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CounterText
Submission and Style Guidelines
Submission Guidelines
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Authors submitting papers do so on the understanding that the work has not yet
been published and it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
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The selection of papers for publication is based on a three-stage process, involving
preliminary evaluation by the editors, review by the University of Malta's
Department of English, and subsequent refereeing by members of the Advisory
Editorial Board. CounterText reserves the right to reject papers at any of these stages
of evaluation. Submissions made for a particular issue of CounterText may be
considered for publication in later issues of the journal, in which case contributors
will be advised accordingly.
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Papers should not normally exceed 6000 words (including endnotes).
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Authors submitting papers should send a 50-word biography with their submission.
This may be published on the online journal if the paper is chosen for inclusion.
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A 200-word abstract should also be provided, together with up to 10 keywords
which may eventually be used to facilitate searches on the Journal’s website and for
indexing purposes.
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Texts should be presented as computer files in WORD format and should be sent as
an e-mail attachment to countertext@um.edu.mt. Authors submitting papers should
include their full name, status, contact number and postal address in their email.
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Images used in papers should be in JPEG format.
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All line diagrams and photographs should be termed 'Figures' and should be
referred to as such in the article. They should be numbered consecutively.
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It will be assumed that authors will have retained a copy of their submitted work.
Style Guidelines
Contributors to CounterText should follow the MHRA Style Guide: A Handbook for
Authors, Editors, and Writers of Theses (Second Edition). The MHRA Style Guide may be
ordered through the MHRA’s website at www.style.mhra.org.uk.
The MHRA Style Guide is also available online from this address. It may be downloaded
as an Adobe Acrobat ® PDF file from:
http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/download.sthml
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Fonts
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Only true-type fonts should be used. These include Times New Roman, Arial,
Courier New and Comic Sans MS.
Spelling
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Use British English spelling. For ambiguous spelling matters, please refer to the
Oxford English Dictionary.
Spacing and Punctuation
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Use a single space between sentences, and normally after all stops, commas, colons
and semicolons. The exceptions to this rule are: ‘e.g.’ and ‘i.e.’, where the first fullstop is not followed by a space.
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The spacing of names should be as in the following example: ‘T. S. Eliot’ not
‘T.S.Eliot’.
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Use single quotation marks. For a quotation within a quotation use double quotation
marks: e.g. ‘He said she shouted "Go away!"’ The full stop precedes the quotation
mark only when the quotation is a complete sentence, or ends with a complete
sentence. Quotations longer than 50 words should be indented.
Paragraphing
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The start of a new paragraph should be marked by a five-space indentation.
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Quotations longer than 50 words should be indented, and marked by a further fivespace indentation of all lines in the quotation.
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Contributors are asked not to use tabulation in their document.
References
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Endnotes and not footnotes should be used. Contributors are asked to include with
their submission a document that sets out, separately, the text of the endnotes for
their paper. This will facilitate preparations for eventual formatting of the online
version of the paper.
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A list of texts cited in the paper should be provided at the end of the paper, under
the title ‘List of Works Cited’, with full bibliographical details set out according to
the conventions of the MHRA Style Guide.
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The following is a list of examples showing how various common types of references
should be written. For any issues not explained here, please consult the MHRA Style
Guide.
Books
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When referring to a monograph, follow this example:
Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990), p. 260.
For subsequent references, follow this example:
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Boyd, p. 72. or Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, p. 72.
ii.
When referring to a multi-volume, multi-authored work, follow this example:
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. by Joseph R. Strayer and others (New
York: Scribner, 1982-89), VI (1985), p. 26.
For subsequent references, follow this example:
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, VI, p. 26.
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For an edited or translated work, follow this example:
Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, trans. by Andrew Hurley
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1999), p. 490.
Replace ‘trans. by’ with ‘ed. by’ or ‘rev. by’ where necessary.
Articles or Chapters in Books
When referring to an article or chapter published in a book, follow this example:
Leona Toker, ‘Nabokov and Bergson on Duration and Reflexivity’, in
Nabokov’s World, 2 vols, ed. by Jane Grayson, Arnold McMillin and
Priscilla Meyer (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), I, pp. 132-140, (p. 138).
For subsequent references, follow example:
Toker, ‘Nabokov and Bergson on Duration and Reflexivity’, p. 134.
Articles in Journals
When referring to an article published in a journal, follow this example:
Bennet, Maurice J., ‘The Detective Fiction of Poe and Borges’, Comparative
Literature, 35 (1983), 262-275 (p. 267).
For subsequent references, follow this example:
Bennet, ‘The Detective Fiction of Poe and Borges’, p. 263.
Theses and Dissertations
When referring to unpublished theses or dissertations, follow this example:
Peter Smith, ‘Historiographic Metafiction in Great Britain from 1960 to
1990’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 1998), p. 17.
Online Articles
As far as possible, the style used for printed publications should be used when
citing online articles. Information should be given in the following order:
• Author’s name
• Title of item
• Title of complete work/resource
• Publication details (volume, issue, date)
• Full address (Universal Resource Locator (URL)) or DOI (Digital
Object Identifier) of the resource (in angle brackets)
• Date at which the resource was consulted (in square brackets)
• Location of passage cited (in parentheses)
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The following is an example of how to refer to an article published in a Webbased journal:
Steve Sammut, ‘Bird Imagery in Shakespeare’s Tragedies’, CounterText, 1.2
(2006) <http://countertext.um.edu.mt/journal/01-2/sammut.htm>
[accessed 28 December 2007] (para. 6 of 36)
Online databases
Online databases may be unique electronic publications, with no print
equivalent. When, however, one would like to refer to an online database that
provides an electronic version of an existing printed publication, it is preferable,
if possible, to cite the details of the original print edition.
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The following example is a reference to an individual poem included in a full-text
online database:
Elizabeth Jennings, ‘Rembrandt’s Late Self-Portraits’, in The Poetry Archive
<http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=
1555> [accessed 14 July 2008]
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In the following example, a complete book of poetry with its original pagination
has been included in a database forming part of a larger resource:
Davis McCombs, ‘Star Chamber’, in Ultima Thule (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2000), p. 4, in Database of Twentieth-Century American
Poetry in Literature Online <http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk> [accessed 20
September 2000]