These are instructions for submitting papers to the ASL journals. If you would like information on submitting material to New Writing Scotland, please click here.
 

1. Presentation: Your paper should be sent as a Word document (.doc or .docx). Double spacing must be used throughout, even for quotations, notes, etc., which will be printed in single spacing. Use endnotes rather than footnotes. Authors should also supply an abstract of no more than two hundred words. The normal word limit for articles in Scottish Literary Review is 7,000, including endnotes.
   
   
2. Sub-headings: Distinguish clearly and consistently in your text between main and sub-headings; if possible avoid sub-sub-headings. Do not use a mixture of numerals and letters to indicate sub-headings; the relationship b5etween sub-headings is less confusingly conveyed by their position (centred or ranged left) and the use of capitals or italics. 
   
   
3. Italics should be used for titles of books and journals, and for foreign words. Do not italicise foreign words which are now in common English use: status quo, laissez-faire. Titles of poems (unless book length), short stories, chapters and articles should be in roman with single quotation marks.
   
   
4. Abbreviations: Many frequently used abbreviations from Latin are in roman: n.b., e.g., ibid., but use italics for c. (circa) and [sic.] , the latter always in square brackets. ETC., in roman, should be followed by a comma except when it ends a sentence.
   
   
5. Do not use full stops in abbreviations consisting of capital letters only: ASL. Use italics if the expanded version is italicised: SND (Scottish National Dictionary).
   
   
6. A full stop should be used at the end of a contraction which does not include the final letter of the word: p. (page), FR. (French), ed. (editor). There is no full stop after a contraction which ends with the final letter of the word: Dr, edn (edition).
   
   
7. Dates should be in the form 30 September 1988, and Friday, 30 September 1988. BC follows the date, but AD precedes it: 30 BC, AD 451.
   
   
8. Numbers below 100 should usually be spelt out, except in series or tables. Centuries should be spelt out: eighteenth century; with a hyphen when used adjectivally: eighteenth-century writers. Per cent should usually be spelt out.
   
   
9. Punctuation: Commas should normally be used before the final ‘and’ or ‘or’ in lists: Dunbar, Henryson, and Douglas. Apostrophes are not used in decades: the nineties, the 1960s; or in plural forms such as MPs. 
   
   
10. Capitals: Too many capitals make a page look spotty, and for your reader’s sake they should be used only when necessary.
    
    
11. Hyphens are used to avoid ambiguity (a) when a compound adjective is formed with a noun: a grief-stricken family, and (b) when an adverb might not be recognised as such: a little-known town. Many compound words are now too familiar to require hyphenating, common sense being the best guide; but words which would otherwise look ugly retain the hyphen: head-dress, cross-section.
    
    
12. Quotations of up to five lines (around sixty words) should be incorporated into the text within single quotation marks. Double quotation marks are used for quotations within quotations.
    
    
13. Quotations of more than five lines should be indented and typed in double spacing without quotation marks.
    
    
14. If you insert any words into a quotation, please enclose them in square brackets.
    
    
15. Where a quotation forms a complete sentence, the quotation mark is placed outside the concluding stop, be it full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. Where the quotation ends a sentence of your own writing, the quotation mark is placed inside the concluding stop of your sentence.
    
    
16. Paragraphs: Use indentation to signal the start of a paragraph. If you do not do this, it is often difficult to tell after an indented quotation whether a new paragraph is intended.
    
    
17. Spelling: Please adopt the spellings of Chambers Dictionary and The Concise Scots Dictionary. Where there are alternative ise/ize spellings please use the former.
    
    
18. Notes, references and bibliographies: the system followed is that laid down by the Modern Humanities Research Association in the MHRA Style Guide. In brief, references are numbered throughout the article or chapter in superior figures, the references or notes appearing at the end of the article or chapter.(a) Books should be cited in full in a first reference, in the sequence:
    
    1. Author (initials preceding surname except in an alphabetical bibliography)
    2. Full title (in italics)
    3. Editor, translator
    4. Series title and volume number
    5. Where known, number of edition if not first; number of volumes if more than one
    6. Place and year of publication (enclosed in brackets)
    7. Volume number (in roman numerals)
    8. Page number(s) of passage cited (b) Citations of articles in books should additionally give the title of the article (in roman, within single quotation marks) between the author and the full title.(c) Articles in journals should be cited in the sequence:
    • Author
    • Title of article (in roman, within single quotations marks) 
    • Title of journal (in italics) 
    • Volume number (in arabic numerals)
    • Year of publication (in brackets)
    • First and last page numbers of article 
    • If necessary, page number of particular reference(s) (in brackets)Subsequent references to the same article need only repeat the name of the author, or title if more than one book or article by the same author is cited, followed by page number(s).
      
      
19. Scottish Language, as a technical publication, employs the Author/Date system, also described in the MHRA Style Guide. Briefly, references in the text consist only of surname(s) and date, within brackets. At the end of the article, works cited are listed in alphabetical order of authors’ surnames, in the sequence:
    
    1. Author (surname followed by initials) 
    2. Date of publication 
    3. Title of article, if any (roman, with no quotation marks) 
    4. Title of book or journal (in italics) 
    5. Place of publication (for books) 
    6. Number of issue (for journals) 
    7. Page number(s) where relevant
       
       
20. Useful publications: MHRA Style Guide, obtainable from the Modern Humantities Research Association, Salisbury House, Station Road, Cambridge CB1 2LA, UK; Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, Oxford; Horace Hart, Rules for Compositors and Readers, Oxford: universally known as Hart’s Rules.

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Please submit papers for Scottish Literary Review to: 
Professor Rhona Brown, Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QH, UK 
email: rhona.brown@glasgow.ac.uk

and

Dr Scott Lyall, School of Arts and Creative Industries, Edinburgh Napier University, Merchiston Campus, 10 Colinton Road, Edinburgh EH10 5DT, UK 
email: S.Lyall@napier.ac.uk

Book reviews for Scottish Literary Review should be sent to: 
Dr Gerard McKeever, Reviews Editor, Scottish Literary Review, Room 2.48, 50 George Square, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9LH, UK
email: gerard.mckeever@ed.ac.uk

Please submit papers for Scottish Language to: 
Robert McColl Millar, School of Language & Literature, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UB, UK 
email: r.millar@abdn.ac.uk