Manuscripts should be submitted to the Managing Editor who will forward the manuscript to the appropriate editor: Michelle Yeh for modern literature and criticism, Haun Saussy for traditional poetry and literary criticism, and Rania Huntington for traditional fiction and drama. Books for review and related correspondence should be directed directly to the Book Review Editors: William Nienhauser (for traditional literature) or Christopher Lupke (for modern literature). For appropriate formats and word-processing information relevant to all submissions and reviews, see the Style Sheet information below.
SUBMISSIONS
MANUSCRIPTS SUBMITTED TO CLEAR FOR POSSIBLE PUBLICATION SHOULD BE SENT TO THE MANAGING EDITOR:
Masha Kobzeva, Managing Editor
Since the identity of the author is not made known to the readers, authors should avoid identifying themselves in notes. Electronic submissions are encouraged.
See “Final Versions” section below for preferred formats. If submitting by mail, a cover sheet with the title and the author’s name should be provided; only the title should appear on the first page of the text. Likewise the identity of the readers will not be made known to the author.
Final versions of essays should be submitted electronically. Book reviews should similarly be submitted to the Book Review Editor who solicited the review: William Nienhauser (Early China to the end of the Tang dynasty) or Christopher Lupke (Song dynasty to the present). We do not accept unsolicited book reviews. All text and notes must be double-spaced, with only one space between sentences. While any standard word processing program is acceptable, submissions created with the native Chinese support in Macintosh OS X or Microsoft Windows and submitted in Microsoft Word format are preferred. Please use the SimSun font for Chinese. Provide the Chinese text for all quoted poems and prose passages.
The editors retain the right to make final stylistic changes.
Manuscripts are normally between thirty and sixty pages, double-spaced throughout—this includes text, quoted extracts, and footnotes. Number all notes consecutively. When citing names, terms, titles., etc., in Chinese or Japanese, give the Romanized form first, then the graphs and, when relevant, English translation. Translations of book titles are in the notes are optional; do not provide characters for publishers, cities, or any terms that will be familiar to our readership (such as Chung-kuo, xiaoshuo, etc.). Redundant references will be removed at the copy-editing stage. Style in notes, etc. should be consistent throughout the essay, and should use an author-title format such as are found in the Chicago Manual of Style or the MLA Handbook — not the author-date format common in social-science publications. A bibliography is not needed.
Romanization of Chinese may be either in modified Wade-Giles (omitting marks above e in jen, chen, etc. and umlauts above u in yun and yuan) or in Hanyu pinyin. Use one system throughout except when quoted texts utilize the other Romanization. Do not hyphenate between syllables when using pinyin; group syllables into words in either Romanization. Examples: Chung-kuo t’ung-su hsiao-shuo; Xiandai wenxue cidian. Do not forget macrons over long vowels in Romanized Japanese.
Abbreviations, if used in text or notes, should be easy to identify and are preferable to acronyms; short titles are generally the best solution: in a discussion of Sanguo zhi tongsu yanyi, use Sanguo or yanyi rather than SGZTSYY; Ku-tien hsi-ch’ü ts’un-mu hui-kao, ed. Chuang I-fu, might be shortened in notes to Ts’un-mu hui-k’ao with or without the editor’s surname.
References to primary texts that circulate in many different editions should include information (such as chapter numbers) that are constant across editions. For example, when citing Honglou meng, include the chapter number (e.g., “Chapter 53”); when citing Shijing, include Mao poem number (e.g., “Mao 193”); when citing Lunyu, include chapter and paragraph (e.g., “6.18”). Additionally, provide details of the specific edition used (e.g., “Shih-san-ching chu-shu (1815; rpt. Taipei: I-wen, 1960), 4:405-9”).
For other style and format questions, please consult a recent number for examples.
BOOK REVIEWS
Book Reviews, in general, should not exceed 1500 words. Book Review Editors can be found on the Editors page.
The format for book review headings is as follows:
Title: Subtitle, [trans./ed.] by Author. Place: Publisher, year. Pp. Roman + Arabic. Information about special features of the book such as illustrations. Price.