Checklist for Contributors

 

General Considerations for submitting to Philip Roth Studies

 

1)  Your final, corrected manuscript must be submitted electronically.

 

2)  Please revise your essay according to the recommendations of the readers and editors.  We do not wish anything to impede the publication of your article.  Therefore, be especially diligent when implementing warranted changes to your manuscript.

 

3)  Use the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook.  This is especially important, particularly when it comes to the Works Cited page.  There are some changes to the third edition—e.g., including both volume AND issue numbers to all journal sources, indicating what format or medium the source is in, etc.  You, as author, are ultimately responsible for seeing that your Works Cited page, and the rest of your essay, adheres strictly to the latest edition of the MLA Handbook.

 

4)  Check and double check all of the quotes in your essays for accuracy.  Your essay will be fact-checked, but we utilize such redundancies to avoid embarrassing mistakes later on.  Please understand that you are responsible for all quotes.  Therefore, it is crucial that you go back and confirm that the quotes are exact.

 

5)  Make sure that all of your page references for quotes (and paraphrased comments) are correct and exact.

 

6)  Regarding your Works Cited pages, please verify that all the information is correct. Please see to it that all works cited in the body of the essay are listed in the Works Cited, and that there are no entries in the Work Cited list that do not appear in the essay.

 

Style Sheet for Contributors

 

For purposes of standardization, please use Microsoft Word when submitting your final manuscript.  We encourage you to become familiar with the “Track Changes” function of Microsoft Word, as our comments and questions will appear in this manner.

 

Style Checklist

 

Manuscript strictly adheres to the MLA Handbook, 8th ed. (2016), EXCEPT when house style supersedes MLA.  (These exceptions are specifically noted below.)

 

Entire manuscript is double spaced, including block quotes, between paragraphs, and in the Works Cited page(s).

 

Manuscript is between 4,000 and 8,000 words long, unless otherwise indicated by executive editor.  Notes should not exceed 2,500 words.

 

Paragraph indentions are created using the tab key or “increase indent” function and not by using the space bar.

 

For block quotations, please use a double indent.

 

Block quote formatting is used only when a quote runs more than four lines when run into the text (MLA 3.9.2)

 

Endnotes, rather than footnotes, are used (if necessary). Endnotes may be used for explanatory or amplifying purposes only; bibliographic citations should appear parenthetically in the text of the manuscript.

 

Endnotes appear after the essay proper and before the Works Cited. Microsoft Word can be frustrating to use in this endeavor, as it is programmed to put the endnotes at the end of the document.

 

Superscript Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals. are used to indicate the presence of an endnote.

 

Any ellipses inserted in quotations to indicate deleted material must be placed in brackets. Please insert spaces between ellipsis dots: e.g. [. . .](House style.) Roth uses so many ellipses in his fiction that it is important for authors to differentiate their own ellipses from Roth’s.

 

Punctuation of quotations should reflect the American practice, where double quotation marks are used to enclose exact text (the primary quotation), and single quotation marks are used within the double quotation marks (secondary quotation), for a quotation within a quotation. If your essay reflects a different quoting system (e.g., English single-quotes or French guillemets) please format it according to American standard practice.

 

All spellings should reflect American English usage. If your essay includes any British spellings, please convert to American spelling.

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Citation style for web sources continues to evolve. Currently, the MLA recommends including the URL as the last element in the citation; please see the sample on the MLA Style Sheet.

 

Works Cited page entries use a hanging indentation.

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Times New Roman 12 font is used throughout the entire document, including block quotations.

 

Headers and footers are blank with exception of page numbers, in the upper right corner.

 

All references to the abbreviation for United States appear as US, not U.S.

 

All dashes are represented as (—) and not as a hyphen (-).

 

There are no spaces on either side of any dashes.

 

 

Abbreviations for Roth’s Works

 

Philip Roth Studies uses standardized abbreviations for Roth’s works. These appear only within parenthetical citations. Titles used within the sentence proper, not within parentheses, should be written in full. Please ensure that your parenthetical abbreviations conform to the following list:

 

 

NOVELS/NOVELLAS

Book Title  [PRS Abbreviation]

 

Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories  [Goodbye]

Letting Go  [Letting Go]

When She Was Good  [WSWG]

Portnoy’s Complaint  [Portnoy]

Our Gang  [Gang]

The Breast  [Breast]

The Great American Novel  [GAN]

My Life as a Man  [My Life]

The Professor of Desire  [Professor]

The Ghost Writer  [Ghost]

Zuckerman Unbound  [Unbound]

The Anatomy Lesson  [Anatomy]

The Prague Orgy  [Prague]

Zuckerman Bound  [Bound]

The Counterlife  [Counterlife]

The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography  [Facts]

Deception: A Novel  [Deception]

Patrimony: A True Story  [Patrimony]

Operation Shylock: A Confession  [Shylock]

Sabbath’s Theater  [Sabbath]

American Pastoral  [Pastoral]

I Married a Communist  [Communist]

The Human Stain  [Stain]

The Dying Animal  [Dying]

The Plot Against America  [Plot]

Everyman  [Everyman]

Exit Ghost  [Exit]

Indignation  [Indignation]

The Humbling  [Humbling]

Nemesis  [Nemesis]

Reading Myself and Others  [Reading]

Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues and Their Work  [Shop]

Why Write?: Collected Nonfiction 1960-2013  [Why Write?]

 

SHORT FICTION

Story Title  [PRS Abbreviation]

 

“Goodbye, Columbus”  ["Goodbye"]

“Defender of the Faith” ["Defender"]

“Conversion of the Jews”  ["Conversion"]

“Eli, the Fanatic”  ["Eli"]

“On the Air”  ["On the Air"]

 

ESSAYS

Essay Title [PRS Abbreviation]

 

“Writing American Fiction”  ["American Fiction"]

“Some New Jewish Stereotypes”  ["Jewish Stereotypes"]

“Writing about Jews”  ["Jews"]

“My Baseball Years”  ["Baseball Years"]

“‘I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting’; or, Looking at Kafka”  ["Looking at Kafka"]

“A Bit of Jewish Mischief”  ["Jewish Mischief"]

“Juice or Gravy? How I Met My Fate in a Cafeteria”  ["Juice"]

“The Story behind The Plot Against America.”  ["Story behind Plot"]

 

 

 

Created December 2009; Updated June 2014