hyphenated keep the initial capital of the proper name; those typed as one word lose the initial capital of the proper name (pre-Marxist, pre-Conquest, anti-Methodist: note that Pre-Raphaelite takes a capital for the prefix, to conform with its recognized abbreviation PRB). (Neoplatonic - initial capital only.)
Festschrift should be roman with initial capital. Other German nouns retain initial capital if italicized e.g. Bildungsroman.
Names ending in s normally have the possessive with 's: Dickens's, Keats's, etc.
4. Hyphens and Dashes
Compound adjectives should be hyphenated, e.g. eighteenth-century prose but prose of the eighteenth century; a well-written book but the book is well written. Compound adjectives take no hyphen when the first word ends in -ly e.g. badly written. Note that early seventeenth-century poetry takes one and not two hyphens.
Prefixes such as re- and de- should be hyphenated if followed by a repeated vowel (re-educate, co-ordinate, but reactivate, reorganize, coeval) with the exception of co-edit, co-exist, etc. (please refer to Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th edn)).
Please use a hyphen where a wrong pronunciation might be inferred (re-analyse, de-emphasize, co-operation, but redefine), or where the composite word has acquired a differing meaning (recreation, re-creation).
When typing a hyphen, no space should be left at either side. Where a dash is intended, insert an em rule or two closed hyphens without spaces between words.
5. Abbreviations and Initials
Style and titles do not take full point if the last letter of the abbreviation is the same as the last letter of the word (Dr, Jr, St, Mme, Ms etc.) but note Prof.
Etymological abbreviations do not take full points (EME, OF, OW).
Abbreviations of time carry no full point (AD, BC, [small capital], am, pm [lower case]).
Abbreviations of organizations do not carry full points, unless the PMLA standard listing indicates otherwise (USA, UK, NZ, BBC, ITV, UNESCO, RSC).
Common abbreviations from the Latin do take full points (e.g., i.e., etc., ibid., et al. but note circa [italic] and close up to number, i.e. c.1790).
Manuscript(s) abbreviated should be written MS or MSS, with no full point.
Degrees and other credits coming after a surname, or initials denoting rank, title or similar nature coming before a surname, carry full points and no spaces (Ph.D., B.A., S.J., R.S.M.).
In bibliographies, paperback and hardback are abbreviated pb, hb (no points, no spaces).
Where junior, or a number, is indicated after a surname, there should be no comma (J.R. Lane Jr, Arthur Jones III).
Series names should always be roman and without quotes. Consult List of Abbreviations in YWES.
Please include in bibliographical listing only those series designations which genuinely aid bibliographical description. Many series add nothing to readers' knowledge of the format of the book (e.g. Vision Critical series), whereas others do (e.g. Casebook, Penguin Passnotes, Text and Performance).
6. Quotations
Quotation marks, whether used to indicate speech or the specialized use of a word, should always be single quotes in the first instance.
Where a quotation forms part of a longer sentence the closing quote precedes all punctuation except an exclamation mark, question mark, dash or parenthesis belonging only to the quotation: i.e. His conclusion is that Hardy is 'a disturbingly puzzled, sceptical, various modern poet'.
Where the quotation contains a grammatically complete sentence starting with a capital letter the full point precedes the closing quote: i.e. Richard Holmes comments on this statement of Coleridge's that 'It was an expressive exaggeration.'
Quotations within quotations take double quotes within single quotes.
All spellings, punctuation, abbreviations, etc. within a quotation should be rendered exactly as in the original, even if this differs from standard YWES procedure.
Where a short quotation is given (i.e. less than two full lines of verse or four printed lines of prose) this should continue in the run of text. Short verse quotations use an oblique / to indicate any line breaks.
Longer quotation of prose or verse should be set semi-displayed, with each line indented five spaces, and with a similar widening of the right hand margin. Displayed extracts can start with a lower case if necessary without initial ellipses.
Words inserted in a quotation by a reviewer should be enclosed in square brackets. Omissions should be shown by three full points.
7. Italics, Underlining and Bold
Italics should be used for book titles, titles of journals, plays, etc.
Italics should also be indicated for foreign phrases inserted in the text:
Italic: circa/c., et al., fin de siècle, inter alia, mise en scène, sic
Roman: apropos, au fait, bricolage, cf. (NB= 'compare', not 'see'), de facto, dramatis personae, elite, exemplum/exempla, Festschrift, ibid., leitmotif, mimesis, oeuvre, per se, q.v., recherché, regime, résumé, role, status quo, stemma/stemmata, topos/topoi, tour de force, via, vis-á-vis, versus
Where bold type is indicated use bold.
8. Figures, Dates, Years etc.
In the main text (except for pagination of articles), spell out numbers one to ninety-nine, except where they are attached to percentages, units or sums of money (10 km, 3 m, 25 per cent [not %]). Use a hyphen in composite numbers (twenty-seven), unless they form part of a date, or volume number. Numbers over 100 should be shown in figures (101, 2,485) inserting a comma between the thousands and the hundreds.
Ordinals should be treated in like manner (seventh, twenty-third, 187th, 2,123rd).
Dates should be written in the sequence day month year with no ordinal suffix and no punctuation (13 June 1842).
Where a succession is referred to, repeat only those units which have changed (91-8, 103-5, 237-42), except in teens (12-13, 112-15, 317-19).
Years should be described as: 1956-7, 1913-14, not 1956-57 or 1956-1957, except in headings and captions, where use 1956-57. Use the 1960s (no apostrophe) or the sixties (not the 60s).
Please check accuracy of figures very carefully. Errors are unlikely to be detected by editors.
9. Article References for Journal
For each journal article reviewed, the appropriate reference, which should include the acronym for the journal, volume (and issue) number(s), year of publication and page numbers, should be inserted in parenthesis in the text, e.g. (JCL 36:ii[2001] 117-21). Please note that there is a space between the acronym and the volume number and another space before the page numbers. A colon separates the volume number from the issue number. All numerals are in Arabic apart from the issue number, which is in lower case Roman numerals. The issue number is to be included only when the pagination for a journal begins with 1 for each issue. When the journal acronym does not occur within parenthesis, then the parenthesis should surround the volume number (and issue number, if relevant), the bracketed date, and page numbers, e.g. (JHR).
For articles in electronic journals, the in-text reference should cite the year of electronic publication of the latest update or posting in preference to the year of original publication. The number range of the article may have to be indicated in paragraphs, if page numbers are not available, e.g. (Jouvert 5:iii[2001] 39 paras).
10. Article References for Collections of Essays
Where a collection of essays is reviewed as a whole, there is no need to supply page references. The book should be reviewed as in section 12 below Referencing Books Reviewed.
Where an article from a collection of essays or from an conference proceedings is reviewed separately from the other articles or papers in the volume, the first instance citation should be explicit and indicate the author and title of the article and the reference should indicate the name(s) of the editor(s) plus the title of the collection and the page references:
Eric Reuland and Wim Kosmeijer deal with related topics in 'Projecting Inflected Verbs' (in Gisbert Fanslow, ed. The Parameterization of Universal Grammar, pp. 56-72). Later references in the same section need only indicate the editor and the page numbers: (in G. Fanslow, pp. 56-72).
11. References to Other Texts Not Under Review
When texts and manuscripts not being reviewed are referred to, the abbreviations used in the reference should be as follows:
folio - fo.; folios - ff.
page(s) - p. or pp.
line(s) - l. or ll. (with a marginal note to the printer explaining that this means lines and not the number 11, if confusion seems likely).
page and note references: p. 00 pp. 00-0 pp. 00ff.
use ff instead of et seq.
n. 30
nn. 30-1
p. 33n
vol. Vols
no. nos
In general text use, these abbreviations should also be used where one unit is referred to in isolation. Where a combination of these is mentioned, the relevant numbers only need to be used (III.ii.21).
In-text references as follows: see figure 3.2, chapter 1, table 6 (lower case initial, spelt out).
Biblical references should be written with initial number (if any) in Arabic style, book name in full, chapter number (Arabic), full point, (no space), and Arabic numbers for verse(s) (2 Corinthians 3.17.18; 1 Peter 2.5-7).
Two distinct page references should be separated by a comma; one continuing over more than one page should have page numbers separated by a hyphen (YWES 80[2001] 68, 71 (two separate references); YWES 80[2001] 66-7 (one reference extending over page)).
Foreign titles in text: the first noun and any preceding adjectives, and all proper nouns (in German all nouns) take an initial capital, and all other words take a lower-case initial e.g. L'Éducation sentimentale.
Quotations in foreign languages in the text should not be italicized unless for another reason than that they are in a foreign language.
Series names should always be roman and without quotes.
Titles of special numbers of journals should be in quotation marks and not italics.
For quotations which are either interrogatory or exclamatory, punctuation marks should appear both before and after the closing quotation mark.
12. Referencing Books Reviewed
Standard abbreviations are ed. (edited, editor); trans. (translated, translator); intro. (introduced, introduction); illus. (illustrated, illustrator); comp. (compiled, compiler), distr. (distributed). Note that contractions (edn) do not take full points.
References will appear in the printed volume at the end of each chapter in a single alphabetical list by author. There should be no numbering of references within the text. Therefore, the title and author should be included in the text. Within the chapter reference should be made to the title and author/editor. The List of Books Reviewed should refer only to books reviewed in the text.
The List of Books Reviewed should be arranged alphabetically by author. Each entry should be ordered and contain the following:
author/editor
title
additional credits if any (intro., illus., trans.)
edn, if not first
series (where this is helpful to the reader)
number of volumes
publisher's abbreviation (see List of Abbreviations)
year of publication (in square brackets)
number of pages (prelims in roman text pages in Arabic numerals i.e. pp. x + 236)
price: in sterling and US dollars (or other relevant currency).
All books are understood to be hardback (hb), if paperback include abbreviation 'pb' price (both hb and pb). Prices, if in round figures, should not carry points or zeros (e.g. £5). Please give sterling price (if available) or price in country of origin (e.g. €=Euro, $=US, A$=Australian, C$=Canada, DM=Germany, €=Euro, etc).
ISBN (both hb and pb if relevant). Please observe the spacing: 10 digit 0 0000 0000 0; 13 digit 0 0000 0000 0000. If both 10 and 13 digit ISBNs are available, please only include the 13 digit ISBN.
Note the following examples, taken from volume 83:
Hillman, Richard. Shakespeare, Marlowe and the Politics of France. Palgrave. [2002] pp. 260. £50 ISBN 0 33396 9454 6.
Morgan, Marcyliena. Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture. CUP. [2002] pp. xiv + 180. hb £42.50 ($58) ISBN 0 5218 0671 2, pb £15.95 ($21) ISBN 0 5210 0149 8.
If in doubt check examples from most recent volume of YWES.
Please include in references only those series designations which genuinely aid bibliographical description. Many series add nothing to readers' knowledge of the format of the book (e.g. Vision Critical series), whereas others do (e.g. New Casebook, Penguin Passnotes, Text and Performance). Series names which should be included are usually found in the latest list of acronyms at the beginning of the volume.
Only books reviewed in the text (even if obtained through libraries) should be listed. Books requested but not sent by publishers and not reviewed, if bibliographically significant, may be cited as unseen with the publisher's name in brackets, e.g. 'Not seen [or, Unavailable for review] were X (UChicP) and Y (HarvardUP)'. Individual articles or chapters and annuals and journals should not be listed, even when they have individual titles. If in doubt whether something is a series (in which case the book should be referenced) or a journal/annual (not to be referenced), check in the prelims of the latest volume of YWES, (journals and annuals are in italics and series in roman) or consult with your AE.
13. Names
When dealing with unusual personal or place names, foreign names, or names which are unusual variants of commoner names, please confirm the name by writing it by hand in block capitals in the left-hand margin. This saves time being wasted at the editorial stage in checking whether such a name may have accidentally been mistyped. (Recent examples have included the forename Raachel, and the surnames Charke and Ferster.) O M Brack Jr, for instance, does not use full points after his initials.
When referring to all but the most commonly known authors or critics for the first time in your chapter or section, provide first name or initials: e.g. 'Milton' but 'Roland Barthes'; Wordsworth' but 'Jerome J. McGann'; 'Shakespeare' but 'Stephen Greenblatt' This is useful for readers and indexers.
14. Journal, Serial, and Publisher Abbreviations, New Journal Titles, and New Publishers
Please check carefully the lists of abbreviations for journals, series, and publishers in the current YWES and employ in your copy and List of Books Reviewed.
In the case of a journal which does not have an acronym in the YWES list, check MLAIB for an acronym (if this fails please supply journal title in full).
If the text incorporates an abbreviation for a journal title, or publisher, that has not been used before and is consequently not in the preliminary lists of YWES, please type the abbreviation and its full meaning on a separate sheet of paper, indicating the chapter and page number on which it occurs. This ensures that it is added to the preliminary pages.
Remember to keep a record of year, page numbers or articles and volume numbers of journals consulted.
When special numbers of periodicals appear, they should be mentioned ['Pst has two special issues this year, one on travel (22:i[1999]) and one on biography (22:iii[1999])'].
15. Style
Aim for clear, standard English. Avoid beginning sentences with connectives ('and', 'but', etc.), the frequent use of colloquial abbreviations ('can't', 'don't', 'quotes' as a noun etc.), and avoid the excessive use of semi-colons, where commas or full stops would serve. Ensure that sentences are grammatically complete.
October 2006