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House Style

The Spenser Review House Style 

The Spenser Review uses a modified version of MLA style for documentation and formatting.  We ask reviewers to observe the following conventions when submitting copy to be edited.

1.  Please submit the review as an email attachment, preferably a Word (.doc[x ]) or .rtf file. We are not able to format and edit .pdf, .wpd, .odt, or LaTeX files. Please contact the editor if there are any difficulties with these formats.

2.  Please include, in the name of the file, your name and that of the author of the book reviewed.

3.  Please begin the review with a bibliographical entry for the book following this format: author (or editor), title, publisher, date, number of pages, price (paperback if available, otherwise hardback), ISBN.  Example:

Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. Virgil in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 2010. vii + 299 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-19812-7. $89.00 hardback.

Below the bibliographical entry, give your name and institutional affiliation as you would like them to appear.

4.  Footnotes should be added using the appropriate function in the word processor.  In general we prefer parenthetical citations.  Bibliographical information for sources quoted more than once should be given in an initial footnote, with subsequent references provided parenthetically. Example: 

First reference in footnote: Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 23. 

Subsequent parenthetical:  (Religion 111-20)

5.  Do not use “p.” or “pp.” as abbreviations.  Give page numbers only, as in the above example.

6.  For quotations from The Faerie Queene, please use roman caps, roman l.c., and arabic numerals for book, canto, stanza, and line numbers.  Example:  

(III.xii.12.3-5) 

7.  Please follow U.S. conventions for quoting and for punctuation with quotations. Specifically:

  • Double quotation-marks for all quotations.  Reserve single-quotes for quotes-within-quotes.
  • Periods and commas go inside quotation marks.  Colons and semi-colons go outside.  Exclamation points and question-marks go inside or outside depending on whether they belong to the quotation. 
  • Parenthetical citations are treated as the final word in a clause or sentence, meaning that they do not follow a comma or period.  Example:

If we force a more far-reaching memory upon our reading experience, then we are likely to burden Redcrosse Knight’s experience of “swimming in that sea of blisful joy” (I.xii.41) during his betrothal to Una with his earlier sinful dream of his beloved in which he was “Bathed in wanton blis and wicked joy” (I.i.47). 

 

Comments

  • John N Wall 1 year, 5 months ago

    You folks included a very fine review of the Virtual Paul's Cross Project by Matthew Smith in Spenser Review some years back. I thought you might like to know that two more projects have joined the Paul's Cross site under the umbrella of the Virtual John Donne Site (https://virtualdonne.chass.ncsu.edu/). The one most of interest to Spenserians is the Virtual St Paul's Cathedral site (https://vpcathedral.chass.ncsu.edu/) where one can experience 6 hours of worship and preaching inside St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Day 1624 and a Tuesday in Advent 1625. The other is the Virtual Trinity Chapel site (https://vtcp.chass.ncsu.edu/) which provides digital models of the Chapel at Lincoln's Inn and a reconstruction of the liturgy of consecration on Ascension Day 1623. We would be grateful of another review! JNW

    Link / Reply
  • long distance moving 8 months, 1 week ago

    Exclamation points and question-marks go inside or outside depending on whether they belong to the quotation

    Link / Reply
  • Livestock Ear Tags 3 months, 3 weeks ago

    Extremely impressed by your writing!!

    Link / Reply
  • Folsom Painting Company 3 months, 1 week ago

    Please include, in the name of the file, your name and that of the author of the book reviewed.

    Link / Reply

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"House Style," Spenser Review ( ). Accessed March 19th, 2024.
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