Aims and scope | Manuscript types | Manuscript preparation and requirements | Formatting and style | Policy on prior publication | English language editing services | Competing interests | Authorship and contributorship | Author affiliations | ORCiD | Supplementary materials | Author hub | Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
The Journal of Linguistics encourages submissions using LaTex - template files for the journal can be found at the link below. Submissions in MS Word are also welcome.
JL LaTeX Template Files
Aims and scope
The Journal of Linguistics (JL) is concerned with all branches of theoretical linguistics. Preference is given to Research Articles which present analyses or generalisations based on sound empirical work, which results in making a clear and original contribution to current debate in theoretical linguistics. Papers should be accessible to non-specialist linguists with an interest in the paper's topic.
The journal also provides an excellent survey of recent linguistics publications, with Book Reviews and Review Articles on major works marking important theoretical advances. The journal includes a Notes and Discussion and a Squib section for briefer contributions to current debate. The Editors also welcome proposals for overview papers for the Looking Back, Moving Forward section.
Special issues
JL Editors encourage well-developed proposals for guest edited special thematic issues. Special issue Research Articles will have strong theoretical content and be accessible to the broad JL readership.
Potential Guest Editors are asked to submit a synopsis of the proposed special issue (up to 3 pages), outlining how – in line with the aims of the Journal of Linguistics – the collection as a whole would make an original contribution to current debate in theoretical linguistics and how each paper would fit into the volume as a whole.
Proposals will be subject to editorial consideration and approval. The papers will undergo the standard JL peer review process (i.e. 3 external reviewers per paper) and one of the JL Editors will be assigned to collaborate with the Guest Editors during the process. The space available for a special issue is up to 232 printed pages.
Special issue proposals can be submitted to the journal’s Managing Editor, Ewa Jaworska ([email protected]).
Manuscript types
Research Articles
Word length: Maximum 15,000 words, including references, footnotes and any appendices.
This applies to new submissions, papers revised and resubmitted after refereeing, and final version of papers accepted for publication. If a longer manuscript is submitted for some reason, the cover letter must include a note making a convincing case for an exception to this limit.
Sections: Manuscripts should include an abstract and a short list of keywords/key phrases.
Looking Back, Moving Forward
Scope: Articles in this section examine some notion, concept, assumption or theoretical position, to assess its role in the development of theoretical linguistics and to consider its current status and the key questions it raises for future theoretical research. We would suggest that the review chapter which frequently forms part of a PhD thesis could in some cases be turned into an article suitable under this heading. The theme, scope, accessibility and format of the papers should be consistent with JL’s editorial policy.
Word length: Maximum 15,000 words, including references, footnotes and any appendices.
Sections: Manuscripts should include an abstract and a short list of keywords/key phrases.
Notes and Discussion
Scope: Articles in this section are appropriate for comments on articles published earlier in JL.
Word length: Maximum 4,000 words, including references, footnotes and any appendices.
Sections: Manuscripts should include a brief abstract and a short list of keywords.
Squibs
Scope: Squibs are brief contributions on a matter of theory or data in relation to theory, without necessarily providing a complete account.
Word length: Maximum 4,000 words, including references, footnotes and any appendices.
Sections: Manuscripts should include a brief abstract and a short list of keywords/key phrases.
Book Reviews
Scope: Book Reviews provide a short summary and evaluation of the content of the book, which also contextualises it in terms of current debate.
Book Reviews are commissioned by the Reviews Editor only. Unsolicited Book Reviews are generally not accepted but offers can be made by contacting the Reviews Editor (see here for more details).
Word length: Maximum 2,000 words.
Manuscripts which substantially exceed the word limit may be cut or sent back to the author to be shortened. If neither is acceptable to the author, the Reviews Editor may ask for the book to be returned so that another reviewer can be found
References: References in Book Beviews should be kept to a minimum. There should be no more than 8 references in a 2,000-word review and no more than 5 in a shorter review. The Review Editor may cut longer lists.
Review Articles
Scope: Review Articles are more substantial pieces of work than a Book Review. Apart from clearly summarising and evaluating the book, they should seek to take up some of the ideas in the book and take the debate forward either by extending them in some way or by taking issue with them. Review Articles should also seek to place the book in its wider linguistic context by referring to other literature within the sub-field. Thus, authors should expect comments and suggestions for changes, and be prepared to revise the initial draft before publication.
Unsolicited review articles are not accepted but offers can be made by contacting the Reviews Editor.
Word length: Maximum 15,000 words, including footnotes and references.
Sections: Manuscripts should include an abstract and a short set of keywords/key phrases.
Manuscript preparation and requirements
Language and authorship
Language: All manuscripts submitted to JL must be written in English, in academic language and style appropriate for a mainstream academic linguistics journal.
See below for more information about language editing services.
Multiple submissions: JL will only consider one paper by a given author or co-author at a time.
General formatting guidelines
JL welcomes submissions in MS Word and LaTeX. Please find the LaTeX templates here:
JL LaTeX Template Files
Prior to refereeing and acceptance, the manuscripts may be formatted broadly within the convention of mainstream linguistics journals. Any tables, figures, footnotes and any appendices must be in their intended position within a single manuscript file.
- Page breaks across tables, figures and numbered glossed examples should be avoided.
- The paper must be anonymous. This means that the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s) are not included in the manuscript file, and all acknowledgements, funding information and personalised data-source information are omitted. Citations to work conducted by the author(s) need not be anonymised but should be talked about in third person to preserve anonymity. Please ensure that all materials in online repositories are anonymised (i.e. use anonymised view-only links on OSF and make sure that scripts contain no author-identifying information).
- The file itself should not reveal the author’s identity through the information that may be present in the file’s Properties.
- IPA symbols should be set in Doulos SIL (downloadable here).
- Following acceptance, papers must be formatted fully in agreement with JL’s ’Formatting and style’ section below.
Formatting and style
Prior to refereeing, tables and figures should be in their intended position within the manuscript file. Following acceptance, the manuscript must be formatted fully in agreement with this section.
Following acceptance for publication, the material is submitted in MS Word or LaTeX, and corresponding PDF files.
- LaTeX users can obtain customised style files here: JL LaTeX Template Files.
- The guidance in this section applies fully to manuscripts formatted in MS Word. For properties that are not specified in the LaTeX template – such as, for instance, the use of quotation marks, abbreviations, small caps, bold and italics, capitalisation, referencing, example placement, etc. – LaTeX authors should follow the guidance in this section.
- Acknowledging referees: We hope that you will appreciate the work of the JL referees on your paper. If so, we would encourage you to recognise this in the Acknowledgements, following acceptance for publication.
1. Pagination and organisation of the manuscript
Page numbers: Please insert page numbers in the top right corner of every page.
- Number continuously throughout the title page, abstract, article’s main text, appendix, references, and endnotes.
- Except for automatic page and footnote numbering, autonumbering and auto-formatting functions should not be used in the main-text file (this concerns section and subsection headings; example, table and figure numbering; paragraph breaks; and cross-referencing bibliographic citations, examples, tables and figures).
- Please do not use a running header, nor include any additional information such as a date or word count.
Title page: The title page should include the title of the article, authors' names and affiliations, on separate lines, as in the pattern shown below, and corresponding author's e-mail address, followed by an alphabetically ordered list of keywords/key phrases and an abstract of about 200 words.
Article Title: In sentence capitalisation
NameA SurnameA1 and NameB SurnameB2
1University of X
Email: [email protected]
2University of Y
Keywords: p, r, s, q
Abstract
2. Spacing, margins and other settings
The manuscript should be double-space throughout, with standard margins on all four sides of all the pages. Except for the first paragraph of a new section or subsection, the first line of every new paragraph is indented.
- Please do not mark paragraph breaks by extra line spacing.
- If the paper includes examples with word-for-word glosses, please set default tabstop at 0.3 cm and use it throughout to fix the alignment (in Word: Page Layout > Paragraph > Tabs > Default tab stop > 0.3 cm).
- Please do not use the space bar to calibrate word-for-word alignment in examples or to calibrate any other vertical alignment – always tabs.
3. Section and subsection headings
These should be typed (not auto-formatted) on separate lines, in bold, not italics, 12pt font size, numbered and punctuated exactly as in the following example – the numbers not in italics with a single space between the number and text:
1. Phonological structure
1.1. Metrical phonology
1.1.1. Metrical grids
4. Style and spelling
Contributors should be sensitive to the social implications of language choice and seek wording free of discriminatory overtones in matters such as race and gender.
- Either British English or US English conventions for spelling and expression should be followed consistently.
- In words with alternative -ize/-ise spellings, either can be used, consistently throughout the text, but note that analyze is only used in conjunction with US spelling elsewhere.
- In publication titles and direct quotations, the spelling should be exactly as in the original. Please run a spellchecker on the final draft to eliminate detectable typos.
5. Abbreviations
Writing should be non-elliptical.
- Page number spans should be given in full, e.g. 152–155 and 48–49 (rather than 152–3 or 152ff. and 48f.).
- Abbreviations of rule names, languages, authors’ names, etc. are to be kept to an absolute minimum and clearly introduced at first occurrence if an abbreviation is indeed needed.
- Glossing abbreviations should follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules (http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php).
- Any additional abbreviations should be listed separately, alphabetically, in a footnote, where the reliance on the Leipzig Glossing Rules should also be acknowledged. The footnote should appear at the first occurrence of a relevant abbreviation.
- If abbreviations of less commonly-known technical terms are used in an article, they should be set out clearly in that endnote too.
- Natural and constructed data sources (from Old English texts, contemporary novels, corpora, etc.) should be clearly identified.
6. Quotations
Quotations of under 25 words should be included in single quotation marks in the running text.
- Any punctuation normally follows the closing quotation mark.
- Longer quotations should be set out as a separate paragraph (or paragraphs), indented at the left margin throughout, without any quotation marks and with no extra indent on the first line.
- The source work and page number must be given for all the quotations.
- Please check thoroughly against the source the accuracy of the text quoted in the manuscript (wording, punctuation, emphasis, capitalisation) and the page number(s) from which the quotation is taken.
7. Short references in text
As is shown below, variants of the author–date–page format are used for literature citations depending on the context of the sentence.
With more than one work listed, works are ordered chronologically, not alphabetically, unless two or more works by different authors have the same year of publication.
... for arguments against see Smith & Jones (1993: 481–483), Chomsky (1995: 154, 286–287; 1997), Vikner (1995: Chapter 5), Rizzi 1997, Iwakura 1999 ...
... and elsewhere (see Seuren 1985: 295–313; Browning 1996: 238 fn. 2) ...
... distinguish certain words from others ‘without having any meaning of its own’ (Hockett 1958: 575).
… structural ambiguity (Lehiste 1973, Lehiste, Olive & Streeter 1976, Beach 1991, Price et al. 1991, Speer, Crowder & Thomas 1993, Nagel et al. 1996) and pronominal reference (Akmajian & Jackendoff 1970; Hirschberg & Avesani 1997, 2000; McMahon, Pierrehumbert & Lidz 2004),
... as argued in Harris (published online 5 December 2012).
Features to note:
- The ampersand (&), not 'and' before the surname of the second (or last) co-author
- A space between the colon and the page number
- A ‘long hyphen’ (en-dash) between page numbers
- Non-elliptical page number spans
- No comma between author’s name and year
- A semicolon separates list items where author’s surname is followed by year and page numbers and/or two or more year-numbers
- Closing quotation mark is followed by the quotation's source details
- Online pre-print journal article citations include author’s surname and ‘published online DD Month YYYY’ – not just the online publication year.
8. Endnotes/Footnotes
All material which is to appear as footnotes in print should be gathered as endnotes in the manuscript. A list headed FOOTNOTES should start on a fresh page.
- The number and the length of footnotes should be kept to an absolute minimum.
- Automatic numbering is preferred for endnotes.
- Endnote markers in the text follow any punctuation, including closing quotation mark.
- Endnotes should be double-spaced and numbered consecutively, starting from number 1.
9. Numbered examples
Examples' number is set exactly at the left margin.
- All the example numbers and any letters identifying sub-examples are in separate parentheses.
- Please do not use automatic example numbering and automatic cross-referencing function.
- In the main text, examples are referred to as (4a), (5b, c), (6b–e), (7)–(9) (not (4)a, (6)b–e, (7–9)).
- Examples in footnotes are numbered with small roman numerals, also in parentheses, i.e. (i), (ii), etc.
- Please note the use of a ‘long hyphen’ (en-dash) between numbers and letter, marking a span.
- Numbered examples should be presented soon after the first mention in the text rather than at the end of a paragraph.
- Detailed description and discussion of the examples then follows in the same paragraph. This is generally regarded reader-friendly.
- Please do not routinely indent text after a numbered example because a new paragraph may not be required at each such point.
10. Examples from language other than modern English
Sentences, phrases and words in languages other than modern English which are set out as numbered examples are normally followed by a line of word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme) gloss and a line of literary translation (see Leipzig Glossing Rules at http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php).
- Glosses are fully aligned with the appropriate words or morphemes of the original using small tabs.
- The translation is included in single quotation marks and sentence-final punctuation is within the quotation marks.
- All the text in numbered examples is in roman type but if a part of a numbered example is to be highlighted, it is set in bold.
- Linguistic category labels appearing in the gloss are in small capitals.
- An asterisk (or a question mark) preceding an unacceptable (or otherwise deviant) example is vertically aligned with the neighbouring examples and is adjacent to the example, i.e. there is no space.
The following illustrate:
As noted in the Leipzig Glossing Rules, in many cases, either a category label from the metalanguage or an English word is acceptable. Thus, either of the two glosses of (6) may be chosen, depending on the purpose of the gloss.
Proper names are usually glossed as in the original and in full form, and remain not translated in the example’s translation line.
A translation or a gloss of a non-modern-English example in the running text immediately follows the example at its first occurrence and is enclosed in single quotes; the grammatical category gloss, if present, is given in small capitals in parentheses and within the quotes, e.g. moja matka ‘my mother (nom, 3sg, fem)’.
11. References
A list headed REFERENCES starts on a fresh page, after the main body of the text, acknowledgements, any funding note and any additional end-matter sections, and an appendix if there is one. The style is that of the Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics Journals (at https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/unified-style-sheet), with two main exceptions:
- Article or chapter page number spans are marked by an en-dash, not hyphen, i.e. 3–14, not 3-14).
- all page numbers are preceded by a comma – i.e. there is a comma rather than a full-stop after journal/proceedings volume number
- Dissertation entries specify the university after a comma but do not list ‘place of publication’ (e.g. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.).
- There is no comma in dates of the form DD Months YYYY.
All and only works mentioned in the text, footnotes, tables/figures and their captions must be included in the references at the end of the article.
- The list is double-spaced throughout, with the right margin non-justified.
- There are no lines or blank spaces for repeated names of authors – the names are always typed in full.
- Unless published with first-name initials only, the first names of all the authors and editors are given in full and any initials are also included. This follows the way names are presented in the original publication in most cases.
- This convention must be followed consistently throughout with the exception for those authors who are known to use initials only (e.g. R. M. W. Dixon, S. J. Hannahs).
- The full first name follows the surname only at the beginning of a new entry. A full-stop separates author name(s) and the year of the publication.
- If an entry is longer than one line, the second and subsequent lines are indented, with a hard line return only at the end of the entry and no hard returns within the entry.
- In the case of joint authors or editors use the ampersand (&), not the word ‘and’ and no comma before &. Please note also a ‘long hyphen’ (en-dash) in non-elliptical number spans (i.e. 1985–1991, 134–162; not 1985-91, 134-62).
- Abbreviations are to be avoided in the case of journal titles (e.g. Journal of Linguistics, not JL) and conference proceedings’ though the latter can include the meeting’s or the society’s acronym also.
- US state names follow each US city name appearing in the Place of Publication slot and are given using the standard two-letter abbreviation, e.g. MA (not Mass.)
Examples follow:
Books
Akmajian, Adrian, Richard A. Demers & Robert M. Harnish. 1985. Linguistics, 2nd edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kemenade, Ans van & Nigel B. Vincent (eds.). 1997. Parameters of morphosyntactic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kiparsky, Paul & Gilbert Youmans (eds.). 1989. Phonetics and phonology, vol. 1: Rhythm and meter. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Lahiri, Aditi (ed.). 2000. Analogy, leveling, markedness: Principles of change in phonology and morphology (Trends in Linguistics 127). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Luce, R. Duncan, Robert R. Bush & Eugene Galanter (eds.). 1963. Handbook of mathematical psychology, vol. 2. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pintzuk, Susan, George Tsoulas & Anthony Warner (eds.). 2000. Diachronic syntax: Models and mechanisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Webelhuth, Gert (ed.). 1995. Government and binding theory and the minimalist program: Principles and parameters in syntactic theory (Generative Syntax). Oxford: Blackwell.
Articles in edited volumes, conference proceedings and working papers
If more than one article is cited from a single edited volume, a short reference to the volume appears in the article entries (as in the examples below) and the full details of the volume appear in a separate entry.
Abraham, Werner. 1997. The interdependence of case, aspect, and referentiality in the history of German: The case of the verbal genitive. In van Kemenade & Vincent (eds.), 29–61.
Archangeli, Diana. 1985. Yawelmani noun stress: Assignment of extrametricality. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 6, 1–13.
Casali, Roderic F. 1998. Predicting ATR activity. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 34(1), 55–68.
Clark, Alexander. 2006. Pac-learning unambiguous NTS languages. International Colloquium on Grammatical Inference 8, 59–71. Berlin: Springer.
Del Gobbo, Francesca. 2003. Appositives and quantification. Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium 26 (University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 9), 73–88.
Hornstein, Norbert & Amy Weinberg. 1995 The Empty Category Principle. In Webelhuth (ed.), 241–296.
Hudson, Richard. 1996. The difficulty of (so-called) self-embedded structures. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 8, 283–314.
Kemenade, Ans van. 2000. Jespersen’s cycle revisited: Formal properties of grammaticalization. In Pintzuk et al. (eds.), 51–74.
Kiparsky, Paul. 1997. The rise of positional licensing. In van Kemenade & Vincent (eds.), 460–494.
Rice, Curt. 2006. Norwegian stress and quantity: Gaps and repairs at the phonology–morphology interface. The North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 36(1), 27–38. [ROA 781]
Rissanen, Matti. 1999. Syntax. In Roger Lass (ed.), Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 3, 187–331. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
Roberts, Ian & Anders Holmberg. 2005. On the role of parameters in Universal Grammar: A reply to Newmeyer. In Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver, Riny Huybregts, Ursula Kleinhenz & Jan Koster (eds.), Organizing grammar: Linguistic studies in honor of Henk van Riemsdijk, 538–553. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Talmi, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and synctatic description, vol. 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 57–149, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, Edwin. 1995. Theta theory. In Webelhuth (ed.), 97–124.
Willis, David. 2000. Verb movement in Slavonic conditionals. In Pintzuk et al. (eds.), 322–348.
Articles in journals
Iverson, Gregory K. 1983. Korean /s/. Journal of Phonetics 11, 191–200.
Murray, Robert W. & Theo Vennemann. 1983. Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology. Language 59(3), 514–528.
Suñer, Margarita.1988. The role of agreement in clitic-doubled constructions. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 6(3), 391–434.
Online papers, reviews, dissertations, unpublished manuscripts and other kinds of publication
Note, in particular, the Harris entry below, which is an example of a paper published online prior to print publication. See example in section 7 above of how this work is cited in the text.
Ellison. T. Mark & Ewan Klein. 2001. The best of all possible words. Review article on Diana Archangeli & D. Terence Langendoen (eds.), Optimality Theory: An overview, 1997. Journal of Linguistics 37(1), 127–143.
Franks, Steven. 2005. Bulgarian clitics are positioned in the syntax, 15 pp. http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/pe... (accessed 10 May 2007).
Harley, Heidi. 1995. Subjects, events and licensing. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Harris, John. Wide-domain r-effects in English. Journal of Linguistics, doi:10.1017/S0022226712000369. Published online by Cambridge University Press, 5 December 2012.
Joseph, Brian D. 2001. Review of R. M. W. Dixon, The rise and fall of languages, 1997. Journal of Linguistics 37.1, 180–186.
Lattewitz, Karen. 1996. Movement of verbal complements. Ms., University of Groningen.
Pedersen, Johan. 2005. The Spanish impersonal se-construction: Constructional variation and change. Constructions 1. http://www.constructions-onlin... (accessed 10 May 2007).
Watson, Kevin & Patrick Honeybone. 2002. Liverpool English, visarga in pausa, and the phonetics–phonology divide. Presented at the Toulouse Conference on English Phonology, University of Toulouse le Mirail.
Yu, Alan C. L. 2003. The morphology and phonology of infixation. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
12. Tables, tableaux, tree diagrams, AVMs, figures, etc.
These are usually single-spaced.
- Only horizontal lines are normally used in tables and both horizontal and vertical lines in OT tableaux and in intricate tables.
- Tableaux and tree diagrams and simple AVMs, etc. may be numbered like other examples.
- Tables are labelled at the top, with a table's number in bold and caption ending in a full-stop (e.g. Table 1. Table's content summary). For the final submission of papers accepted for publication, all tables with their captions are listed single-spaced, in a separate, single file. The file is named something like ‘Smith_Tables1-5’. In the main-text file, where a given table is intended to appear in the printed version of the paper, there should be a line of text <Insert Table 1 about here>. Such table-placement markers should be placed between complete paragraphs, not within a paragraph. Each table must be explicitly referred to in the text (e.g. ‘as seen in Table 1’) at least once, close to its intended location. Tables must be submitted in a single Word file and a corresponding PDF file. Where relevant, abbreviations and special formatting should be explained it the table's caption or table's footnote.
- Typically, each tree diagram, tableau, AVM and figure is set in a separate file, named e.g. Smith_Diagram(8), ‘Smith_Tableau(16)’, ‘Smith_Figure1’.
- Please do not use automatic table-numbering and cross-referencing functions.
- Where a given figure is intended to appear in the printed version of the paper, there should be a line of text <Insert Figure 1 about here>. Such figure-placement markers should be placed between complete paragraphs, not within a paragraph. Each figure must be explicitly referred to in the text (e.g. ‘as seen in Figure 1’) at least once, close to its intended location.
- Individual tableaux, tree diagrams and figures should be submitted in individual Word and corresponding PDF files. In addition to PDF, JPG and TIFF file formats are acceptable. The identity of the object will be clear from the file’s name. A file with a list of figure captions, named ‘Smith_Captions’, is to accompany figure files.
- Unlike tables and figures, tableaux, tree diagrams, AVMs, etc. can be included in the main-text file, in their intended locations.
For further advice on figure file formats, please refer to the artwork guide linked below: www.cambridge.org/core/services/authors/journals/journals-artwork-guide
13. Typographic conventions
Please use Times New Roman size 12pt font throughout the manuscript, including the title page and endnotes/footnotes and Doulos SIL (downloadable here) size 12pt font for IPA special and letter-like symbols in IPA transcription strings.
Special typefaces are used as follows:
small capitals
(i) major technical terms when first introduced
(ii) emphasis in the main body of the text or footnotes (not italic or bold)
Please do not use CAPITALS with a reduced font size.
Italics
(i) language material in the running text
(ii) titles of books, journals, proceedings and Ph.D. dissertations.
Bold
(i) article title
(ii) emphasis in numbered examples.
‘Single quotation marks’
(i) terms used in a semi-technical sense or terms whose validity is questioned
(ii) meanings of words and sentences
(iii) quotations and ‘direct speech’.
“Double quotation marks”
For quotations within quotations only.
Ampersand (&)
Used instead of the word ‘and’ before the second/last surname of a co-author or co-editor in references as well as in the main text.
A ‘long hyphen’/en-dash (–):
(i) to mark a ‘dash’ – it is then preceded and followed by a space
(ii) to mark number spans, such as in page numbers (e.g. 123–154) in the main text as well as in References, tables, figures, captions, etc.
(iii) to mark a relation, e.g. ‘syntax–phonology interface’, ‘subject–verb agreement’, ‘noun–pronoun alternation’, ‘subject–auxiliary inversion’, ‘verb–particle sequence’, ‘English–French bilingual’.
Please distinguish between a ‘long hyphen’/en-dash (–) and a short hyphen (-).
The em-dash (—) is used only in tables, to mark an empty cell.
Capitalisation
In the text, where the words ‘section’, ‘chapter’, ‘table’, ‘tableau’ and ‘figure’ are followed by a section’s, chapter’s, table’s, tableau’s and figure’s number, the words have an initial capital, e.g.
… see Section 3 below for detailed exposition.
… will be presented in Section 4.2. The following section, Section 4.3, develops those ideas …
… as seen in Table 1. The table presents results from Group 1 experiment.
In the text, book titles are given (in italics and) in Title Capitalisation, e.g.
… ever since The Sound Pattern of English.
In References, Title Capitalisation is used for journal titles, conference titles and conference proceedings’ titles where the conference’s title is included. Elsewhere in References, Sentence capitalisation is used in titles but a capital follows the colon at the start of a book’s or paper’s subtitle. A colon (not a full-stop) separates first part of the title from the subtitle (where present).
14. Keeping track of numbered sequences
If (sub)sections, numbered examples or footnotes are added to or removed from the text in the process of revising it, every care should be taken to ensure that all subsequent (sub)sections, examples or footnotes are appropriately renumbered and that any in-text and in-footnote references to them by numbers (e.g. ‘given the arguments in Section 3.2 above’) be checked and adjusted if necessary.
While automatic footnote (i.e. endnote) numbering is fine, please do not use automatic example, figure and table numbering and cross-referencing.
15. Review Articles and Book Reviews: Special features
Title page 1. Review articles must have their own title as well as category heading. The details of the book under review are typed on the first page in the following format:
REVIEW ARTICLE
Tracking the origins of transformational generative grammar1
BARBARA C. SCHOLZ & GEOFFREY K. PULLUM
University of Edinburgh
Marcus Tomalin, Linguistics and the formal sciences: The origins of generative grammar (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 110).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 233.
Abstract and keywords. An abstract of up to 200 words follows just below the book's details and is itself followed by a list of keywords.
Title page 2. Book reviews are headed by:
(i) the details of the book under review and
(ii) the reviewer’s name and affiliation.
These details immediately precede the text and have the following exact format; please note the type and order of information and exact use of punctuation, bold, italics, capital letters and small capitals:
Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou & Martin Everaert (eds.), The unaccusativity puzzle: Explorations of the syntax–lexicon interface (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 5). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. x + 372.
Reviewed by first name surname, Institution’s Name
Text organisation. Review Articles and Book Reviews follow the same order of text elements (i.e. start with title and end with References) as articles but Book Reviews are not divided into sections and subsections.
In-text references to the book under review. The name of a single author or editor of the book under review is to be given in full at each mention rather than be abbreviated. However, the names of two or more authors or editors may be abbreviated thus: ‘Chomsky & Halle 1968 (henceforth C&H)’ if used relatively frequently throughout the text. Please note the use of the ampersand (&) and the lack of spaces in the abbreviation. Alternatively, the book under review may be referred to by an abbreviation of the title, e.g. ‘The book The Origins of Complex Language by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy (henceforth OCL)’.
Please note that the abbreviation is in italic and that the book’s title in the running text is in Title Capitalisation.
Page references. Page references to passages in or quotations from the book under review are given in parentheses as bare numerals, e.g. (39), not (p. 39). If necessary, the word ‘page’ may precede the page number in the text. Please note that the full stop immediately follows the page reference if this appears at the end of a sentence, thus: the author notes that ‘the problem becomes traceable’ (39).
Chapter references. When referring to chapter titles, or the titles of individual papers in an edited volume, the following exact format for punctuation should be used:
I turn now to Chapter 3, ‘Syntactic variation in English: A global perspective’, which provides an excellent summary ...
The first paper in the volume is by Kim Blogg, entitled ‘Syllable structure in Klingon’, and this proposes ...
Chapter titles are in Sentence capitalisation, with a capital also at the start of the subtitle, and titles are set in single quotation marks (not in italic or bold font). Note also that upper-case ‘C’ is used when referring to chapters by number. The names of author(s)/editor(s) must be given in full at first mention.
Last updated: 26 September 2024
Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Competing Interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.
Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
ORCID
We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
- to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
- to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
- to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
- must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.