Guidelines for Submission of Manuscripts

1. Manuscripts submitted to the Journal must not have been previously published elsewhere -- either in print or electronically -- nor currently under review for possible publication elsewhere. Manuscripts should be submitted in electronic format, with an original hardcopy mailed to the Editor's address posted on the CLTA web-site. Manuscripts are sent to reviewers anonymously. Result of the review process, often including anonymous reviewers' comments, suggested revisions, and editorial changes will be returned to the author via email.

2. The Journal publishes articles in both English and Chinese. English articles should go through a spelling and grammar check on the computer before submission. Authors writing in their non-native language are advised to have their articles thoroughly edited by professionals with native-level proficiency in that language prior to submission.

3. Each manuscript submitted to the Journal should begin with abstracts in both English and Chinese, beginning with the one in the language of the article. Each abstract should be 1/4 to 1/2 page in length (approximately 100-200 words in the English version). The abstracts are published on the CLTA website and in Linguistics Abstracts, an internet and hardcopy publication.

4. Documentation of sources: Authors should adhere to established academic standards for acknowledging sources and avoiding plagiarism. Information on what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it is available at: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_plagiar.html. #10 below provides guidelines on how to document other sources.

Manuscript Preparation:

Note: Help with technical aspects of Chinese computing is available via the CLTA website: http://clta-us.org/cltalinks/links.htm.

5. All manuscripts must be readable in MS Word 2002 with all the original formatting. (Files prepared in MS Word, version 6 and upward, are usually acceptable.) Articles written in Chinese may be in either traditional or sim-plified characters. All three commonly used coding systems - mainland Chinese (GB), Taiwan (Big5), and Unicode - are acceptable, but the coding system should be consistent throughout the article. Character form (traditional or simplified) should be consistent unless the subject of the article requires contrasting the two forms. It is ultimately the author's responsibility to present the manuscript in an electronic form that can be accommodated by the software available to the Editor.
6. Diagrams, tables, and charts must be no more than 5" wide in order to be accommodated within the width of the Journal, and the font size should be no smaller than 9 points in order to be legible (main text is printed in 11 points).
7. Chinese characters in articles written in English: Characters should be used in example sentences. Romanization may be added at the author's discretion. For occasional Chinese words within English text, characters may be used to accompany romanized words on first occurrence, and where they facilitate identification, but not with words or names that are well-known or can be readily identified. In all cases, Chinese characters must be displayable without such specialized programs as TwinBridge, NJStar or Richwin.
8. Romanization: Except for established proper nouns and terminology, romanization should be done in standard Hanyu Pinyin. Tonal markings should be made by using either the Unicode-compliant Times New Roman font with tone-marked vowels or tone numbers at the end of each syllable (which will be converted to tone diacritics by the Editor).
9. Footnotes rather than endnotes should be used within the manuscript.
10. References and Bibliographies: Contemporary standard formats used in academic publications are acceptable. Items in Chinese and Western Languages may be grouped separately or listed together. Chinese listings must include characters for authors and titles, while romanization for Chinese titles is unnecessary and translation of the titles into English is optional. Other formatting matters such as the use of capitalization, italics and punctuation should also be consistent throughout the bibliography. Authors may also refer to the bibliographies in recent issues of the Journal as samples.
11. The above guidelines should be supplemented by the Foreign Language Annals Guidelines for Manuscript Preparation. The sections most useful to authors submitting manuscripts to JCLTA are: 4.c. References; 5. Acknowledgments; 7. Reference list; 8. Tables and Figures; and 9. Appendices.