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 NOTES FOR AUTHORS

Please try to follow these as far as possible, but remembering that the Editor and his staff are there to back you up. Exceptions can always be made if particular circumstances justify them, though they should be consistently applied and notified to the Editor.

Please try to write in ways that will be intelligible to those who do not have much background knowledge of the topic; try to make your title both clear and attractive. The most convenient way for you to submit your text is by e-mail attachment in a format legible by Microsoft Word (ideally .doc rather than .docx). If this is impossible we can scan hard copy, but electronic submission is preferred. Black and white illustrations are very welcome—please send the highest resolution you have. Please keep formatting as simple as possible, without defining your own Word styles—accepted articles will need to be formatted using our own styles and templates. A short biographical note (60 words or so) is also helpful. If you wish to look at articles that have already been published to get a feel for the journal we are happy to send you a sample copy.

Spelling

The Way follows modern British spelling (though quotations are reproduced exactly) unless there is reason for special provision—the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors is taken as authoritative, though we prefer ‘judgment’ to ‘judgement’.

‘-ise’ is used when the root derives from Latin (realise, recognise); ‘-ize’ when it derives from Greek (emphasize, baptize).

Possessives of nouns ending in ‘s’ take the form s’s (Jones's), except in the case of biblical names or those that are classical or classicising (Jesus’, Ignatius’).

Single consonants should be used in words such as ‘focusing’.

Italics are used for book titles and foreign words; please use sparingly for emphasis.

Upper Case—if in doubt, stay lower case

‘Church’ to refer to a faith grouping (the Church of England); ‘church’ to a building.

‘Bible’, but ‘biblical’. Generally ‘incarnation’, ‘atonement’, ‘christology’, ‘christological’, ‘passion’, ‘resurrection’, ‘scripture’. ‘The Gospel of St John’ (text), but ‘the gospel (good news) proclaimed by Jesus Christ’. The Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop McGarry (personal identifiers) were present, as well as several other archbishops and bishops (offices).

All but words except conjunctions, articles and prepositions in English-language book and article titles, and in subtitles within the article, are upper case: The Importance of Being Earnest. Foreign titles follow the conventions normal in the original language.

Style

While a few of our articles may be demanding, complex or academic, we always bear in mind that English is not the first language of all our readers, and ask authors to keep their style straightforward. The Way has a preference for simple, short sentences.

In general, there should be no more than one qualifying phrase or clause before the main clause of a sentence: ‘According to the authors, since the end of the Second World War the world has got worse’ should be changed to ‘According to the authors, the world has got worse since the end of the Second World War’. Similarly, the main verb of a subordinate clause should not be too far from its conjunction: ‘The authors think that the world is a great deal worse since the Second World War ended’ is better than ‘The authors think that, since the Second World War ended, the world is a great deal worse’.

Subheadings should break up the text at appropriate points. We prefer not to introduce numbering or different levels of subheading unless clearly necessary, though we do have provision for sub-subheadings.

Inclusive Language

Please use ‘humanity’ in preference to ‘mankind’ or ‘man’. Avoid generic ‘he’, but do not use cumbersome or pointed strategies. It is usually preferable to recast text in the plural (‘readers often find ...’ rather than ‘the reader’) than to use ‘he or she’ more than once or twice, or ‘they’ in the singular, which can create confusion.

The Way prefers to avoid gender-specific pronouns with regard to God, but will respect the convictions of an author who wishes to maintain them. However, if the convention of referring to God as a male is kept, then please capitalize as ‘He’, ‘His’, to signal some kind of disanalogy—Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus Christ are ‘he’; ‘the Second Person of the Trinity’ is ‘He’.

‘America’ is never used to refer only to the United States; please use US and US American, and North America only if you mean to include Canada and Central America.

Quotations and References

Please use footnotes rather than endnotes.

Brief references (biblical references, page numbers in a work that is cited a lot) can be made within the text; anything longer becomes a note.

Scripture should be cited as follows: Matthew 5:1-6; 2 Maccabees 7:4-7. We prefer NRSV.

Spiritual Exercises, italicised and always in full, refers to the text; ‘Exercises’or ‘Spiritual Exercises’ refers to the process. 

Ignatian texts can be cited as: Exx 15.1; Constitutions X.1.1 [810]; Diary, 15 February 1544. Note that verses are separated by a point, not a colon. These are our standard editions and abbreviations:

Autobiography ‘Reminiscences (Autobiography)’, in Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, translated by Philip Endean and Joseph A. Munitiz (London: Penguin, 1996).
Constitutions in The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996).
Diary ‘The Spiritual Diary’, in Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, translated by Philip Endean and Joseph A. Munitiz (London: Penguin, 1996).
Dir On Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Manuscript Directories and the Official Directory of 1599, translated and edited by Martin E. Palmer (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996).
Exx The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, translated by George E. Ganss (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992).

Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu as: MHSJ EI 12, 456; MHSJ MN 5, 556-557, etc.

Jesuit General Congregations should be cited from Jesuit Life and Mission Today: The Decrees and Accompanying Documents of the 31st – 35th General Congregations of the Society of Jesus (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2009), as General Congregation 34, decree 2, in Jesuit Life and Mission Today.

Full bibliographical references are made in line with the following examples:

books Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (London: SCM, 1988).
articles Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, ‘Angels Black and White: Loyola’s Spiritual Discernment in Historical Perspective’, Theological Studies, 44 (1983), 241–257.
more complex texts Karl Lehmann, ‘Introduction’, in The Content of Faith: The Best of Karl Rahner's Theological Writings, edited by Karl Lehmann and Albert Raffelt, translation edited by Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1994 [1977]), 1–41, here 25.
  Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, volume 20, translated by E. Quinn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981).
online sources Michael Paul Gallagher, ‘Theology and Imagination: From Theory to Practice’, Christian Higher Education, 5/1 (2006), 83–96, here 84. Available at http://www.plaything.co.uk/gallagher/academic/ theol_imag.html, accessed 2 April 2014.

Article titles should not be followed by a comma if they end in punctuation (e.g. ‘?’ or ‘!’).

Places of publication should only include US states if there is danger of ambiguity (Cambridge, Ma), or if the place is very unfamiliar. Please use the form ‘Ma’, ‘Tx’, etc., with no full stop.

Publishers: ‘Press’ is generally omitted. Use ‘UP’ for ‘University Press’, and abbreviate further if publisher is obvious from place of publication, e.g. (Oxford: OUP, 2001), but (New York: Oxford UP, 2001).

Page references: do not use ‘p.’ or ‘pp.’; please avoid using ‘ff.’

Repeat citations should be cited using surname and brief title (Dickens, Bleak House, 445). Never use ibid., idem or op. cit., and consolidate successive citations of the same text where possible.

There is no need to put a date of accessing for established websites that do not change very often, such as the Vatican, and major newspapers and journals.

Punctuation

Dashes: please use ‘em’ dashes without space. ‘The Prime Minister—none other than David Cameron—gave the speech.’ Hyphens should be used minimally; if in doubt omit. ‘Sixteenth-century English’, but ‘first class degree’. Always use en-dashes between ranges of numbers.

Points of omission are indicated by an ellipsis (Ctl + Alt + ‘.’in MS Word). The ellipsis is treated as a word in its own right:

Within a sentence it has a space either side.

At the end of the sentence it is followed by a full stop.

If it substitutes for the first words of a sentence, there is a space between it and the full stop at the end of the previous sentence (though we’ll avoid ‘…. …’).

Unless there seems some good reason in context, we will not scruple about capitalization at the beginning of such a sentence: ‘The book is very good. … It is the best thing I have ever read … on the subject. … we need to do something with it.’

Please try to follow UK conventions about quotation marks:

Single quotation marks, reserving double quotation marks for quotations within a quotation.

Final punctuation OUTSIDE the quotation mark, except where the quotation is a whole sentence or longer.

Displayed quotations (where a quotation is four lines or longer) are introduced:

with a comma if the syntax flows from the main text;
otherwise with a colon;

never with a point.

Abbreviations

Letters after a person’s name, without full stops or comma: (Paul Nicholson SJ).

No full stop in common acronyms such as USA and UK, or after US states (Ma, Tx). No full stop where an abbreviation ends with the same letter as the complete word (so Mr, but Rev.).

Avoid abbreviations of Latin phrases such as ‘e.g.’, ‘i.e.’: better to use a full English expression—‘for example’, ‘in other words’.

Lists

If the items are named by complex phrases, please separate them with semi-colons. ‘Among the themes discussed were: the Franco dictatorship; the Poll Tax and its effect on the Thatcher government; the shortcomings of the Nixon presidency.’

If the items listed are referred to in shorter phrases, please separate them with commas, including one before the final ‘and’ unless the sentence is perfectly clear without it: ‘There were apples, pears and oranges in the fruit bowl’; BUT ‘on the drinks tray, there was white wine from France, port from Portugal, and a liqueur from Eastern Europe’.

Numbers and Dates

One-word numbers are generally written out in full (six, seven).

Dates and other numbers are written in numerals (1976, 4,400 years, 23).

Ranges of numbers are written out numerically in full (17-19, 223-229).

Dates are generally written out as follows: 16 August 2000, 7 April 1976.