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Basic Publication Requirements:

1. Essays, interviews and reviews are welcome as contributions.
2. Reviews should be between 1000 and 1200 words.
3. Essays should be between 5000 and 7000 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 down 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

6. MLA style should be used throughout. Major failure to comply with this requirement will result in your essay being automatically rejected.
7. The number of footnotes should be kept to a minimum. When simply citing the source, use in-text citations.
8. Italics (and not underlining) should be used for titles of larger works, and double quotation marks for titles of shorter works.
9. Use British spelling but use -ize endings (realize, organize, etc.).

Font requirements and formatting:

1. Submitted texts should be edited in MS WORD, 1997 edition or later.
2. All margins should be 25mm.
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, bold.
5. Indent the first line of each paragraph by 10 millimetres.
6. Dashes should be shown as m-dashes, with no space before or after the dash, e.g.

    He felt—understandably enough—offended.
7. Avoid the following formatting tools:
a) soft return (Shift+Enter combination)
b) hard space (Space+Shift combination)
c) page division
d) footers and headers
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. Example: (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 (eg. Internet sources, personal interviews, private correspondence and 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 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 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 millimetres 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 lines should be indicated with a slash (with a space before and after).
2.  When quoted material exceeds three lines, block quotations should be used. (For punctuation and indentation, see section above.)

Omissions from quotations:

1. For an omission within a sentence, use three periods with a space before and after each period (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 periods, 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. Book with one author:

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

2. Book 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. Work 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. Work/chapter 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. 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. Guardian15 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Sept. 2009.

10. Interviews:

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

Rowling, J. K. Personal interview. 15 May 2002. Print.

Desai, Kiran. Interview. Boldtype 3.2 (May 1999): n. pag. Web. 10 Sept. 2009.

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 date of publication as well as 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 (eg. “Norton” for “W.W. Norton”). If more than one name is included, give only the first surname (eg. “Faber” for “Faber and Faber”).

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

Editorial Policy

Successive themed issues of Text Matters are advertised on the journal website in CFP, and in European Messenger. TM welcomes articles, reviews and interviews from all parts of the world.  Contributions are peer reviewed by members of the editorial board and external reviewers. Final assessment is made by the publisher's reviewer.