Style Guide

The Metacritic Journal’s style of writing is based on the MLA style of formatting text and footnote references (see  MLA Formatting and Style Guide, or MLA Handbook for Research Papers, 8th edition, New York, 2016 for anything not covered in this summary). British/Australian spelling and punctuation conventions are recommended.

Format

Paragraphs

• Articles should be 1.5 spaced, justified, using Times New Roman 12 p.

• The following format should be used for the notes: 10 p, single space.

• New paragraphs should be denoted by indenting the first line by using the tab key and not the space bar. There should be no line spaces between paragraphs.

• Subheadings can be used inside the text, in bold letters, same size font, left-justified.

Style Notes

Note: With the exception of articles tackling regional aspects, which may be accepted in Romanian language, articles published in Metacritic Journal must be written in standard English so as to be accessible to an international audience. The editorial team can provide some help with maintaining this standard, but if significant revision is needed to bring a contribution up to standard, authors may need to seek professional advice in timely manner.

Abbreviations

Any terms that may not be well-known to an international audience should be spelled out. Well-known abbreviations/acronyms may be used as such (UNICEF, PhD, e-mail, EU etc.), with no full-stops.

Capital letters

• The names and initials of persons (J.G. Ballard, G.R.R. Martin).

• The names of months and days of the week (Monday, June).

• Titles that immediately precede personal names (Prime Minister David Cameron), but not persons’ titles used alone (the prime minister, a professor of English etc.).

• In titles and subtitles of works, capitalize all principal words (The Mouse That Roared, For Love Alone, As I Lay Dying) but not articles (a, an, the), prepositions (against, as, between, in, of, to). Examples: For Whom the Bell Tolls, Of Mice and Men, Love in the Time of Cholera.

• Where necessary to maintain sentence flow, capital or lower-case letters at the beginning of a quotation may be changed from upper to lowercase or vice versa without the use of square brackets.

Images and charts

• Authors are responsible for the use of copyrighted images. Images and charts should be provided in .jpg 300dpi (maximum).

Contractions

Contractions do not require full-stops (PhDs, Dr, Mr etc.).

Dashes

• For dashes used as punctuation, use en dashes (–) preceded and followed by one space.

• Hyphens (-) should only be used to connect words or break lines (if necessary).

Dates

• Spell out centuries in lowercase (“the twenty-first century”)

• Dates should be in the format Month DD YYYY with no punctuation.(“June 3rd 1928 saw the arrival of…”).

Ellipses

• An ellipsis is indicated by three un-spaced full-stops, with a parenthesis at either end. Example: “South Australia’s universities (…) agree that (…)”

• If the ellipsis occurs after a full-stop, then a space should still appear. For instance: “Many have commented that William Shakespeare’s use of metaphor is exhaustive. (…) For a time, it was believed so”.

• Ellipses should not appear at the beginning or end of a quotation

• Only round brackets are to be used to surround ellipses.

• If the ellipsis is in the original quotation, note this in parentheses after the bibliographical reference.

Headings (for book reviews)

• At the head of book reviews, provide the following information in bold, left-justified:

Author of book, Title of book, Publisher, Year, ISBN, pages.

• Book reviews are not titled.

• Provide the reviewer’s name right below the head of the book reviews, right-justified.

Italics

• Use italics for published books, journals, plays, films and works of art.

• The introduction of new terms and labels (the first time only) are also to be marked with italics.

• Italics can also be used for words from other languages than the one used in the article and for emphasis.

Numbers

• Punctuate numbers in the following ways:

• 1,000

• 45,000

• 8,756,431

For numbers ten or lower write out as words (nine, seven, two).

For numbers over ten, write in numeric form (11, 38, 14).

With abbreviations or symbols, write numbers in the following ways:

• 5.15 pm

• 9%

• 2 cms

• 6.9 million

Paragraphs

• Indent all paragraphs apart from the first paragraph of a whole article or section, or a continuation after an indented quote.

• No line space between paragraphs should be present (except above and below the indented text).

Quotations

• Use double quotation marks. For quotations within quotations, use double angle quotation marks («, »).

• Quoted passages of more than three lines should be indented and separated from the main text by one line above and one line below. The quoted passages should be resized to 11p (in contrast to the rest of the text, which is 12p in size). Do not use quotation marks for indented, long quotations.

Spacing

• Use one space only after full stops and colons. Double spaces should never be used.

In-text translations

• For the articles in English: when quoting from non-English, untranslated sources, the author's English translation is placed in the text, indexed with a footnote containing the original excerpt, with “My translation” mention. For the articles in Romanian: when quoting from non-Romanian, untranslated sources, the author's Romanian translation is placed in the text, indexed with a footnote containing the original excerpt, with “My translation” mention.

Footnotes and parenthetical references

• In a book review, page references for quotes from the book under review should appear as page numbers in parentheses.

• No endnotes are to be used in the articles. Footnotes are only to be used for additional argumentation, for original fragments that are translated in the text or for adding necessary information.

• In articles which are predominantly about a particular work, include an initial footnote giving the bibliographical details with a note explaining that subsequent references to that work will be included in parentheses in the text.

• If 2 or 3 texts are discussed in detail, they can be identified with initials (for example WH 123 for page 123 of Wuthering Heights) after an initial footnote explaining this abbreviation.

• If there are more than 3 texts under discussion with more or less equal treatment, footnotes should be used.

• Parenthetical references for short quotes (not indented) should be placed at the end of each quote.

• Page numbers at the end of indented quotes should appear in parentheses.

• Arabic numbers are used to number each footnote (when necessary).

• Do not leave spaces between entries.

Referencing Style

References

• Always use a shortened form in all in-text notes. The author’s last name alone, followed by the relevant page numbers, is usually adequate. Example: Fukuyama 345-47.

• If you cite two or more works by the same author – for example, Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and his Panegyric – include a shortened form of the title following the author’s last name in each reference after the first. Example Debord, Society 278; Debord, Panegyric 1-3.

• Repeat the information even when two references in sequence refer to the same work. Do not use ibidem and op. cit.

• The list of references that are used within the article should be put after the body of the text, cf. MLA style, not numbered.

• The basic format for any citation included in the “Works Cited” section of the paper is, as follows:

Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication Date.

Article Format

Author Name (right-justified, 12p font)

Next line, right-justified: Faculty, University etc.

Next line: City, Country

Next line: e-mail

[Blank line]

Next line, centered, 12p font: Title, bold, capslock.

[Blank line]

[Blank line]

Next line, justified: Abstract (bold title, then normal)

Next line, justified: Key words (bold title, then normal)

[Blank line]

Next line, justified: Text body

[Blank line]

References

[Blank line]

Author' bioprofile (in italics, with the name in normal)

Format of authors’ profiles

Jane Smith teaches/studies comparative studies at the Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Romanian literature and media studies. Smith's recent publications/ conference talks include (list two or three of your important and/or recent books or articles with the year of publication only). E-mail address.

Submitting Contributions

All submissions to Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory are to be sent in electronic form as Microsoft Word documents. Submissions should be emailed as attachments to metacriticjournal@gmail.com. Please include an 150-word abstract and 5 key words for articles to be considered for peer review, a 50-word biographical note (not a CV) and a photo-portrait of the author, to be published in case of accepted submission.

Copyright Statement

Malpractice and plagiarism