electronic book review

digital futures of literature, theory, criticism, and the arts

Submission Guidelines

Format

ebr accepts essays as unformatted/plain text, or in Word or .rtf format.

Images

  • Separate from body text.
  • Include captions.
  • Indicate in text placement of image.
  • pngs, gifs or jpgs only
  • 72 pixels per inch.
  • Width: 400-800 pixels

Standard Guidelines

  • All contributions should have a title, author name and should be accompanied by a current email address and biographical blurb.
  • Use: Internet, World Wide Web or Web, and website, web page
  • Dates should appear as 1980s, ’80s, and 20th century
  • Anchor pronoun references (ex: in “this idea …” this must link explicitly to the concept mentioned in the previous sentence)

Commas, Punctuation

  1. The serial comma should be used by authors in their submissions.The following phrases are simple examples of serial commas:

Men, women, and children.

Morning, afternoon, or night.

  1. Here is an example of a serial comma used within a sentence:

The boy took a photograph of his parents, a duck, and a swan with his new camera.

  1. There should only be a single space used between sentences.
  2. Commas should be placed inside of the punctuation.
  3. Use Burroughs’ (not Burroughs’s) for singular possessives ending in ‘s’
  4. Do not use spaces between points of ellipses…

Gender, Ethnicity, Cultural Specificity

The masculine pronoun should not be used generically to represent human subjects. The author/s should preferably use gender neutral nouns as much as possible. Please avoid the use of “s/he” or “hir” and similar variations. The editors at ebr will edit appropriately, based on the context, unless otherwise specified.
All submissions must be careful in using non-discriminatory language. Sexist, racist or culturally inappropriate terms should not be used.

USA Spelling

The editors prefer that the American variant of spellings is used in submissions. A few quick points about the differences in American English and British English are:

  • British English words that end in -re often end in -er in American English
  • British English words ending in -our usually end in -or in American English
  • Verbs in British English that can be spelled with either -ize or -ise at the end are always spelled with -ize at the end in American English
  • In British spelling, verbs ending in a vowel plus l double the l when adding endings that begin with a vowel.
  • In American English, the l is not doubled

Some representative differences are noted in the examples below, with British English on the left and American English on the right:

  • centre/center
  • colour/color
  • apologise/apologize
  • traveller/traveler

MLA Format with Link

In-text Citations

In-text citations should be used when quoting or summarizing someone else’s work. They should be included in parenthesis with the author name and page number, or just page number if the author is mentioned previously in the sentence. If the author is unknown, include the title of the work followed by the page number. For citations with more than one author, be sure to list all author names.

In-text citations with one author:

  • Davis makes a claim (23).
  • A claim is made (Davis 23).
  • Davis said, “I made a claim” (23).
  • It was stated, “I made a claim” (Davis 23).

In-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Davis and Williams made a claim (45).
  • A claim was made (Davis and Williams 45).
  • Davis and William stated, “We made a claim” (45).
  • It was stated, “We made a claim” (Davis and Williams 45).

Works Cited

The works cited page of an essay should be written in MLA format.

  • Work containing one author: Lastname, Firstname. Title of Book. City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Medium of Publication.
  • Work containing multiple authors: Lastname, Firstname and Firstname Lastname. Title of Book. City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Medium of Publication.
  • Any digital references should include a url.

Additional Information

More examples of MLA formatting can be found at the following website: http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla#list

ebr will not accept essays that do not use MLA formatting.

Titles of works should be put in italics and bolded. Titles of poems should be in quotes.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used for commentary only.  ebr follows MLA format which discourages extensive explanation through footnotes, so otherwise avoid.

If an author wishes to include footnotes, they should be numbered and listed at the end of your submission as well as within the submission according to MLA guidelines. Please limit footnotes to a maximum of 15.

Given how we format footnotes into HTML – as inline drop-down notes – we would prefer Word documents with endnotes rather than formatted as traditional footnotes at the bottom of the each page. We intend to publish essays with both endnotes and the inline footnotes.

Numbers

Spell out numbers below one hundred.

Quotations

Double quotes should be used, not single quotes.

Hyphens and Dashes

ebr uses a single (non-formatted) hyphen – like this – to indicate a dash.

Author Bio

Approximately 100 words in length.

List affiliations, significant publications, and other details.