Style Sheet for Submissions to MKS


New style sheet:  Please follow the MKS style guidelines as used in this sample article: MKSTemplate.doc, introduced in this brief video.


1. THE AUTHOR'S MANUSCRIPT

a. Copy -- Please submit copy electronically via e-mail only. Send copies in both Microsoft Word and PDF format. Be sure to include and/or attach any unusual fonts that your manuscript requires. If possible, however, please prepare your entire paper using a single Unicode-compliant font.

b. Margins -- Use an A4 page layout, and leave a wide margin of at least 2 inches (5 cm) on all sides. Text should have fully justified (not ragged) right margins. Do not add hyphens to break words between lines.

c. Typing -- Please do not use the formatted template for your first submission -- wait until your text is approved by the Editor before you invest effort in formatting. The type should be no smaller than 10 point or 10 pitch (elite). Double-space between all lines (including tables, charts, and notes).

d. Pagination -- Number all pages sequentially, including pages that have charts.

2. TYPE FACES back to TOP

a. Italics -- Use italics for all cited language material, including both real and reconstructed material, except in columnar charts or between slashes or square brackets. Also use italics for the titles of books or journals but not for articles. In a typed manuscript italics may be indicated by a single underline. Italics may be used for secondary headings.

b. Bold -- Boldface type may be used for main headings, for unnumbered subheadings, or for emphasis in the text. In a typed manuscript boldface is indicated by a wavy underline.

c. Small capitals -- Small caps may be used for emphasis in the text or for grammatical markers in morpheme-by-morpheme translations. In a typed manuscript indicate small caps by a double underline.

3. PUNCTUATION back to TOP

a. Quotation marks -- Use double quotes for direct quotation from literary sources and reported speech (e.g., John said, ). Use single quotes for a quote within quotes. Use single quotes for a translation gloss in the text stream; in some cases they can be omitted in columnar charts or tables. A period or comma follows the single quote after a translation gloss (aseh means horse.) but precedes single or double closing quotes elsewhere.

b. Parentheses, brackets, etc. -- Use parentheses (...) to enclose peripheral comments; avoid parentheses within parentheses; if necessary, substitute square brackets for the inner parentheses ([...]). Use square brackets [...] to enclose editorial comments or phonetic material. Use slashes /.../ to enclose specifically phonemic material. Use curly brackets {...} to enclose a class of material. Periods (.) go inside parentheses when a complete sentence is enclosed; otherwise periods go outside.

c. Hyphens, dashes -- Hyphenate after prefixes only when followed by a capital letter (pre-Khmer) or when the result would be ambiguous (recreation, re-creation). An en dash is used to indicate a range (12-15, May-June). An em dash is used for emphasis, a break in thought, or appositives (Will hecan hefind them?). A dash should not have a space before or after it.

d. Periods, commas, colons -- Ellipsis is indicated by three close-set periods ( ... ) with a space before and after; do not add a fourth for punctuation. Use a comma after the expressions e.g. and i.e. only when a full sentence follows. Use a comma before the conjunction that joins the last of a series of three or more coordinate items (A, B, or C). Use commas in numbers (8,000 not 8000). Do not put a space before a colon. Punctuation usually takes the same type face as the text immediately preceding it. For names, insert a space following the period after the last initial (L.M. Huang).

e. Questions, exclamations -- Use exclamation marks sparingly; overuse makes them ineffective. Question marks and exclamation marks are placed inside or outside of quote marks depending on whether or not they are part of the quotation.

4. FOOTNOTES back to TOP

a. Content -- Be sparing of footnotes. Put important material in the text and bibliographic information in the References section, and delete peripheral comments that do not contribute to the main point of the article. Footnotes will ultimately be placed at the bottom of pages for publication.

b. Sequence -- Number footnotes serially throughout the article, not page by page. They may be placed at the bottom of the page as footnotes or collected at the end of the article as endnotes.

c. Format -- Indicate the footnotes in the text with a superscript number, preferably at the end of a clause or sentence. The number follows all other punctuation. In the footnote itself the number, followed by a period, is placed at the left margin.

5. CITED FORMS back to TOP

a. Format -- A letter, word, phrase, or sentence cited as a linguistic example or as the subject of discussion should be in italics unless it is between square brackets or slashes. The gloss follows in single quotes.

b. Orthography -- Forms in a language not written with a roman-based alphabet should be transliterated or transcribed; do not add the script form without strong reason. Remember that many of our readers will not be familiar with the script.

6. ABBREVIATIONS back to TOP

a. Punctuation -- Abbreviations ending in a lowercase letter are followed by a period; abbreviations ending in a capital are not (etc. PMK).

b. Language names, grammatical terms -- Names of languages placed before cited forms are often abbreviated, but language names used as nouns are not usually abbreviated unless they are being used very frequently in the text; (MK khlang), but (khlang in Middle Khmer). Similarly with grammatical terms (nhi clf. rot) but (the classifier rot).

c. Journal names -- Titles of well known journals or frequently cited books may be abbreviated in bibliographical references, e.g. MKS, BSOAS, JA, JSS, JBRS, CAAAL. (See the latest issue of MKS for the list of accepted abbreviations.)

d. Usage -- Try to use only abbreviations that are common throughout the English-speaking world. For example, 9c for ninth century is common European but not American usage; better to use 9th cent.

7. TITLES and HEADINGS back to TOP

a. Capitalization -- Capitalize only the first word and any proper names.

b. Section headings -- Section headings, with or without a number, should be flush with the left margin. Major numbered section headings are boldface, secondary numbered section headings are italic, and minor unnumbered section headings may be boldface. Major sections start a new paragraph below the heading; secondary and minor sections may be run on with the heading.

c. Punctuation -- A section heading has a period before run-on text; there is no period if there is no run-on text.

d. Running heads -- Omit the running head on article title pages, full-page illustrations, and broadside table or charts. Blank pages should bear a page number. On the title page of articles for the running head substitute a footer with the journal name, volume number, date, and the page number for that article.

8. TABLES and CHARTS back to TOP

a. Appearance -- Plan each table or chart so that it will fit into the printed page without crowding, leaving ample white space between columns. Do not use vertical and horizontal lines unless it would not be clear without them.

b. Column heads -- Column headings should be short so as to stand clearly above their respective columns. If longer headings are needed, represent them by numbers or capital letters and explain these in the legend below the table.

c. Position and reference -- The position of tables and charts may need to be shifted by the layout editor, so they should be numbered consecutively throughout the article and should be referred to in the text by number, not by positional references such as the preceding chart.

d. Legend -- Each table or chart should have a centered legend below it containing a number, usually a short title, and, if needed, a short explanation. A long table may also have a short title at the top. Table numbers and chart number should be italic 12 points

9. SPELLING and GRAMMAR back to TOP

Either standard British or American spelling and grammar are acceptable, but be consistent throughout the article. The word data may be treated as either a count noun or a mass noun but be consistent throughout the article.

10. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE back to TOP

a. Position -- Bibliographic details should never be given in the text; it is strongly recommended that they be collected in a Reference section at the end of the article rather than scattered in footnotes.

b. Reference in text -- Brief reference in text should take form such as Haudricourt 1962 or Henderson 1952:125-6 or Liem (1974:182-96).

c. Full citation -- A full citation should have the author's name, the date of publication, the title, the editor (if any), the page numbers (if part of a volume or journal), and the publisher. A book or journal title should capitalize all main words; an article title should capitalize only the first letter of the first word and proper nouns. A book or journal title should be in italics, an article should not be. The titles of well-known journals can be abbreviated, e.g., MKS for Mon-Khmer Studies. The full title with the abbreviation will appear in the list of abbreviation at the beginning of MKS. Briefly translate foreign titles. Punctuate as in the following examples:

  • Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt.
  • Oranuch Sa-at. 1982. Meng rue monh [Meng or Mon]. Journal of Language and Culture 5.22:56-65.
  • Smalley, William A. 1976. The problem of vowels: Northern Khmer. In William A. Smalley ed., Phoneme and Orthography: Language Planning in Ten Minority Languages of Thailand, pp. 25-42. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-43.
  • Headley, Robert K., Jr. 1978. An English-Pearic vocabulary. MKS 7:61-94.

d. Personal names -- Give full personal names as shown on the book or article or as commonly used in publications by that author. Do not reduce the first name to initials unless that is the normal practice of that author. Alphabetize author's names as discussed in Section 11b.

11. PERSONAL NAMES back to TOP

a. Short reference -- Authors should be referred to by the short form that is the accepted polite form in their culture. Thus for Malay, Lao, and Thai names it is usually the first (given) name, for Vietnamese names it is usually the last (given) name, for Chinese names it is usually the first (family) name; and for European names it is usually the last (family) name. Cambodian names don't generally have short forms. If an authors preference is known to be different from this, follow that preference; e.g., Nguyen Dinh Hoa prefers to be referred to as Nguyen, but Nguyen Dang Liem preferred to be referred to as Liem. In MKS the author's name at the beginning of an article gives his preferred short form in full caps.

b. Alphabetization -- Alphabetize according to the short reference part of the name (Section 11a); if it is necessary to turn the author's name around, as with European names, insert a comma after the alphabetized part, as in the examples in Section 10c. Chinese and Vietnamese names, however, should be alphabetized according to the first (family) name, as is their current scholarly practice. Burmese names should move the honorific (U, Naw, Saw, etc.) to the end before alphabetizing.

12. REFERENCES back to TOP

Books:

  • Benedict, Paul K. 1972. Sino-Tibetan: A Conspectus. Contributing editor: James A. Matisoff. Cambridge University Press.
  • Jacob, Judith M. 1974. A Concise Cambodian-English Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press.

ARTICLES:

  • Headley, Robert K. Jr. 1978. An English-Pearic vocabulary. MKS 7:61-94.
  • Lindell, Kristina. 1974. A Vocabulary of the Yuan dialect of the Kammu language. Acta Orientalia 36:191-207.

A reference with EDITORS:

  • Ai Ching. 1972. A Miao secret language. In Herbert C. Purnell, Jr. ed., MYLS, pp. 235-6. Ithaca: Cornell University.
  • Catlin, Amy. 1982. Speech surrogate systems of the Hmong: From singing voices to talking reeds. In Bruce T. Downing and Douglas P. Olney eds., The Hmong in the West, pp. 170-201. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs.
  • Rousseau, J. 1974. A Vocabulary of Baluy Kayan. In J. Rousseau ed., SMJ 22.45:93-152.

A reference with REVIEWER:

  • David Thomas. 1983. Review of Jenner & Pou, Lexicon of Khmer Morphology. NOL 25:44.

A reference to an UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT:

  • Ai Ching. n.d. A Miao secret language. Unpublished ms. 27 pp.

A reference to a PAPER presented at a CONFERENCE:

  • Benedict, Paul K. 1996. Interphyla flow in Southeast Asia. Paper presented on January 8th at the Fourth International Symposium on Language and Linguistics, Pan-Asiatic Linguistics, Bangkok, Thailand, (January 8-10, 1996