Guidelines

Submission Guidelines

ROMARD is currently seeking submissions for publication. Anyone may submit original work for consideration provided that they hold the authorized copyright for the work. ROMARD welcomes submissions of:

• Full-length articles (8,000-10,000 words, including notes)
• Emerging Scholarship, Work in Development, & New Voices (5,000-8,000 words, including notes)
• Performance Reviews (1,500-3,000 words, including notes)
• Census of Productions
• Translations or Critical Editions of Performance Texts and other Source Materials

Please submit your entire and completed work to chief editor, Kyle A. Thomas (kathomas@missouristate.edu), in a Microsoft Word format. To ensure blind review, all identifying information must be removed not only in the content of the article but also in the submission's formatting. To remove author identification from the properties for the file, click on the following, beginning with File on the main menu: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.

We would ask that all submissions please follow our Style Guide. When submitting your work please ensure the following:

• The submission includes a title page or abstract in the main text file.
• The submission includes tables, charts, maps, graphics, illustrations or other images in a separate file. Please call out the placement for visual materials in the main text file, i.e., [Place Table 1 here] or [Insert Figure 2 near here].
• The submission is in 12-point Times New Roman font; employs italics rather than underlining; and is in a single column layout with left margins justified.
• The text uses endnotes, not footnotes or parenthetical notes. (The only acceptable parenthetical notes give act, scene, and line of a play.) Include the full bibliographic citation the first time a source is used and thereafter use short citations.
• The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.

Style Guide

ROMARD uses the Chicago Manual of Style for its format, conforming to the general guidelines of MIP. We ask that all submissions utilize endnotes rather than footnotes or parentheticals. Please include the full bibliographic citation the first time a source is used and thereafter use short citations.

Visual materials

Once a submission has been accepted for publication, it is the author’s responsibility to then secure permission to use any approved illustrative materials that are not their own. When seeking permissions, note you must get permission for the use of material in electronic editions (e.g., e-books or Amazon’s Look inside this book), as well as the physical edition. The official term for this is embedded copyright. Illustrations taken from another book are not owned by the publisher of the book. The actual owner of an illustration may be the artist or photographer, or the library or museum where it is kept. As a rule, we expect you to supply all visual material. Mark clearly in the text where each illustration needs to be inserted. For example: [PLACE ILLUSTRATION 1 HERE] or [Insert Figure 2 near here]. Additionally:

• Digital images must be at least 300 DPI (dots per inch) and minimum format of 10 x 15 cm. Note that a color spread requires images of extremely high quality and resolution, a small black-and-white image much less so; for black-and-while line artwork the minimum resolution is 600 DPI. Submit digital images in their original format. TIFF, EPS, and JPG files are all suitable. Large digital files can be sent by WeTransfer, Dropbox, or Google Drive folder.
• Printed photographs (original photos, book illustrations, etc.) must have sufficient contrast and size (at least 10 x 15 cm, preferably larger).
• Tables should be submitted in separate Word or Excel files.
• Captions should be supplied in a separate Word file.

Italics

• All single words or short phrases in languages other than English should be placed in italics; direct quotations or more substantial quotations in the standard non-italicized font.
• Where an English translation of a word is required, it should follow immediately follow in normal type, in parentheses—e.g., “the distinction between exhortatio (exhortation) and praedicatio (preaching) became very important in thirteenth-century discussions about lay preaching.”
• Use italics for titles of books and journals; titles of articles should be placed between double quotation marks.
• Titles of extant plays should be in italics, while titles of lost plays in quotation marks following the recommendations of the Lost Plays Database.
• Use non-italicized font for punctuation following italicized text if the main sentence is in non-italicized font.
• The use of bold type is discouraged, unless there is a very clear reason for using bold and it is used sparingly.

Punctuation

• Series (“Oxford”) commas should be used: commas should appear before the final “and”/“or” in a list of three or more items (e.g., truth, grace, and beauty).
• Use double quotation marks; single quotation marks belong only within double quotation marks (e.g., “This is the ‘best’ way.”)
• Translate quotation marks from different systems or languages (e.g. « … » or „…“) into the forms here (“ ”).
• Punctuation goes inside quotation marks.
• Footnotes go outside the final punctuation mark: e.g., Smith said that “this was the best way.”¹⁵
• A single space (not two) should follow periods at the end of sentences, as well as commas, colons, and other punctuation marks.
• Do use a space to separate each initial of an author or editor’s surname (e.g., B. C. Cummings, not B.C. Cummings).
• Ellipses should have a space before and after; if the beginning of the sentence is omitted following the ellipses, begin with a capital letter. Do not use ellipses at the beginning of a quotation or at the end, unless there is a specific reason such as a purposely incomplete thought or sentence.
• Possessives almost always take the ’s. This includes names ending in s or another sibilant (e.g., Jesus’s, Berlioz’s), and names with es endings (e.g., Moses’s leadership, Sophocles’s plays). When the singular form of a noun ending in s is the same as the plural, the possessives of both are formed by adding an apostrophe only (e.g., politics’ true meaning). The same applies for the name of a place, organization, or publication is a plural form ending in s, even though the entity is singular (i.e., the National Academy of Sciences’ new policy).
• Hyphenation is used where the first of two or more words is used adjectively (e.g., “a tenth-century manuscript” versus “in the tenth century”). You may find these referred to as compound adjectives or compound modifiers. Where one of the words is an adverb ending in –ly, do not hyphenate (e.g., “a handsomely bound codex”).
• Medieval Institute Publications copyeditors use the Merriam-Webster dictionary as guidance for hyphenation, particularly at ends of lines.

Numbers

• Numbers from zero to one hundred should be written out as words (so, nineteen but 345), and all numbers pertaining to even hundreds and thousands. You may depart from this rule when numerals or numbers form the main part of the text.
• Follow the Chicago Manual of Style for inclusive pairs of numbers (e.g., 96–97, 101–4, 246–48), except for spans of years, which repeat the century (1014–1103).
• Decades should be written as 860s, not 860’s.
• Use Arabic for percentages and spell out percent (e.g., 50 percent). You may depart from this rule when percentages form the main part of the text (50% – without a space).
• Use Arabic for volume numbers (whether of journals, series, or multivolume works) and for sections of medieval texts. Roman numerals are used for front matter, manuscript shelfmarks as per library usage, and in titles.
• Set dates in the m-d-y format: February 19, 2018.

Capitalization

On the whole, CMS 16 prefers a “down” style, or a sparing use of capitals. Some of the exceptions are noted below. When in doubt, consult chapter 8, “Names and Terms.”

• Nationalities and nouns deriving from people or languages are capitalized (e.g., Latinate, the Lombards), as are nouns and adjectives of movements derived from proper nouns (e.g., Christian, Platonism).
• Historical periods are capitalized (e.g., Middle Ages, the Reformation), but a descriptive designation of a period is usually lowercased – except for proper names (e.g., the medieval era, ancient Greece, the baroque period, antiquity; but the Victorian era).
• Books of the bible are capitalized but not italicized (e.g., the book of Genesis, the Gospel according to John, the First Epistle to the Corinthians); also note biblical, not Biblical; satanic, not Satanic; the Eucharist but eucharistic.
• Named prayers, canticles, creeds, etc., are capitalized but not italicized (e.g., the Ten Commandments, Kaddish, the Nicene Creed). Parables and miracles are lowercased (e.g., doxology, the parable of the prodigal son, the miracle of the loaves and fishes).
• Unique events and periods take capitals (e.g., the Last Judgement, the Peasants’ Revolt).
• Note that church is generally lowercased, unless it is part of the official name of a denomination or building, or unless it refers to the whole body of Christians in all times and places.
• References to particular parts of a book are not capitalized (e.g., chapter 1; appendix 2; part ii, figure 8).
• Seasons of the year are not capitalized (e.g., spring 1349); nor are points of the compass (north of England, northern England), except when they indicate an official name or specific concept (South America, the Western world).
• Civil, military, religious, and professional titles are capitalized when they immediately precede a personal name and are thus used as part of the name (e.g., the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop Wilberforce). When following a name or used in place of a name, a title is normally lowercased (e.g., the president, the bishop, the pope).

In most European languages, titles of books and other publications are set in sentence-style caps, with just an initial capital. English-language titles are set in headline-style caps, following these basic principles:

• The first and last words in titles and subtitles are capitalized.
• All nouns, pronouns (except the relative “that”), adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions are capitalized.
• Always capitalize the first element in a hyphenated compound. Capitalize any subsequent elements unless they are articles, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, or such modifiers as flat or sharp following musical key symbols. If the first element in the compound could not stand by itself as a word (i.e., anti, pre, etc.), do not capitalize the second element unless it is a proper noun or adjective.
• Do not capitalize: articles; prepositions; and the coordinating conjunctions and, but, or, and nor; to, whether as a preposition or as part of an infinitive; as in any function; and parts of proper names that would be lowercased in text, such as de or von.
• For journals, follow the preferred capitals style of the journal.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations and symbols are most appropriate in tabular matter, notes, bibliographies, and parenthetical references. The use of less familiar abbreviations should be limited to those terms that occur frequently enough to warrant abbreviation—roughly five times or more within an article or chapter—and the terms must be spelled out on their first occurrence. If there are a significant number of abbreviations in the text, consider an abbreviation list. The following conventional abbreviations may be used:

• ca. [not ca. or c.].
• b. (birth / born), d. (died), r. (reigned)
• Use full-stops / periods after Mr., Dr., ad., vols., eds.; and with e.g., i.e., vol., fol., no., ed., vol., chap., pp., n., trans., and so on. Other than Mr. and Dr., these abbreviations should not be used in running text.

Moreover, please note:

• Journal titles may be abbreviated if a clear abbreviation list is supplied; this may be an editorial decision.
• Do not omit the period after abbreviations such as “St.” except in titles that themselves omit it. French place names containing “Saint” are normally spelled out, and the hyphen is essential: “Saint-Denis.”
• Avoid starting sentences and footnotes with abbreviations. Use "for example," not "e.g."

People-first language