Style Guidelines

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[Book Reviews]
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Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature follows the endnote documentation style of The Chicago Manual of Style with some slight alterations. We do not publish a bibliography, so all documentation information must appear in the notes. This style sheet is designed to provide an overview of commonly used note formats and points of our house style. For any questions not answered here, please refer to the most recent edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.

Each source is first cited in an endnote. For the primary texts—literary or critical—that are frequently cited, parenthetical references will be used for subsequent citations. A parenthetical may also be used when a second citation of a work occurs immediately after the first even if the work is not cited again. For works that will be cited parenthetically, the endnote should include the sentence “Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.” The parenthetical references in the text should include p. or pp. followed by the page number(s).

Please make sure you include complete and accurate documentation, including subtitles, names of editors and translators, series’ titles, and page numbers.

Books: Here are the basic endnote formats for books, including those with editors. Include database information for works consulted electronically.

1 Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 5.

2 Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing, ex. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 45.

3 Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, ed. Leonard Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1953), 292.

4 John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Godly Forme of Household Government (London: Thomas Man, 1630), A8r, Early English Books Online, reel position 1542:14.

Book Articles, Chapters, or Other Parts: If a specific passage is quoted in the text, then only the page number of the quote is given in the endnote as in the first example below. If the selection is referred to generally, then the page range is given.

5 Susan Fraiman, “After Gilbert and Gubar: Madwomen Inspired by Madwoman,” in Gilbert and Gubar’s “The Madwoman in the Attic” After Thirty Years, ed. Annette R. Federico (Columbia: University of Missouri, 2009), 29.

6 Sharon Marcus, “Friendship and the Play of the System,” in Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 25-72.

7 Marilyn Butler, introduction to Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen (London: Penguin Books, 2003), xi-l.

Multivolume Works and Letters in a Published Collection: In the first example below, all the volumes were published in the same year and the set is referenced as a whole. In the second example, each volume has its own title and publication year. When quoting specific letters, each letter requires its own note documenting the sender, recipient, location, and date. Subsequent citations can reference the volume and page number using a colon: 3:156.

8 The George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight, 9 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954).

9 Françoise de Graffigny to François-Antoine Devaux, Lunéville, 7 January 1744, in Correspondance de Madame de Graffigny, vol. 5, 3 janvier 1744-21 octobre 1744, Lettres 636-760, ed. Judith Curtis (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1997), 12.

Journal and Magazine Articles: If a specific passage is quoted in the text, then only the page number of the quote is given in the endnote as in the first two examples below. If the article is referred to generally, then the page range of the entire article is given. Please include issue numbers in all citations of journal articles.

10 Lillian S. Robinson, “Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 2, No. 1 (1983), 86.

11 Csilla Bertha, “The House Image in Three Contemporary Irish Plays,” New Hibernia Review, 8, No. 2 (2004), 74.

12 Jane Smiley, “Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain’s ‘Masterpiece,’” Harper’s, January 1996, 61-67.

Points of House Style

  • Use a person’s full name the first time s/he is mentioned.
  • Use the complete title of a work and its original publication date the first time it is referenced in text.
  • Quotations of more than four lines of prose or three lines of poetry are inset.
  • Avoid overuse of coordinating conjunctions at the beginnings of sentences: and, but, or, for, and yet.
  • Please use a noun after “this” to clarify the referent.

Foreign Language Quotations: Include the foreign language quotation first, followed by a parenthetical that includes the page number, a semicolon, the English translation, and if the translation is not the author’s, a comma and a page reference to the translation: “Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure” (p. 5; For a long time, I used to go to bed early, p. 33).

Ellipses: Use three ellipses for an omission within a sentence and four for omissions between sentences. Ellipses are not used at the beginning and ending of quotes.

Dashes: We use an em dash (—) with no spaces before or after.

Commas: We use the serial comma before “and.” We do not use commas before subordinating conjunctions such as “since” and “because.” We use commas and the conjunction “which” for non-restrictive clauses. Use “that” and no commas for restrictive clauses.

Multiple Punctuation: Punctuation goes inside quotation marks except for colons and semicolons, which go outside.

Dates: We use the day month year format: 22 September 1994.

Abbreviations: In general, avoid abbreviations, including the ampersand, “i.e.,” and “e.g.”