Submissions

Author Guidelines

The editors of Jonathan Edwards Studies (JES), an online publication of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University (JEC), invite submissions of articles, documents, and reviews pertaining to Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), his background, life, thought, and legacy. Contributions should be grounded in original research, written so as to be accessible to specialists and general readers alike, and defend a clear thesis. Types of submissions fall into several categories:

Articles are manuscripts running 6,000-11,000 words (or approximately 20-35 pages) in length, not including endnotes.

Features are shorter pieces on a theme relating to Edwards, up to 2,000 words in length.

Historical Documents present primary-source materials, in full or in part but no more than approximately 50 pages in length), by or about Edwards, introduced and annotated by the contributor.

Book Reviews should be between 350 and 1,000 words. If someone wishes to submit an unsolicited review, he or she should contact the editor prior to submission.

If manuscripts submitted to JES are published, authors will be asked to assign the copyright of your work to the JEC. In return, the JEC will grant authors nonexclusive rights to create derivative works from your article and to reprint it in works of which you are author or editor.

JES cannot consider a manuscript if it (a) has been published elsewhere (in any language), (b) is currently under consideration by another journal, (c) has circulated in a public electronic forum such as a webpage or listserv, or (d) will be published as part of a book prior to publication in JES. If any of these conditions applies to your article, the editors reserve the right to rescind their acceptance.

Illustrations, maps, tables, and other visual and audio resources are encouraged. You may include low-resolution scans of any illustrations when you first submit your article for consideration. If the editors accept your manuscript for publication, they will ask you to provide high-resolution scans when you send the revised version of your essay. You must provide the editors with copies of letters of permission from copyright holders or from the individual or institutional owners of uncopyrighted illustrations.

Additional permissions may be required for the use of archival, interview, and privately held materials, as well as lengthy quotations from sources still in copyright. For further information on permissions, see The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, paragraphs 4.42-4.58.

JES is a peer-reviewed journal. Submissions will be sent for review to scholars and authors who are specialists in the field of Edwards Studies or generalists in their disciplines. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, the editorial staff will edit it to conform to JES's house style. Submissions should be fully and correctly annotated. The first citation of a work should include city and state of publication, short form of publisher's name, and date. Include English translations of quotations in other languages.

Style Guide for Submission to Jonathan Edwards Studies Journal

For general questions and issues not addressed below, defer to the Chicago Manual of Style, available online at chicagomanualofstyle.org. Alternatively, contact Ken Minkema (ken.minkema@yale.edu) or Nate Antiel (nate.antiel@gmail.com) with questions.

Basic Formatting

All manuscripts should be set in Times New Roman, 12 point, double spaced.

Margins should be set to 1" top and bottom, 1.25" left and right, with a 0" gutter. Headers should be set at 0.5" and footers at 0.7".

Insert page numbers in bottom center.

The first paragraph of the essay, chapter, and or section should be flush left. All subsequent paragraphs should be indented (use the tab key not line spaces to set off paragraphs).

Spelling

In running text defer to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, also available on-line. The convenient desk model is the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

The preferred form of a word is the first one listed by Webster’s. As such, “adviser” is preferred over against “advisor.”

In quoted text defer to the author’s spelling. There is no need to alter the spelling or to note [sic] in order to identify archaic or alternate spelling.

In regards to Edwards’ texts, defer to the spelling found in the Works of Jonathan Edwards Online.

Titles: Italic or Roman

Italic type is used for titles of books, plays, long poems that have been published separately, works of art, and musical compositions:

Moby-Dick; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Hamlet; Waiting for Godot

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; Lycidas

The Last Supper; Raphael’s Transfiguration

Roman type and quotation marks are used for titles of stories, short poems, articles in journals or periodicals, and chapter titles:

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”

Milton’s “On Blindness”

“Jonathan Edwards’ Use of the Bible,” by Mark Noll

For Edwards’ primary texts, set letters in roman, set un-published manuscripts in roman and in quotes, set longer, published texts and sermons in italics.

Letter to George Whitefield

“Notes on Books of Moses”

End for Which God Created the World

A Divine and Supernatural Light

Citations

All citations should appear in footnotes, numbered numerically.

For works quoted multiple times, use full-citations for the initial citation and shortened citations subsequently. See Chicago 14.14–18 and 14.24–28

All references to Edwards’ primary texts and introductory matter to the Works of Jonathan Edwards should reference the Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, abbreviated as follows:
WJEO volume#: page#

WJEO 10: 385–87

Commas

Use serial commas (include comma before “and” or “or”):

Jonathan Edwards was a preacher, theologian, and missionary.

Quotations

Quotations longer than five lines should be set off as block quotes (use “tab” to indent rather than line spaces). Block quotes do not need quotation marks.

Dates

Years are expressed in numerals unless they stand at the beginning of a sentence:

The year 1776 saw . . .

but,

Seventeen Seventy Six saw . . .

Use month and day to note specific dates not the day-month-year form:

“November 20, 1985” not “20 November 1985”

Eras should be expressed as CE and BCE not AD and BC

Small Caps

Use small caps for degrees and era designations. This feature is in the “Font” section under the “Format” tab:

b.a., m.a., ph.d.

732 ce;  31 bce

Ellipses

Ellipses denote the omission of a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage. Ellipses should be set as three equally spaced periods. Do not use Word’s automatic ellipsis function— . . . is correct while … is not. In designed material, ellipsis points must always appear together on the same line. Three dots indicate an omission within a quoted sentence:

In Freedom of the Will, Edwards observes that “the will . . . is plainly, that by which the mind chooses anything.”

Four dots—a period and three ellipsis points—are used to indicate the omission of the last part of a quoted sentence, the first part of the next sentence, a whole sentence or more, or a whole paragraph or more.  Grammatically complete sentences should precede and follow a four-period ellipsis. The first letter of a quoted passage may be changed from lowercase to uppercase, or vice versa, to fit the context in which the quote is used.

“The faculty of the will is that faculty or power or principle of mind by which it is capable of choosing . . . . If any think ‘tis a more perfect definition of the will, to say, that it is . . .”

Hyphens and Dashes

Hyphens

The hyphen is used to link words that form a single phrase and might otherwise be misread (e.g. eighteenth-century literature; well-wrought urn) and to link certain prefixes and suffixes to words (e.g. pseudo-scientific; quasi-religious).

Generally, adjectives are hyphenated while nouns are not (eighteenth-century literature; the text was written in the eighteenth century).

Webster’s lists specific words, such as noncombatant, nonprofit, counterinsurgency, that many writers use with hyphens. The rule is to avoid hyphens with prefixes that are not themselves words, with certain exceptions for rare or new combinations like “non-word.” See Chicago 7.90 for additional compound forms.

Dashes

There are two types of dashes: en-dash (–) is longer than a hyphen (-) and shorter than an em-dash (—). The en-dash can be formed on a Mac with the option+hyphen keys. The em-dash can be formed on a Mac with the shift+option+hyphen keys.

En-dash (which stands for “to” or “through”) is used for ranges such as dates, page numbers, times, and, less frequently, words:

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758)

See pages 98–105

the London–Paris train

Em-dash sets off an amplifying or explanatory element in a sentence—commas, parentheses, and colons may be used to perform similar functions:

Jonathan Edwards—that great New England divine—believed that . . .

There should be no spaces between the words or numbers and the dash that separates them.

Inclusive Numbers

In running text, numbers 1–99 should be spelled out.

During this period Edwards preached twelve sermons.

not

During this period Edwards preached 12 sermons.

Some numbers are abbreviated (called inclusive numbers). These include a span of page numbers and dates of works. Inclusive numbers are abbreviated according to the following principles:

1–99 Use all digits 3–10, 71–72

100 or multiples of 100 Use all digits 100–104, 1900–1901

101 through 109, etc. Use changed part only 101–8, 1902–5

110 through 199, etc. Use two or more digits 321–32, 1970–78, 11564–615

as needed

But if three digits change in a four-digit number, use all four:

1496–1504, 2787–2816

NOTE: Life dates are never elided (all numbers are used):

1703–1758

Guidelines for working in “Track Changes”

We frequently use the Microsoft Word “track changes” feature when editing in order to ensure that every step in the writing/editing process can be recorded and managed. This also helps us maintain quality, cohesion, and style throughout publications.

When text is submitted to the journal, all edits made by staff will be recorded using “Track Changes,” unless the author requests that a hard copy be edited (please make this request at the time of submission). The copy will be returned to the author digitally with these marks visible. This feature should be left on at all times during the editorial process. Additionally, authors should not “accept” or “reject” changes using the “Track Changes” feature. Rather, delete any edits you wish to reject and leave any edits you wish to accept. Please do not use the “Comments” feature to respond to or add queries— [simply type within brackets while the “Track Changes” feature is on]. When the article has been finalized, all approved edits will be accepted in the digital file by the editor(s).

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
4. The text is double-spaced; uses Times font, 12-point; employs italics rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
6. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

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