Guidelines for Articles Submitted to the Journal of Religious Leadership

FORMAT

If possible, please submit your article to the editor via email. If you send a disk, please label the disk indicating the platform (IBM or Mac), software and version used, and include a printed copy of the article.  You may email your document to scormode@cst.edu.  Each paragraph should begin with a tab, not a series of spaces; never type in all caps; do not use O for 0 (zero) or l (the lowercase of the letter L) for 1 (the numeral one).  Please keep a back-up copy of your manuscript and disk until publication of the journal.

CONTENT

Length of article: Suggested article lengths follow:

            Article:  5,000-7,500 words, excluding notes and bibliography

            Book Reviews: 750-1,000 words

Notes:  Foot notes, rather than end notes.  Do not program for hidden foot notes.  Use this form: 

Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation,” Thesis XX, in Luther: Early Theological Works, ed. and trans. James Atkinson, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 291. [or …1962): 24-36.]

Author information: Please include brief biographical information—academic degrees, recent publications, and teaching or preaching interests, where applicable.

Abstract:  150 words.

Bibliography:  Please include a bibliography at the end of all article submissions.

STYLE 

The Chicago Manual of Style, 14^th ed., and the Random House College Dictionary, are the primary references with respect to questions of style, usage, and spelling.  Commonly occurring situations, as well as deviations from these resources, are delineated below.

Abbreviations:

·         Books of the Bible:  The preferred style is to spell out books of four or fewer letters or use the traditional abbreviations as found in Chicago 14.34, 1^st list (Gen., Matt., John).  Separate chapter and verse with a colon.  When more than one verse is cited, separate them with commas (Gen. 2:3-6, 12).

·         Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or PC(USA)

·         Do not use postal abbreviations (IA, CA, MI)

Academic Degrees and Titles:

·         When abbreviating degrees, use a period and no space between letters (B.A., MDiv., Ph.D.)

·         Capitalize academic titles when they precede a personal name.  Otherwise use the lower case.  (President Jones, Dr. Jones is president and professor of homiletics.)

·         Capitalize the names of departments, offices and committees. (She is a professor in the Department of Biblical Studies.)

Capitalization:

·         Church:  Uppercase when referring to a specific congregation, when used as part of the official name of an organized body of Christians (the Church of England), and when referring to the whole body of Christians, worldwide or throughout time.  Lowercase references to a division of the universal Church or to the church as an institution.

·         Scripture, scriptural.

·         Bible, biblical.

·         Gospels, the Gospel of John; but lowercase gospel when used in a general sense.

·         Hispanic.

Commas:

·         Use the series comma.  (He disliked peas, potatoes, and ginger ale.)

·         Omit comma between month and year. (May 1997)

·         Commas are used to set off geographical places.  (He lives in Austin, Texas, during the winter.)

Hyphen:

·         Turn of the automatic hyphenation option on your word processing program.

·         Compound adjectives, except those ending in “ly,” which appear before the noun they modify, often employ a hyphen (first-century Palestine).

·         Do not hyphenate racial/ethnic groups (African American, Native American).

Italics: 

·         Please indicate copy that you wish to appear in italics (book or journal titles, or for emphasis) by underlining it, and not putting it in italics in the manuscript.  The italics command occasionally disappears.

Numbers:

·         Spell out numbers one through ninety-nine, and numbers at the beginning of a sentence.  (One hundred ten men and 103 women graduated.)

Plurals:

·         Abbreviations having more than one period often form plurals by the addition of an apostrophe and an “s” (Ph.D.’s); Noun abbreviations with only one period usually add only an “s” (vol.s).

·         Form the plural of multiple letters without periods or numbers with only an “s” (IOUs, 1950s).

Possessives:

·         For singular nouns, add an apostrophe and an “s.”  Plural nouns take an apostrophe only (horse’s mouth, puppies’ tails).

·         Proper names ending in “s” take an apostrophe and an “s” (Charles’s dissertation).  The exceptions are Jesus’ and Moses’.

Quotations:

·         It is the author’s responsibility to verify the accuracy of quotations and cite sources for the quotations.

·         A quotation should be run into the text with quotation marks if it contains fewer than fifty words.  A quotation containing more than fifty words should be extracted from the text with a line space (return) above and below.

·         Put periods and commas inside quotation marks; semicolons go outside quotation marks; question and exclamation marks go inside the quotation marks if the material quoted forms the question (He said, “Why are we leaving now?”)

·         Questions introduced within sentences are ordinarily not enclosed in quotation marks (One must ask, Why are we continuing down this path?)

References:

·         Place a colon between main title and subtitle.

·         If the place of publication is not widely known, the abbreviation of the state name, region, or country should follow it.  Short state names are given in full (Mich., Ohio, Ill.)

Usage: 

·         Use “more than” instead of “over” when referring to a number.

·         Use “different from” instead of “different than.”

·         A book, speech or paper is “titled”; a person who has a right to something is “entitled.”

·         Compose means to make up or put together; comprise means to include or contain.