Author guidelines and stylesheet

General

Length and language

Your article should be longer than 7,000 but not much longer than 9,000 words, excluding footnotes. Including footnotes, the whole text should not count more than 12,000 words. An abstract will be asked during the submission process: please provide a short summary of between 150 and 250 words. 

The use of English is preferable, although we also admit French, Italian, Spanish and German contributions.

Permissions

Images and their captions are to be provided by authors, including permissions and high-resolution reproduction (but these are only due after acceptance). Should the necessity of a list of figures arise, the following format is respected:

Figure #. Description or Artist's Name. Title. Date. Specification / Material. # x # mm. Collection's / Library's Name. Photo by #. Reproduced by Permission of #. Courtesy of #. License CC-##-##.

Authorship

If the article has more than one author, please add a supplementary file that specifies each of the author’s substantial contributions to the article in question (drafting, writing, revising, etc.). Only authors who have made substantial contributions will be accepted. For a definition of academic authorship, we refer to the commonly accepted definition of the ICMJE.

Anonymise your submission

When submitting your article, ensure that there is nothing in the document that betrays the identity of the author(s) by taking the following precautions:

  • Do not provide your name and institution in the version meant for peer review. Keep acknowledgements for the later version.
  • Do not refer to your own past research in the first person. You can change this after the peer review stage.
  • Remove author identification from the file properties in Microsoft Office documents. Do this both under ‘properties’ in the ‘file’ tab and by clicking ‘inspect document’ on the same tab (click ‘inspect’ and ‘remove all’ the results for the hidden content that you want to remove).

Style guidelines

JOLCEL generally adheres to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition, more specifically the notes-bibliography system.

In the footnote, only the last name, short title and relevant page numbers are provided, even if it is the first mention. Ibid. is used, but use of idem is discouraged — we recommend instead that the author’s last name be repeated.
Use the semicolon as delimiter when multiple references are given.

  • Jaeger, The Envy of Angels, 65; and Jaeger, Ennobling Love, 78.
  • Ibid., 71.
  • See, e.g., Derrida, De la grammatologie, 17; and Foucault, L'archeologie du savoir, 23.

All the full, spelled-out references are saved for the bibliography (references section) at the end of the article.

References are sorted alphabetically, not by date of publication. By implication, same-authored references are also sorted by alphabetical order, i.e. the first word of the title.

  • Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Envy of Angels. Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1994.

Every cited source should be mentioned in the bibliography. This includes common editions of classical texts.

More examples are given below. Pay special note to punctuation, italics, and the inversion of authors’ first names and surnames. In the references section, names are always spelled out in the fullest possible way, unless the cited authors are conventionally cited by their initials (e.g., T. S. Eliot).

Journal articles

Note that we only require the article’s year of publication between brackets (not month or season).

  • Ouspensky, “Quelques considérations,” 83.
  • Ouspensky, Leonid. “Quelques considérations au sujet de l’iconographie de la Pentecôte.” Messager l’exarchat du Patriarche Russe en Europe occidentale 9, nos. 33–34 (1960): 45–92.

Books and edited volumes

  • Leonhardt, Latin, 16.
  • Leonhardt, Jürgen. Latin: Story of a World Language. Translated by Kenneth Kronenberg. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Originally published as Latein: Geschichte einer Weltsprache (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck oHG, 2009).
  • Paillard and Milanezi, eds., Theatre and Metatheatre, 33.
  • Paillard, Elodie, and Silvia Milanezi, eds. Theatre and Metatheatre. Definitions, Problems, Limits. MythosEikonPoiesis 11. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
  • Winckelmann, Johann Joachim. The History of Ancient Art. Translated by G. Henry Lodge. 2 vols. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1880.

Book Chapters

 Note that there is a full stop before ‘In’, and that a comma precedes ‘edited by’.

  • McLaughlin, “Petrarch and Cicero,” 27.
  • McLaughlin, Martin L. “Petrarch and Cicero: Adulation and Critical Distance.” In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Cicero, edited by William H. F. Altman, 19–38. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015.

 Critical editions and translations of primary texts

  • Sallust, The War with Cataline, 6.
  • Sallust. The War with Catiline. The War with Jugurtha. Edited by John T. Ramsey. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
  • Augustine, City of God, 4:27–33.
  • Augustine. City of God. Translated by George E. McCracken et al. 7 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957–72.

Occasionally, when an editor or a translator is more important to a discussion than the original author (e.g., an introduction to an edition), the book can be referred to as such:

  • Constable, ed., introduction to Letters, 1:54.

Consequently, depending on whether or not the primary source is also referred to / discussed in the publication, one can choose between these options for the bibliography:

  • Constable, Giles, ed. The Letters of Peter the Venerable. 2 vols. Harvard Historical Studies 78. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
  • Peter the Venerable. The Letters of Peter the Venerable. Edited by Giles Constable. 2 vols. Harvard Historical Studies 78. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Later editions, revisions and reprints

With editions other than the first, mention the edition number and the date of the publication that is used:

  • Strunk, William, Jr., and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. New York: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

If the original publication details—particularly the date—are relevant, include them. The following examples may be useful:

  • Bahadur, Gaiutra. Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. First published 2013 by C. Hurst (London).
  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925. Reprinted with preface and notes by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Collier Books, 1992. Page references are to the 1992 edition.

Manuscripts

In the main text, the short title of the manuscript is given, and a more elaborate footnote gives the manuscript’s place, library, shelfmark, date, origin and (if necessary) specifies relevant folios. Unique premodern manuscripts that are not press-printed and have no publisher do not need to be taken up in the references section.

  • Main text: Troyes MS 802.
  • Footnote: Troyes, Médiathèque, MS 802, (saec. XIII2, origin unknown), fols. 1–88vb.

Web pages and published electronic sources

References to web pages should have a URL. So do scholarly publications that can otherwise not be traced.
A URL based on a DOI (i.e. appended to https://doi.org/), when available, is preferable to the URL that appears in your browser’s address bar when viewing the article (or the abstract). The URL is always the last part of a citation.

Web pages always require access dates (day, month and year of consultation) and can include time stamps (when last edited).
Published electronic sources do not, although the author may decide whether it is useful to include it.

Footnote:

  • See the blog [John Doe], "[Title]," accessed February 10, 2015, [URL].
  • Frank P. Whitney, “The Six-Year High School in Cleveland,” School Review 37, no. 4 (1929): 268, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1078814.

Bibliography:

  • Narr, Charlotte F., and Amy C. Krist, “Host Diet Alters Trematode Replication and Elemental Composition.” Freshwater Science 34, no. 1 (2015): 81-91. Accessed August 1,2017. https://doi.org/10.1086/679411.

Figures

Figures included in the article are captioned as Figure x: Caption. When possible, always provide source and license. Copyright and permissions for reproduction of Figures are the responsibility of the author. When in doubt, contact the editors.

Numbers

Whole numbers from zero through one hundred and certain round multiples of those numbers are spelled out in full. Numbers in the beginning of a sentence are also spelled out.

  • “eleventh-century manuscript”
  • “thirty-two”
  • “seven hundred”
  • “one thousand years”
  • “three million years”

For numbered divisions, JOLCEL adheres to Chicago’s traditional system for numerals (presented below), which is efficient and unambiguous. Use the en dash (–), which is wider than the hyphen (-) but narrower than the em dash (—).

  • Below 100: 3–10, 71–72, 96–117
  • 100 or multiples of 100: 100–104, 1100–1113
  • 101 through 109, 201 through 209, etc.: 101–8, 808–33, 1103–4
  • 110 through 199, 210 through 299, etc.: 321–28, 498–532, 1087–89

Roman numerals are always given in full.

Citations and translations

  • Citations
    • long citations running over more than three lines (which corresponds to ca. 40 words, ca. 200 characters) become a block quote.
    • always in the original language, both in the main text and in block quotes.
    • long citations in Latin and Greek are treated in the same way as other languages, i.e. not italicized, but between double quotation marks.
    • translations (below) of citations are compulsory and are given in footnote.
  • Translations
    • authors providing their own translations should so state, in parentheses following the translation, in a note, or in the prefatory material—for example, “my translation” or “Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.”
    • translations of short citations (only a handful of words) can be included in the body text between brackets, e.g., “Quevedo’s first editor, José Antonio González de Salas, assigned it the following title: “Amor constant mas allà de la muerte” (“Love constant beyond death”).” or “The tercets repeat this movement from spirit to matter or, to be more precise, from soul (alma) to veins and marrow (venas, medulas).”
    • In translations of poetry in footnotes, verses are separated by forward slashes (/), not by line breaks (i.e., NOT with return or enter ⏎).

On language, register and style

  • Consistent with Chicago, quotation marks are always closed after punctuation, “as such,” even if the punctuation mark does not correspond to the one in the quoted source.
  • Use of "double quotation marks," 'single quotation marks,' and italics: 
    • Double quotation marks are used for citations only. The exception is italicized isolated words in a different language, e.g., in Latin.
      • e.g., "As Noordegraaf notes, "Not only did Leigh make many a humorous observation on the linguistic usage of the lower classes, he also levelled sharp criticism against his social equals and superiors." [...]"
    • Single quotation marks are used for emphatic, ironic, specialized-terminological or nonstandard use.
      • e.g., "All these effects go some way to achieve a 'domesticating' effect, that is, bringing the Greek world of Euripides' play closer to the more familiar Roman world."
    • Italics are used to put emphasis on words or terms or for all text in other languages other than the main language (esp. when discussing a word as word, rather than referring to the its meaning).
      • e.g., "Classical languages were beneficial precisely because of their non-utility."
      • e.g., "Marcus Cornelius Fronto teased a poet-friend about the latter’s misuse of the word harena."
      • e.g., "The adjective oblectatoria is attested in classical Latin only in Gellius."
  • Spelling: for English-written articles, the author is free to choose British or American spelling and the according style rules as long as they are used consistently.
  • Names are preferred in the original language unless another variant is more common, like Vergil, Augustine, etc.
  • Use "see [...]", never “cf.” Cross references are written as “see n. #.”
  • For interruptions and afterthoughts mid-sentence, the em dash (—) is used without spaces, both before and after the word.
    • e.g., “Men like Lucian—men who were born outside of and might perhaps never see Athens—can only have an ironic relationship to the organic intellectualism that Socrates espoused.”