Guidelines – Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Eighteenth-Century Fiction (ECF) publishes four issues of peer-reviewed, research articles every year. Submit your work to ECF online now. The ECF Editor, Dr. Eugenia Zuroski, and the ECF Editorial Board seek research articles of 6,000 – 8,000 words. Please review below the ECF house style and submission guidelines before submitting your manuscript; however, The Chicago Manual of Style formatting is not required at the submission stage.

ECF Peer Review Guidelines. NOTE: The ECF editors do not send every manuscript to external peer reviewers; for some submissions, the ECF editors provide in-house peer review.

Clarification: ECF journal does not publish chapters taken verbatim from completed and filed dissertations. ECF, like most journals in the Humanities, does publish articles that grow out of “dissertations in progress” and that might end up replicating material in the other direction. Please note that journal articles and dissertation chapters are different entities, with different audiences; the ECF editors prefer that authors substantially rework material taken from a “dissertation in progress” and then used in an article submitted to ECF for consideration. If, in a journal article, an author uses material from a completed and filed dissertation, the ECF editors ask that the author add quotation marks around verbatim passages from their own dissertation, using the same protocol as when they quote from any other scholar’s dissertation, article, book chapter, or book.

The editors are also pleased to receive Reflections and flash essays for consideration. Reflections essays are usually 1,500 – 4,500 words long; flash essays range from 500 to 1,500 words.

Note from the ECF Editor about Reflections essays

Reflections are shorter than research articles. A Reflections piece will run about 4,000 words and will not be peer-reviewed. These essays tend to focus on research-related topics but are more personal in tone, exploring issues that arise out of the author or co-authors’ own experiences with and of their research. The ECF editors are interested in considering Reflections essays on a range of issues around the processes of scholarly research and writing—material challenges, conceptual quandaries, questions about how scholars define or negotiate fields, and how scholars commit to or transform methodologies. Please read these examples:

“The Archival Tourist Take Two: Looking at Legacies of Eighteenth-Century Portraiture through the Work of Elizabeth Colomba and Fabiola Jean-Louis,” by Dr. Laura Engel (ECF 33.4, 2021), https://muse.jhu.edu/article/796660

and “The Danger of Liaisons,” by Dr. Jennifer Tsien (ECF 30.4, 2018), http://muse.jhu.edu/article/699086

Eighteenth-Century Fiction House Style

The ECF editors follow The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), the latest edition, in most matters, but see below for specific style items to check and rectify in your manuscript.
This style guide was updated in March 2024.

Chicago Manual of Style formatting is not required at the submission stage.

ECF uses footnotes at the bottom of each page. *A bibliography is not required for ECF articles: complete bibliographic information must be included in the footnotes (see details and examples below). (A “Selected Bibliography” may be included in some cases; consultation with the ECF Editor is recommended.)

Manuscript format

MS Word .docx file (no PDF files), Times New Roman 12 point, 1.5 line spacing, no boldface, no extra spacing between paragraphs, indent or tab paragraphs 0.5″; please read the instructions in the submissions system about ensuring that your WORD file is actually anonymous.

Footnotes, not endnotes; footnotes in Times New Roman 11 point, single spaced. The ECF editors ask that authors add DOI URLs or other stable URLs to citations where possible, for accessibility.

Format for Footnotes

Books:

First Name Last Name, Title of Book: Subtitle of Book (City: Publisher, Year), 345.

Journal articles:

Author Full Name, “Title of Essay,” Journal Name 12, no. 3 (2000): 123, https://doi.org/38d8f.ecf5005.

Chapters, articles, etc., in books:

Author Full Name, “Title,” in Book Title: Subtitle, ed. John Smith (City: Publisher, Year), 123.

On the first appearance of a primary work (literature from the 18th or 19th [or earlier] centuries), publication details should be cited in full in a footnote. Thereafter, cite page numbers in parentheses in the text. The first footnote should end with the sentence: “References are to this edition.”

Citations to French primary material should appear in the original French, regardless of whether the essay/article is written in English or French. A translation of the original French may be included in a footnote but is not required. For any Latin phrases or expressions, a translation should be included in parentheses: for example, Castigat ridendo mores (laughing corrects morals). For commonly used Latin phrases, consult the Oxford English Dictionary Online Edition (OED) as to whether or not the Latin phrase is italicized in the English usage. For example, “reduction ad adsurdum” is not italicized according to the OED.

On the first appearance of a secondary reference, publication details should be cited in full in a footnote. For subsequent citations, use the abbreviated footnote format:

23 Author’s last name, page number.

If the author of a secondary reference is cited for more than one work in the article, use the format:

16 Author’s last name, abbreviated title of specific work, page number.

To abbreviate the title of a quoted source (such as a twentieth-century book by a literary scholar), always include the first few words or the opening complete phrase.

If two cited authors share a last name, use the full name for both authors for every citation to avoid confusion.

Books since 1900:

Note the abbreviations “ed.” (edited by), “rev.” (revised by), and “trans.” (translated by), which should precede the name of the editor, reviser, or translator.

Do not use “f.” or “ff.” or “passim” to indicate following pages: always provide a complete page range.

EXAMPLES:

23 Frances Burney, Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance to the World, ed. Edward A. Bloom (1778; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 36–37. References are to this edition.

36 Kristina Straub, Divided Fictions: Fanny Burney and Feminine Strategy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 123.

For multivolume works, give the volume number in Arabic numerals, followed by a colon and the page number(s):

23 The Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay (1778-1840), ed. Charlotte Barrett; preface and notes by Austin Dobson (London: Macmillan, 1904–5), 2:77 (emphasis added).

When citing the introduction, preface, or other accompanying text, but the particular primary text is never cited within the article:

18 Stephen Bending and Stephen Bygrave, introduction to The Man of Feeling, by Henry Mackenzie, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ix.

Earlier books: The publishers’ names may be omitted unless they are significant to the argument of the essay, but always indicate the place of publication. For reprints of primary works, include the original date of publication. For editions of primary texts, include the name of the editor.

29 Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the English Poets (1779–81; New York: Octagon Books, 1967), 2:160.

Book articles, essays, or chapters in a collection:

33 Eveline Cruickshanks, “The Political Management of Sir Robert Walpole, 1720-42,” in Britain in the Age of Walpole, ed. Jeremy Black (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984), 36–39.

As much information as possible is required for citations of archival material:

35 Frances Burney to Susan Burney Phillips, 1 March 1787, Frances Burney D’Arblay, Diary and Letters, MSS, Berg Collection, 3:2644-45, cited in A Known Scribbler: Frances Burney on Literary Life, ed. Justine Crump (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2002), 242.

Try to avoid “cited in” or “quoted in” references: authors should seek out and verify the original quoted material, especially if the quoted material comes from another critical work published since 1900. Finding and quoting the original source reduces the repetition of errors in citations and ensures the quotation is not taken out of context.

For review journals, when the reviewer’s name is unknown:

12 Critical Review 54 (December 1782): 420, ECCO.

Include the name of the database to increase accessibility, such as Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). No URL or link is required, simply the name.

TITLES: Lower case for all prepositions in titles of books or articles, regardless of the case in the original; use the upper case for all substantives.

PUBLISHERS: Omit in their names “The,” “Inc.,” “Ltd.” Major publishers’ names may be shortened, such as Penguin, Vintage.

Italicize: ship names; titles of paintings; published books, pamphlets, and very long poems published individually; movie titles.

Italicized terms in italicized subtitles and titles within titles:

CMS 8: Names, Terms, and Titles of Works — 8.173: Italicized terms and titles within titles — Any term within an italicized title[such as the ECF sections headings] that would itself be italicized in running text—such as a word from another language, a genus name, or the name of a ship—should be set in roman type (reverse italics). …

From Tyrannosaurus rex to King Kong: Large Creatures in Fact and Fiction
The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise

A title of a work within another title, however, should remain in italics and be enclosed in quotation marks. Since ECF italicizes subtitles or section headings, a book title within that italicized section heading would appear in quotations marks.

The Legacy of “Sir Charles Grandison”

Some titles do not require italics: Titles of poems appear in quotation marks (unless the poem is very long and was published separately as its own book); titles of unpublished PhD diss.; titles of TV or radio programs, titles of unpublished book projects. Names of websites (name should appear in headline style, in plain font). Check CMS for exact formatting of specific cases.

Quotations should be taken from either an original edition or a standard scholarly edition. If an original edition is cited from an online database, the name of the database should be included in the footnote; no link or URL is needed.

CHECK all these matters, using Find/Replace in your Word document:

Capitalize Black, Aboriginal, Indigenous when used as identity-based descriptors, such as Asian or Hispanic. See https://www.tvo.org/article/why-we-decided-to-capitalize-black-aboriginal-and-indigenous
Spell out Oxford University Press (not OUP), and all other publishers; do a find/replace search for “UP”; spell out journal names, unless the journal itself uses an initialism: ELH but Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies; abbreviate to ECF for references to Eighteenth-Century Fiction articles in your own ECF
In the essay body text, write “chapter 7,” “book 3,” “letter 37,” and “act 1,” but use abbreviations in parentheses and in footnotes: “vol. 1,” “chap. 6” (no capitalization of “chapter,” “part,” “section,” etc., and note the numeral is used in these instances).
Mr, Mrs, Dr, Mme (no period; abbreviation ends in same letter as abbreviated word);
but M. for “Monsieur” (include the period). For example, use find/replace for “Mr.”
Acronyms and initialisms use no periods; see CMS.
Use commas for words in a series: “men, women, and children”
Avoid contractions. Spell out: can’t = cannot; don’t = do not; I’ll = I will; I’d = I would
En dash: dates (1769–81); page range (34–49.
Use two em dashes for missing letters in names: Mrs S——

Hyphenation: look up all hyphenated words in the OED Online to verify. For example, no hyphen: reimagining, reread, reprint, unmade, postmodern, postcolonial (all posts!), freewill, deathbed, subgenre, subtitle, subtext, storytelling, reuse, reinvent, worldview.

Dates: 1766–88; the 1760s; 27 June 1793 [day month year]; from 1734 to 1765; when indicating a lifespan: Hubert-François Gravelot (1703–77)

Ellipses: always 3 dots, no matter how much text was left out between the two parts. And NOT the ellipsis symbol, simply three periods/dots, with no spaces between them.

Latin abbreviations in text and in footnotes: most are discouraged. Fix instances of ibid. and op cit. — include Author last name and page number; e.g. = for example, and i.e. = that is.

Numbers: 430–31, 403–4, 400–407; 420–22. | Translate all Roman numerals into Arabic, except in French articles and essays: XVIII^e siècle; and for royalty: Charles II. | In footnotes, 4th ed., not fourth edition. | Where appropriate, no. 4, not No. 4, or number 4. | In a sentence where rules indicate a mixture of written out numbers and numerals, use all numerals.

Names: The first time a name appears in an article or book review, use the full name—for example, Evelyn Richardson—then, on repeated reference use only the last name: Richardson. Exception: if two Richardsons appear in the same article, then continue to use the full name for each in the notes, and as needed in the text for clarity.

Possessive: Use the ’s for all singular nouns, even those ending in S

Quotation marks: placed outside periods, commas, and question marks, but inside colons and semicolons.

Slash: In poetry, the slash indicates the end of lines and requires a space on either side of the slash. Where the slash indicates an alternative, there are no spaces around the slash: him/her.

The ECF editors encourage the use of the singular “they” pronoun as well as “their,” the possessive adjective (determiner).

Slang/Jargon: avoid, especially for metaphors. As well, fix any mixed metaphors.

Spacing: No space between initials in names: F.D. Roosevelt, J.F. Kennedy

When emphasis is added to quoted text, follow the quotation with: “(emphasis added)”;
insert that parenthetical phrase following the page number in the footnote.

Original orthography should be preserved in quotations, except:

replace ‘inverted commas’ with “quotation marks” as necessary;
move any commas and periods inside quotation marks;
passages predominantly in italics (such as in prefaces) can be silently converted to roman/plain text—italicized blocks challenge reader-retention;
if the sentence requires a change in the case of the first letter of a quotation, make the change silently, without brackets: [T]hus = Thus …
In this protocol, ECF journal follows The Chicago Manual of Style — “13: Quotations and Dialogue, 13.18: Changing capitalization to suit syntax … Initial Capital or Lowercase Letter — Aside from proper nouns … , most words are normally lowercased unless they begin a sentence (or, often, a line of poetry). To suit this requirement, the first word in a quoted passage must often be adjusted to conform to the surrounding text. In most types of works, this adjustment may be done silently, as such capitalization does not normally affect the significance of the quoted matter, which is assumed to have been taken from another context (see 13.7, item 3).” — ECF does not include square brackets to indicate a change of case at the beginning of a quoted passage unless confusion will result.

Check for accuracy: names of people, places, book authors; book titles (including subtitles), quotations, web links (no broken links), page references for quoted text.

Notes about writing style in ECF journal
The editors and copy editors will look for and correct or flag the following:

subject-verb agreement and incorrect pronoun case; comma splices, misplaced colons, and incorrect apostrophes; dangling participles and misplaced modifiers.
typographical and spelling errors; misuse arising from homonyms and similar-sounding words.
incorrect idioms and phrases, such as “centres around”; colloquial, cliché, and unclear phrases.
inconsistencies in logic, factual details, and cross-references.
places where citations are needed (quotations without a source, unsupported generalizations in academic work, illustrations requiring captions and credit lines).

In ECF, quotations of 100+ words shall be set off as block quotations.

Typography: Upon first use, foreign terms should be set in italics rather than underlined or placed in quotation marks, but always check the OED for exceptions, because many foreign words and phrases are now considered to be standardized English and require no italics. If the term is then used repeatedly in the essay, no italics are required after its first appearance.

No underlining should appear in the body of the essay, unless reproducing the typography of a primary source.

SPELLING

Check recent issues of ECF for the preferred spelling of historical authors’ names.

gothic, lower cased (as of autumn 2015); utopia, lower cased (as of autumn 2014)

Note about acknowledgements:

ECF journal does not publish acknowledgements: With the start of volume 25, the ECF editors adopted a policy of no acknowledgements or thank-you notes in Eighteenth-Century Fiction articles. ECF will include attribution notes, such as identifying a person who specifically helped with a particular idea or bit of research; an attribution note may be added as a footnote at the appropriate spot in the article text. ECF will include grant-money-received notifications at the end of the first footnote; granting institutions usually require such acknowledgements. Notes mentioning that “I previously presented this research at this particular meeting” will be included. Some exceptions may apply in certain circumstances, but that will be decided on a per-case basis.

ABSTRACTS and KEYWORDS are CRUCIAL

An effectively written abstract, which includes germane keyphrases, can increase readership by capturing scholars’ attention and improving your article’s search engine optimization (SEO). Drawing readers into your article will boost citations.

It is easier to construct an effective abstract after the essay is completed. Readers should know whether or not they want to invest their time in reading your entire article from their initial look at the abstract. ECF abstracts are a maximum of 150 words, and the editors ask that authors avoid using sentences from the introductory pages of the essay, because the journal format places the abstract immediately before the opening lines of the essay body.

An effective humanities abstract must do the following:

Motivate – Why should readers care about this research and the results?
Provide an overview of the topic – a concise description of the core of the essay, similar to an elevator pitch for a film.
Designate the approach – Which methodology did you apply to this research?
Sketch the results – What’s the outcome of your research?
Summarize the conclusion – What are the implications and the significance of your answer to the initial research question? An abstract is a spoiler, not a teaser!

Read sample ECF abstracts on Project MUSE:

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/652076 | https://muse.jhu.edu/article/641783

The best keyphrases are not individual words, but two to four words of plain language that precisely and specifically describe your work, or phrases that researchers might type into a search engine.

Common mistakes in choosing article keyphrases:

X Using single-word terms

X Choosing terms or phrases that are too broad and not focused on your work – such as “eighteenth-century studies,” which yields +14 million hits in an online search and +6,500 results in the MLA Bibliography.

X Selecting terms that are too specialized, which nobody searches for, such as “bibliographical information on ornament usage”

Examples of effective keyphrases:

epistolarity in Jane Austen
Richardson and sentimental fiction
Radcliffe and scientific romance

ECF GUIDELINES for ACQUIRING IMAGES or ILLUSTRATIONS

If, at a particular institution, the permissions process includes a comments section, or if you can email a person directly, I always emphasize to image providers that Eighteenth-Century Fiction is a not-for-profit scholarly journal published by McMaster University and the University of Toronto Press: given that specific educational status of the publication, some institutions will reduce or even waive the “publishing fee” or “reproduction fee.”

(1) In negotiations for permission to publish illustrations, please note that ECF is an academic research journal published for educational purposes and is run as a not-for-profit publication by McMaster University.

(2) There will be fewer than 250 print copies in circulation internationally. An electronic version is available by subscription only on Project MUSE, via university libraries; the University of Toronto Press also hosts an electronic version, which is available by subscription only. The page count of the specific journal issue is not yet determined, but will likely be between 124 and 160 pages.

(3) Depending on the dimensions of the image, the reproduction in the print version of the journal will cover either a half-page, 2.5” x 4” (approximately), or a full page, 5” x 4” (approximately).

(4) If black and white reproduction fees are less than color, it is fine to make that choice, but ECF will publish in color, if the essay author wishes. The production costs of printing color images in the paper version of ECF will be absorbed by the journal.

(5) Rights required: “nonexclusive world rights in all languages and for all editions in print and other media, including electronic editions in online subscription databases such as Project MUSE.”

(6) Please ensure that the digital file is at least 300 dpi; the format jpeg or .tiff works best; the file format .png is okay too.

Notes:
• Since the images of engravings and other two-dimensional artworks from the eighteenth century are in the public domain according to the courts in the US and Canada, the fees these institutions charge should only be for labour costs to produce the digital file and send it to you.
• Some European institutions (specifically, in the UK) are not on board with the whole concept of public domain, however; they own the object, so we have to do as they prescribe, unless we can find the object or illustration elsewhere: so many places are digitizing their public domain collections for all to use. Many engravings can be found at multiple institutions, so please consider pursuing optional sources for an image, if the original source is requiring high fees for reproduction. The British Museum and the Bodleian will likely charge a substantial fee and require very specific information and rights language.
• ECF does not have funds to assist with reproduction or access fees charged by institutions.
• ECF will cover the cost of print reproduction of the images in the paper version of the journal, in color as well.

***Each illustration requires a detailed caption:
[Artist/maker/engraver name, if known], Title of engraving or painting [in italics], (DATE). [Image provider or location of the original artwork/engraving]. Reproduced by permission. [Also include information required by the provider, such as copyright information and a credit line.]

Example:
Joseph Highmore, Portrait of Samuel Richardson (1747). Stationers Hall, The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers. Reproduced by permission.

NOTE: All information required by the image provider for inclusion in the caption must be noted; this is called a credit line and may include copyright notification, depending on the provider’s requirements.

When you secure a high-resolution file, please email each one individually and forward the permission document(s) to ecf@mcmaster.ca at the same time. Or, use DropBox, Google Drive, or other online file sharing for very large files. There is also a place in the ECF online system to upload supplemental files, such as images.

If you have any questions, please email ecf@mcmaster.ca

NOTE: In order to ensure that authors can publish in ECF and still comply with their funders’ open-access requirements, the ECF editors have implemented the following policy: An author may upload the accepted Eighteenth-Century Fiction article or essay document file to his or her own institutional online repository. The ECF editors ask that the date and place of publication of the finalized article be noted.

The ECF editors require that authors wait until after the date of publication of their articles in the journal Eighteenth-Century Fiction to post their accepted manuscripts to any institutional open-access repositories.

ECF authors are requested to sign a contract with Eighteenth-Century Fiction/McMaster University/University of Toronto Press that states: Eighteenth-Century Fiction (ECF), McMaster University, obtains and owns the copyright on the contents of its journal. To clarify the rights of authors and ECF, and thus insure the protection of both, ECF requires that an author formally assign all rights to ECF before an article is published. Section 6 of the contract includes the right of the author to republish in certain forms: “We will accede to any request by the Author(s) to use part or all of their article in an article or in a book published under either the Author(s)’s exclusive authorship or editorship, provided that acknowledgment of its first appearance is made in a manner approved by ECF, and in such cases no fee for reprinting shall be payable to us.”

NOTE to all ECF authors and book reviewers:
Please remember that academia.edu is not an institutional repository; use only the link to ECF on Project MUSE and the abstract of your own ECF article for notices on academia.edu about your recently published work.

Vous pouvez lire ce texte en français: https://ecf.humanities.mcmaster.ca/directives/