Submissions

Successive themed issues of Text Matters are advertised on the journal website which also contains instructions for authors. The journal welcomes original, unpublished articles, reviews and interviews from all parts of the world. Contributions are peer reviewed by external reviewers (double blind reviews). The final decision is made by the editor-in-chief and issue reviewer who are assisted in the process by members of the editorial board responsible for a particular field. The journal reserves the right to immediately reject the texts that are popular rather than informed by academic expertise. Text Matters does not accept submissions in poor English or submissions that do not conform to Text Matters style sheet. The managing editor screens all the submissions in order to prevent plagiarism, ghost writing and other kinds of malpractice. Only then are contributions handed over to particular reviewers.

Basic Publication Requirements:

1. Essays, interviews and reviews are welcome as contributions.

2. Reviews should be between 1,000 and 1,200 words.

3. Essays should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words (including all in-text citations, footnotes and the Works Cited section). Each essay should be preceded by an abstract of up to 300 words. It should also include both a full title and an abbreviated one (up to 75 characters, including spaces) to be used as a running header.

4. Information about the Author should be written in the upper left corner of the page and include the following:

Name and Surname
Name of the department or any other organizational unit
Name of the university or any other academic organization

5. MLA style should be used throughout. Major failure to comply with this requirement will result in your essay being automatically rejected.

6. The number of footnotes should be kept to a minimum. When simply citing the source, use intext citations.

7. Italics (and not underlining) should be used for titles of larger works, and double quotation marks for titles of shorter works.

8. Use British spelling, but use -ize endings (realize, organize, etc.).

Font requirements and formatting:

1. Submitted texts should be edited in MS WORD (1997 or later).

2. All margins should be 25 mm.

3. Capitalize all the major words in the title. If you have a subtitle, use a colon to separate it from the main title.

4. Use Times New Roman 12 and double space your essay. For block quotations and footnotes, use font size 10. For titles, size 14 in bold.

5. Indent the first line of each paragraph by 10 mm.

6. Dashes should be shown as em-dashes, with no space before or after the dash, e.g.

He felt—understandably enough—offended.

7. Avoid the following formatting tools:

1. a) soft return (Shift+Enter combination)

1. b) hard space (Space+Shift combination)

1. c) page division

1. d) footers and headers

1. e) tabs and unnecessary spaces (e.g. tabs and multiple spaces for paragraph indenting, double spaces between words, unnecessary spaces at the end of paragraphs)

In-text citations:

1. Provide parenthetical citations that follow the author-page method:

Pullman is described as “a withered little lizard of a man” (McEwan 11).

2. When the author is mentioned in a signal phrase or otherwise known from the context, give only the page number in parentheses:

McEwan describes Pullman as “a withered little lizard of a man” (11).

3. If you cite more than one work by a particular author, include a shortened title (preferably, the main noun or the main nominal phrase), using the following punctuation:

Pullman is described as “a withered little lizard of a man” (McEwan, Amsterdam 11).

McEwan describes Pullman as “a withered little lizard of a man” (Amsterdam 11).

In Amsterdam McEwan describes Pullman as “a withered little lizard of a man” (11).

4. The rule which requires you to use double quotation marks for titles of shorter works also applies to in-text citations, e.g.: (McGahern, “High Ground” 13).

5. When there are two or three authors, include all the names (either in the signal phrase or in parentheses):

Feminist critics have applied this model to portray women writers as disinherited daughters who are nonetheless capable of producing literature that contests, distorts and revises the master texts of their literary fathers (Gilbert and Gubar 46-53).

It has also been argued that “an important site of conflict within post-colonial literary cultures is generated, as the backward-looking impotence of exile and the forward-looking impetus to indigeneity collide” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 136).

6. With more than three authors, include the name of the first author given followed by the phrase et al., e.g. (Smith et al. 243).

7. When the name of the author is unknown, use the complete title in the signal phrase or a shortened title in parantheses, e.g. (“Sad Encounters” 15).

8. If you need to quote someone cited in a text written by another author, begin the in-text citation with qtd. in: William Trevor describes himself as “Irish . . . to the last vein in my body” (qtd. in Core 373).

9. For interviews, use the name of the person interviewed, not the interviewer.

10. When you use a source with no page numbers (e.g. Internet sources, personal interviews, private correspondence or other unpublished texts), include the name of the author only or, if this is also unknown, the shortened title. Examples: (Smithson) or (“Sad Encounters”)

11. When giving page ranges, give the last two digits of the second page number whenever available, e.g. 1-3, 11-13 (not 11-3), 23-25, 42-59, 178-99. When necessary, more digits should be used, e.g. 178-205.

12. For other rules, consult the most recent edition of the MLA Handbook.

Quotations from prose:

1. Quotations shorter than 40 words should be incorporated in the text and placed inside double quotation marks. Single quotation marks should only be used for quotes within quotes. In both cases, typographic quotation marks should be used instead of straight marks.

2. When quoted material exceeds 40 words, block quotations should be used. They should be indented by 10 mm from both sides and separated with a one-line space before and after. (Unlike with short quotations, place the full stop, or any other closing punctuation mark, before the parenthetical citation.)

Quotations from poetry:

1. Short quotations from poetry (up to three lines) should be incorporated in the text and placed inside double quotation marks. Each separate line should be indicated with a forward slash (with a space before and after).

2. When the quoted material exceeds three lines, block quotations should be used. (For punctuation and indentation, see the section above.)

Omissions from quotations:

1. For an omission within a sentence, use an ellipsis with a space before and after each dot (without parentheses):

Her soul becomes the object of what one reviewer has described as “a battle . . . waged between the forces of good and evil” (McGrath 1).

2. An omission of a whole sentence or more should be indicated with four dots, with no space before the first:

On the thick sheet ice of the streets walking has to be relearned. The jungle of houses is so impenetrable that only brilliance strikes the eye. . . . Every step one takes here is on the named ground. (Benjamin 99)

Works Cited:

All texts cited should be listed alphabetically in the Works Cited section at the end of your essay, for which the format is:

1. Books with one author:

Spark, Muriel. The Public Image. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990. Print.

2. Books with one editor:

Gunn, Giles, ed. Literature and Religion. New York: Harper, 1971. Print.

3. Books with more than one author/editor:

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1995. Print.

Quirk, Randolph, et al. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman, 1985. Print.

4. Works in a collection (by the author himself/herself):

García Márquez, Gabriel. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” “Leaf Storm” and Other Stories. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper, 1972. 105-12. Print.

5. Works/chapters in an edited collection/anthology/book:

O’Connor, Flannery. “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” The Realm of Fiction: Seventy-Four Stories. Ed. James B. Hall and Elizabeth C. Hall. New York: McGraw, 1977. 479-88. Print.

6. A preface, introduction, foreword, afterword:

Byatt, A. S. Introduction. A Mill on the Floss. By George Eliot. Ed. A. S. Byatt. London: Penguin, 1985. xi-xlii. Print.

7. Essays in journals:

Howey, Ann F. “Reading Elaine: Marjorie Richardson’s and L. M. Montgomery’s Red-Haired Lily Maids.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 32.2 (2007): 86-109. Print.

Russell, Richard Rankin. “Embod[y]ments of History and Delayed Confessions: Graham Swift’s Waterland as Trauma Fiction.” Papers on Language and Literature 45.2 (2009): 115-49. FindArticles.com. CBS Interactive, 2010. Web. 24 Mar. 2010.

8. Articles in newspapers and magazines:

Banville, John. “Erin Go Bust.” New York Times 16 Oct. 2008: 39. Print.

9. Reviews:

DeZelar-Tiedman, Christine. Rev. of A Map of Glass, by Jane Urquhart. Library Journal 15 Feb. 2006: 112. Print.

McGrath, Patrick. “Never Did Spider More Hungrily Wait.” Rev. of Felicia’s Journey, by William Trevor. New York Times Book Review. 8 Jan. 1995: 1. Print.

Tayler, Christopher. “The Emotional Housekeeping of the World.” Rev. of Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro. Guardian.co.uk. Guardian 15 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Sept. 2009.

10. Interviews:

Martin, Valerie. Interview by Rob Smith. Contemporary Literature 34.1 (1993): 1-17. Print. 

11. Manuscripts, typescripts, unpublished letters, emails, dissertations:

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. 1400-1410. MS Harley 7334. British Museum, London.

Urquhart, Jane. Letter to the author. 17 May 2001. TS.

Swift, Graham. “Re: Last Orders.” Message to the author. 22 June 2001. E-mail.

Nowak, Marek. “The Uncanny in the Works of Angela Carter.” Diss. U of Łódź, 2004. Print.

12. Published letters (add the number if it is assigned):

Woolf, Virginia. “To T. S. Eliot.” 28 July 1920. Letter 1138 of The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. Vol. 2. New York: Harcourt, 1976. 437-38. Print.

13. Published dissertations:

Nowacka, Anna. “The Gothic in the Works of Angela Carter.” Diss. U of Łódź, 2004. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2005. Print.

14. Two or more works by the same author:

Byatt, A. S. Possession: A Romance. 1990. London: Vintage, 1991. Print.

—. Interview with Nicolas Tredell. Conversations with Critics. Ed. Nicolas Tredell. Manchester: Carcanet, 1994. 58-73. Print.

15. Online material

Give the date of publication as well as the date of access (examples included in specific sections above).

16. Anonymous texts

Start the entry with the title of the work. Alphabetize the entry by the first word of the title, omitting a, an or the.

Publication details for the “Works Cited” section:

1. Give the city of publication, the publisher’s name, the year of publication and the medium consulted (see examples above).

2. If more than one city of publication is given (for one publisher), include only the first. (However, if more than one publisher is listed, give all of them.)

3. Shorten the publisher’s name, omitting articles (a/an/the), business abbreviations (Inc., Ltd.) and descriptive words (Books, Press, Publishing, Publishers, House). Cite the surname of the publisher only (e.g. “Norton” for “W.W. Norton”). If more than one name is included, give only the first surname (e.g. “Faber” for “Faber and Faber”).

4. Use “U” and “P” when citing university presses, e.g. Oxford UP, U of Michigan P. 

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

For all parties involved in the act of publishing (the author, the journal editor(s), the peer reviewer and the publisher) it is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior. The ethics statements for Text Matters are based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.