Authors submitting to the Journal of English Linguistics should format manuscripts according to these style guides, in order of precedent:

1. JEngL style sheet (this page)
2. Unified Style Sheet of the Linguistic Society of America
3. Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed.

This page provides an overview of formatting guidelines. It also lists matters of style that are idiosnycratic to JEngL. For convenience, a few points from USS that authors often encounter when submitting to the journal are also noted. Please address questions about JEngL style to jengl@missouri.edu.

General Formatting Guidelines

File Format

Please upload your document in Word (DOC or DOCX) format. Our publisher's system does not currently accept open access formats like ODT. Please do not upload documents as PDFs. We screen all manuscripts for information that might compromise anonymity and, if we have an editable version of a file, we can fix these issues without delaying the review process. If files are uploaded as PDFs, we must unsubmit the file, return it to the author, and ask the author to resubmit. So, PDFs risk delaying review. Graphics should be submitted as TIFF or EPS, though we can also work with BMP and JPEG.

Anonymity

Please assure that the manuscript is anonymous to facilitate double-blind peer review. In addition to obscuring authors' identities, please remove acknowledgements, institutional affiliations, and funding descriptions that might compromise anonymity. If a manuscript is accepted for publication, there will be opportunity to reinsert all such references.

Font size/type

Use twelve-point Times New Roman typeface for all text except for special phonetic characters. IPA should be in Doulos SIL, Lucida Sans Unicode (PC), or Lucida Grande (Mac). Please use one of these specific fonts for IPA, rather than the IPA extensions that are available within Times New Roman and other font packages. The IPA extensions do not convert to PDF in a consistent way, which increases the likelihood that errors will be introduced into your manuscript as it is sent to reviewers.

Double Spacing

Double-space everything in the main text, including examples and block quotations, as well as the endnotes and references. Tables can be single-spaced.

Headings and subheadings

Do not number headings and subheadings. Organize the manuscript into unnumbered main headings with no more than one level of subheading. Center main headings, using boldface letters and title case; left-justify subheadings, using title case and non-boldface letters.

Endnotes

Use endnotes, not footnotes. Endnotes are appropriate for material that is supplemental to the main body text only (i.e., do not use endnotes to cite references), but still essential for inclusion in the article. Group endnotes on a separate page after the body of the article, before references. Use the heading Notes centered in bold. Write endnotes as part of the main article text; do not use Microsoft Word’s “Insert Endnote” command. The first line of each endnote should begin with a .5-inch indent, followed by a non-superscript number and period (e.g., 1.) Within the body of the article, place endnote numbers in superscript after the punctuation at the end of a clause or sentence.

Tables

Number tables and place them on separate pages after references, before figures. In the text itself, indicate the approximate position of the table with "[TABLE 1 HERE]." Reference all tables in the text at least once. Place table headings two double-spaced lines above the table. Left-justify the heading using boldface and all capital letters. Place table titles on the next double-spaced line. Left-justify the title, using non-boldface letters and title case. For example:

TABLE 1

Frequency of Causative get and have in Speech and Writing

Figures

Number figures and place them on separate pages at the end of the document after any tables. In the text itself, indicate the approximate position of the table with "[FIGURE 1 HERE]." Also be sure to reference all figures in the text at least once. Place figure headings one double-spaced line above the figure, using boldface letters and title case. Separate the figure heading from the figure title with a colon, using non-boldface type and title case. For example:

Figure 1: Map of the Island of Jamaica, Showing Kingston and Rural Towns

Example Sentence

Number all example sentences, and surround numbers with parentheses. Indent the entire line with one .5-inch tab, then tab again after the number. This should align the beginning of the example sentence at 1 inch. For example:

     (1)  The students were expelled by the principal.

     (2)  The principal expelled the students.

Please do not use Microsoft Word's auto-numbering function.

Spaces

Place only one space after sentence-final punctuation.

JEngL-Specific Style Guidelines

American punctuation and spelling conventions

Because the JEngL is published in the U.S., use American, rather than Commonwealth, conventions. These include:

• Place periods and commas inside of single and double quotation marks.
• Use commas before and and or in lists of more than two items.
• Use a comma after the abbreviations e.g. and i.e.
• The derivational morpheme -ise/-ize is typically rendered as -ize.
• Note American spelling of words that differ from Commonwealth spellings (e.g. color instead of colour, theater instead of theatre)
• See notes on quotation marks below.

Italics

Use for linguistic tokens. Use also for non-English terms that are generally unfamiliar to English-speakers. Do not italicize common Latin abbreviations like i.e., e.g., and et al. Use for book titles. Do not use special fonts (bold, italic, or underlining) for emphasis.

Double quotation marks

Use for direct quotations. Use also in the first occurrence of a technical term that requires definition or of a word used in specialized or unusual sense. After the first, double-quoted occurrence, use no special formatting on the term.

Single quotation marks

Use for glosses. This includes translations of non-English terms and semantic equivalents. Use also for quoted materials that are embedded within other quoted materials.

Numbers

Write numbers between zero and one hundred as words. Use numerals for larger numbers. Also use numerals for numbers in pairs or sets, as well as before the word percent. Do not use the percent sign (%) in running text. Do not use a comma after the thousands place in numbers from 1000 to 9999, inclusive.

Colons

Do not capitalize the first word after a colon.

References (from USS)

Parenthetical Citations

Separate the year and page number(s) using a colon (do not insert a space after this colon). Separate works by the same author with commas; separate the works of different authors with semicolons. In parenthetical citations, use the ampersand (&) instead of and in works with multiple authors, and do not insert a comma before the ampersand. In running text, use and between multiple authors, and insert a comma before and in the case of three or more authors (or use “et al”). Do not use abbreviations for pages or passages (e.g., p. or pp.). Use pages wherever possible, not year alone. Do not use chapter or section numbers in place of page numbers. Use "cf." sparingly and only when meaning 'compare to' or 'see elsewhere.' A few examples:

• Chomsky (1965:11) argues that...
• It is generally acknowledged that language usage varies by genre (Meyer 1991:62-63).
• As Labov (2006:399) noted...
• ...other varieties outside the realm of the standard or standardizable (Woolard 1991; Silverstein 1992, 1995; Gal & Irvine 1995; Lippi-Green 1997; Irvine & Gal 2000; Milroy 2000).
• There are now good manuals to introduce students to the complex topic of corpus manipulation and analysis (e.g., Kennedy 1998; Biber, Conrad & Reppen 1998).

Citations in References

Use .5 column inch hanging indent and spell out all given names. Use sentence case for non-recurring publications, such as books, articles, and dissertations, but title case for recurring publications, such as journals and series. We consider dictionaries to be recurring publications. Please observe this capitalization convention both in running text and in the references section. For multiple works by the same author, list the publications from the earliest to the most recent, with the author’s full name listed for each entry; if two publications occur in the same year, use (a, b, c) to specify. Below are some examples of bibliographic forms.

Book:
Trudgill, Peter & Jean Hannah. 1985. International English: A guide to varieties of standard English. 2nd edn. London: Edward Arnold.

Reprinted Book:
Austin, John Langshaw. 1962\1975. How to do things with words. J.O. Urmson & Marina Sbisà (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon.

Edited book:
Bohannan, Paul & John Middleton (eds.). 1968. Kinship and social organization. Garden City: The Natural History Press.

Contribution to a book:
Tax, Sol. 1937. Social organization of the Fox Indians. In Fred Eggan (ed.), Social anthropology of North American Indian tribes, 3-34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Journal article:
DuBois, Sylvie & Barbara Horvath. 2000. When the music changes, you change too: Gender and language change in Cajun English. Language Variation and Change 11(3). 287-313.

Multi-volume work:
Langacker, Ronald. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1, Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Dictionary:
Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Unpublished presentation:
Silverstein, Michael. 1995. Indexical order and the dialectics of social life. Paper presented at SALSA III, University of Texas, Austin, TX.

Thesis or dissertation:
Dyer, Judy. 2000. Language and identity in a Scottish-English community: A phonological and discoursal analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan PhD dissertation.

Internet content:
Linguistic Society of America. 1998. The LSA resolution on the Ebonics issue. http://www.lsadc.org (17 May, 2006).

Linguistic corpus:
The British National Corpus, version 2 (BNC World). 2001. Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. URL: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk

(Note: If a corpus provides a preferred citation--e.g., the corpora at byu.corpora.edu--follow the corpus-specific guidelines.)

Software:
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink. 2010. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.1.23, retrieved Jan 2010 from http://www.praat.org/

Newspaper article:
Fuller, Chet. 1988. Untitled article. Atlanta Journal/Constitution. 14 November: A11-12.

Copyrighted Material

It is the author’s responsibility to secure permission for any copyrighted material used in an article. We require signed permission from the copyright holder if quoted material (1) exceeds the amount allowed under the “fair use” provisions of copyright law, or (2) the author quotes creative material. Please contact us and we will send you a permission form that the publisher requires holders of copyright to sign.