Shakespeare Studies

Notes for Contributors to Shakespeare Studies

Major Points

Basic style  Please submit your typescript in British style: use British spelling and single quotation marks (double ones are used only for quotation within quotation).  However, authors who normally use American style need not depart from this. 

The following forms are preferred: 6 July 1960, the 1930s, connection, idealize, characterization, enquiry, judgement, Leontes' (i.e. for 'classical' names), Jones's (i.e. for modern names), medieval, Shakespearian.

English  Contributors whose main language is not English should have their English checked by a competent English speaker.

Typescript  Type or print on one side of A4.  Place footnote material at the end of your text.  Use double spacing.  Avoid creating 'Works Cited'; all the details of references should be in footnotes.

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Other Points

Numbers  In expressing inclusive numbers falling within the same hundred, the last two figures should be given: 13-14, 44-48, 103-09, 1933-34.

References  Quotations from Shakespeare should be from G. Blakemore Evans, gen. ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).  If for any reason other editions are preferred, state the source in the first convenient note.

The first reference to a book should be in the form:

E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923; repr. 1974), vol. 1, p. 123.

The first reference to an article in a book should be in the form:

Marie Therese Jones-Davies, 'Shakespeare and the Myth of Hercules', in Reclamations of Shakespeare, ed. by A. J. Hoenselaars, Studies in Literature 15 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 57-74.

The first reference to a journal should be in the form:

Stephen Greenblatt, 'Sidney's Arcadia and the Mixed Mode', Studies in Philology 70.3 (July 1973), 269-278 (p. 270).

Subsequent references:

Greenblatt, p. 272.

When more than one source of the same author are used:

Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, p. 112.

Do not use Ibid or op. cit.

Act, scene, line references to plays should be in the form: Hamlet, 3. 4. 24-25.

Quotations  Never fail to specify the edition you used.  Prose quotations of fewer than about forty words and verse quotations of less than three lines may be run on in the text, within single quotation marks; verse line divisions should be indicated by an oblique ( / ) with a space on each side.  Quotations within the body of the text should normally be followed by a parenthetical reference like (3.4.23-26) and (p. 78), after which the full stop comes.  Longer quotations should be indented.  When quoting from plays, speakers' names should be given in small capitals without final punctuation, as follows:

hermia  And are you grown so high in his esteem,

Because I am so dwarfish and so low?

(A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3. 2. 294-95)

Italic type  Italic type should be indicated by underlining it.  When words which would normally be italicized appear in upper case or italic context, they should be placed within inverted commas: From 'Mankind' to Marlowe.

Abbreviations  Full stops are not used when the last letter of the full form of a word is the same as the last letter of the abbreviated form: Mr, Dr, Mrs, Ms, Mme, St, nos, vols

but note the exception 'no.' (for Italian 'numero').

Other abbreviations take the full point:

M. (Monsieur), p., pp., vol.

Journal titles should not be abbreviated, except where the journal title is itself an abbreviation (PMLA, TLS, ELH).

Do not use 'l.' for 'line', and 'll.' for 'lines'.  Do not use 'U' for 'University', and 'P' for 'Press'. 

Ellipsis  In order to distinguish points that appear in the original and points indicating an ellipsis, indicate an ellipsis by means of three points with space within brackets ([. . .]).  When you omit a line or lines in quoted poems or verses, indicate it by putting as many points within brackets as will cover the length of a line.

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