Warring States Papers
Style Sheet

This page gives guidelines which the Journal editorial staff will generally follow in preparing copy for publication; see also the Information for Authors page. Suggestions on general usage or word division will be found in the Reference section of this site, for both English and Chinese.

Journal authors should consult with the editors on any doubtful points; see also our instructions on Preformatting. Authors should be generally familiar with Project methodology, as briefly summarized on the Rules page in the Methodology section. Note especially the recommendation not to cite a late work (such as the Shr Ji) for earlier periods (such as the Warring States). Warring States evidence should be used, or the lack of it noted, for Warring States matters.

Introductory Points

General. We do not seek to impose a uniform style, giving the impression that one person wrote all the articles. Individual authorial voices and approaches are welcome. We will copy-fit to avoid breaking footnotes, and as far as possible paragraphs, over page turns. We also prefer to unify some details of mechanics, and we systematically discourage the use of certain common but nonfunctional conventions. The major points of intended uniformity are given under Conventions, below.

Schedule. The journal does not yet have an established routine, though we expect a roughly annual rhythm. We will aim in general at rapid publication of current results. Author promptness in replying to editorial queries, at all stages of the process, will always be appreciated.

Overall Planning

Form. We are looking for a research memo rather than a lecture or a literary essay. Our model for length and formal clarity is Physical Review Letters. Please begin your paper with a statement of the problem being discussed, and end with a statement of the conclusion reached. The first and last paragraphs should ideally combine to make a good abstract of the paper. Everything in between is the evidence cited, and the argument from that evidence, supported by citation of the sources relied on.

Length. Established practice for a number of current "classical" journals is that an article is 20 ± 5 pages, and a note is 10 ± 5 pages. Given that two-level perception, we are chiefly interested in the lower or "note" level, and especially in the lower end of that level. 4 pages as printed, including footnotes and bibliography, is our default expectation for the length of pieces. This amounts to a little under 2,000 words. We recognize that some topics may require the inclusion of a long data set or a translation, and that even minimal treatment of a complex topic may take a certain amount of space. And excellence is always its own excuse. We do not, however, wish to compete as a matter of course with journals whose standard article length is 20 pages and up. We hope instead to supply a presently vacant niche.

Audience. Our envisioned reader is a Sinologist familiar with pre-Imperial China: someone who knows what the Shr Ji is, and has heard of the Gwodyen texts, but will appreciate brief explanations of technical points from specialties within that zone of acquaintance. We hope also to interest the comparativists, and our colleagues working in parallel fields (particularly the Mediterranean classics), but not at the cost of explaining everything de novo in every article. The stranger has obligations too.

Clarity. We will revise or rearrange to reduce ambiguity and produce clarity. As a general principle, prefer primary evidence to secondary opinion (our methodology forbids authority arguments per se). In citing secondary opinion, it is often helpful to indicate the primary evidence for a cited opinion (thus: "Author Title 154, citing MZ 31"). If you are basing an argument on a given data set (eg, the "fei li" passages in DJ), it may help to give a complete listing, either in the article or as an appendix. The reader should be able to see what you are seeing, without having to duplicate the work you have been doing.

Relevance. Do not introduce evidence which will not be relied on in the argument. Do not spend time refuting previous opinions at length, unless such refutation is your main point (but do be sure to cite previous opinion when you are relying on it; see the Ethics paragraph of the Information for Authors page). Give a preliminary summary sufficient to define the problem, including any relevant major views pro or con, and proceed directly to your own argument. This is not your thesis, whose purpose is to show that you know what everybody else knows. It is your contribution to knowledge, whose purpose is to show what you have found out that nobody else knows.

Conclusion. Do not suddenly introduce new data (above all, new archaeological data) in the course of your conclusion. The conclusion should bring together the implications of what has gone before. Do not attempt to be surprising, witty, or enigmatic in the final sentences. The final sentences should state the point at which the paper has arrived; and that point should have been telegraphed in the introduction.

Some Preferred Conventions

Years should be given in our recommended "prefixed-zero" system for BC years, and simply as numbers for AD years. This is the least language-specific convention that is now possible, and it has the virtue of permitting hypenation of dates. See further Radiocarbon Dates and Dates, below.

Eras. The word "Jou" must be limited to the period ending in 0771. Later periods are Spring and Autumn (extending to sometime around 0500) and Warring States (ending in 0221). The last two may not be collectively referred to as "Eastern Jou." We make a point of this because of widespread confusion resulting from the indiscriminate use of "Jou" in scholarly writings. Warring States data are not evidence for the Jou Kingship in the centuries when the Jou Kingship meant something politically. Notice that in LY 17:4 (c0270) "a Jou in the East" is spoken of, not as the current situation, but as a situation that might come to exist in the future, and that "Eastern Jou," in the Jan-gwo Tsv and elsewhere, does not refer to a historical period; it means "the eastern part of the Jou enclave." Available terms for the stretch of time between 0771 and 0221 are "post-Jou" and "pre-Chin." The latter is the most common scholarly usage in Chinese, and is recommended accordingly.

Romanization. Any system, including that of EFEO, is acceptable as long as it includes tones, so that readers may learn new terms without having to resort to a dictionary for tonal information. If tones are not provided by authors, we will, in adding them, convert to Common Alphabetic romanization. If tones are provided with either pinyin or Wade-Giles spellings, respell ü as -yu and put the tonemark over the u (we cannot process stacked diacritics, and even if we could, the result would be ugly). Cited works given in characters (whether Chinese or Japanese) need to have at least their author surnames and title keywords romanized, for use in the citation convention which is described below.

Citations. The basic forms are given on the Citation Conventions page in Reference. Briefly: Use the form Surname Keyword page (no commas) for modern works. Avoid the convention exemplified by "Jones 1997e" (suppose Jones produced 27 citable works in 1997?), but do add dates of publication to references where it helps to evaluate the probity of the evidence cited, thus

Jones Word (1954) 24f, but cf Keith Semantics (1998) 47

Supplying a date may also clarify citations of ancient works, eg "Pseudo-Plato Hipparchus (04c)." Citations may be given within the line or in a footnote, as best assists the flow of the argument. When in doubt, use in-text citations, since they save space overall. Give expansions of the short citation forms in a Works Cited list at the end of your article. For examples of the form of expanded entries, see the Works Cited list for the present web site, and the next paragraph below. See further below for citations from classical Chinese texts. For divisions within texts, follow the convention recommended in Classical Chinese Texts, or consult with the editorial staff. See also the next two paragraphs below:

Abbreviations. For frequently mentioned books and journals, use established abbreviations and short forms, to avoid repeated mention of complicated bibliographic data. The WSP abbreviations lists are customized as far as possible to the likely citation needs of its authors and audiences. They, or the relevant portions of them, are printed in the back of each volume of WSP, for reader convenience. For author guidance, see the separate Journals, Books, and Texts pages.

Bibliographic Form. In your Works Cited listings, include only information which is directly helpful for library retrieval (place of publication, for example, is not normally useful except in disambiguating occasional doublets, such as Shangwu vs [Taiwan] Shangwu). We deplore the different grimaces customarily used to differentiate Books (italics) from "Articles" (quotes). In our opinion, books and articles are equally valuable to scholarship, and should be treated with equal dignity. It is sufficient to capitalize the titles of both, to distinguish them from regular prose, and the presence of a journal rather than a press in the citation entry will adequately distinguish the two from each other. For examples, see the Bibliographic Form page.

Your Article

Title. We do not accept subtitles. Make your title clear in itself. Select it with a view to including a distinctive keyword for use in our citation convention. The title may not consist wholly of characters. It may contain characters, but it must occupy, including any characters, no more than 4 inches when set in 15pt type. If your paper has joint authors, be sure to choose a short title; title plus authors plus page number must fit on one line of the volume's Contents page.

Author Name. Give in your preferred form. If you have alternate forms, we recommend the one with at least one of your personal names spelled out. We do not include degrees, affiliations, or titles of nobility with names. Joint authors will be stacked vertically; the order of listing is up to the authors themselves.

Affiliation. You may give only one. It may be an academic institution (not including department) or a business firm. If you have connections to two academic institutions, give the one where you are paid more, or have greater permanency. The default affiliation is city of residence. We prefer the affiliation which applied at the time the article was written, but an author preference for a more recent affiliation will be indulged.

Dedications are out of place in the shorter articles which we prefer. Foundation or other grant support, or thesis guidance, may be acknowledged in an unnumbered first footnote. More specific indebtedness should be credited in a numbered footnote, at the point in the text where the indebtedness arises.

Characters. Standard characters included in the extended TwinBridge 4 font may be freely used, but should not be included where the Chinese term is obvious to professionals in the field. We are not equipped to add nonstandard characters or inscriptional forms in text. Inscriptions should be presented in facsimile. Authors are responsible for providing reproduction-quality facsimiles, and for arranging for permission to reproduce any copyrighted material. Please provide copies of permission statements when submitting a manuscript.

Tables. We welcome tables, diagrams, or any other device that gives an overview of the evidence. Tables must be within the capabilities of WordPerfect 7. Statistical analysis is welcome, but be sure to specify which statistical process you are using, and specify any relevant confidence interval. Within our technical limits, the devices of scientific writing (including formulas of no great notational complexity) are available where appropriate.

Notes will be printed as footnotes. Giving routine citations in footnotes wastes vertical space, so include them in text where practical (our short citation form is designed to make it routinely practical). Footnotes are better used for explanations which would interrupt an argument, or to deal with possible objections. But avoid long footnotes unless it is clear that they can be accommodated entirely on the page where they begin. If a footnote is insistently long, format it separately as a 2p future article, or as a 1p appendix to the present article. Do not regard the footnote as a zone where documentation is not required. If a footnote statement needs a citation, give that citation within the footnote, in the same format as specified above.

Indexing. It will help if you will circle in your text keywords which in your opinion deserve indexing. If an indexable topic does not occur as a word in your text, write it in the margin and circle it there.

Details and Mechanics

Spelling. Other things being equal, American alternatives ("color") are preferred to British ones ("colour"). On the "judgement/judgment" crux, which is disputed even within British usage, we follow Fowler p310, which in turn agrees with American pronunciation rules for "soft g." See our separate Reference pages for preferred English spellings, and for word division in romanized Chinese.

Ancient Pronunciations. All are understood to be reconstructions, hence, in our view, the usual prefixed asterisk is superfluous (it also conflicts with our recommended usage of *- for glottal stop in phonetic transcriptions). Its repeated use is also both wearisome and underdistinctive. Author preferences will however be indulged. Be sure to state the authority for the reconstruction you use.

Punctuation. We aim at a clean page not stippled with punctuation. Do not use periods after abbreviations or acronyms; reserve them to mark the end of a sentence. We use a raised dot (p = 3·1416) to keep decimal points from competing with final periods. For the same reason, convert periods in text references (such as the HK concordance code for Dzwo Jwan 1.4.7) to a different format (eg, 1/4:7). Put periods, and by extension any other mark of punctuation, including a colon or semicolon, inside any associated raised element, such as an end quote or footnote number. It is prettier that way. (And if an entire sentence is parenthesized, the final period follows the parenthesis, to indicate closure).

Affixed Abbreviations. We prefer the alternative that is cleaner (has least punctuation) and takes least space. Normally, affix abbreviations to a numeral, as c0402 (circa), p307 (page), v7 (volume), 3ed (edition) 307f (page 307 and relevant following page or pages), and fp8 (facing page 8). Given the possibility of closely affixed circa dates (c0402), the following should be spaced away from the year: b (born) fl (flourished; floruit), r (reigned), d (died). In citations, separate page numbers and footnote numbers (eg, 317 n1).

Authorial Stance. The inclusive "we" (the author plus readers who are following the argument) is fine, but don't use "we" in a different sense elsewhere in the article.

Possessives. We generally prefer speech idiom (as would be used in a lecture) to the sometimes artificial conventions decreed for writing (Confucius's, Robert Burns's), but this is an area where authorial preference will be indulged. The use of apostrophe plus s for a pluralized numeral form (as, 1960's for Nineteen-Sixties) is allowed, and indeed suggested.

Numeral Plus Noun. Hyphenate only when the phrase is an adjective (seven-year locusts), not otherwise (seven hundred dollars). By extension, we prefer forms like "$400 million."

Citation Formulas. The model is MC 3B6 (Mencius, chapter 3 sya, passage 6) or Shr 135A2 (Shr poem 135, stanza 1, line 2). Add the title of that chapter or poem, if desired, following the reference code (the title may not replace the reference code), thus "JZ 24 (Shan-mu)." Where no letter naturally separates two numerals in a reference code, but only in such situations, use a colon as a separator, thus LY 9:3. Give intrinsic divisions before page references to any specific edition, thus: HHS 24 2/840 = "Hou Han Shu chapter 24, which happens to be volume 2 page 840 of the Junghwa HB punctuated edition." For pages in Chinese and Western books, recto (as, 34r) means the side of a double page first encountered in normal reading order for that language; similarly verso (34v). The line or column may be added (construed as "row," thus 34r4), as may the word within that line, after a colon (eg, 34r4:17). Double columns, as in the Legge translations, may be differentiated as a/b; four-on-one reproduction formats as a/b/c/d (in order of the original pages, regardless of their position on the reproduced page).

Acronyms. See pages in this section for Book and Journal abbreviations. By preference, spell out other journal titles; consult the editors in difficult cases. For books, see also the longer list of Text Acronyms in our on-line reference feature Classical Chinese Texts.

Inscriptions. Do not cite inscriptions simply by reference to standard collections; not all libraries are up to "standard" in this respect. Give the name of the vessel, its provenance, and its probable date. If it was not scientifically excavated, or if it is no longer extant, note that fact, which is relevant to the value of the inscription as evidence. Don't write for fellow experts, in this or any other matter; write for Sinologists with other disciplinary or technical specialties.

Dates. As noted above, use a prefixed zero for BC years, and a plain number for AD years. Do not give retrojected Julian months ("April 0479"), a practice which entails extreme cultural dissonance in our period; instead, give local ones (10mo = 10th [lunar] month). Give modern days in the form 10 May 1992, a recommendation in which we are pleased to coincide with the Chicago Manual of Style (14ed).

Spans. Distinguish between a span of known years (0342-0317), a range of possible years (0342/0339), and a duration which overlaps several consecutive years (the conquest of 0255/54). Note that the last formula does not repeat the entire year, but only its last two digits.

Radiocarbon Dates. Convert radiocarbon years to historical years by adjusting for the "BP" base year of 1950. Then convert "0800 ± 20" forms to the equivalent range, in this case "0820/0780." We do this because it is emphasized, by those who know, that the center date of the range is not intrinsically more likely than anything else in the range. Add the error factor (typically 68%) in parentheses. If the calibration curve (see Bowman p27) gives two interpretations for the radiocarbon result, give both, joined by "or."

Places. Give unfamiliar place names (and most archaeological sites are very unfamiliar to nonspecialists) with map coordinates to the nearest minute (in the form 35° 36 N, 117° 58 E). Modern provinces are irrelevant to our period; give instead, in parentheses, the Warring State in which that site was included at that date. If your best guess is uncertain, add a question mark, thus: (Chu?).

Compounds. Distinguish between coordinate compounds (yin/yang; the Tswei/Gu hypothesis) and subordinating compounds (wan-wu, Tyen-sya). There is no agreed standard practice for polysyllabic Chinese words written together. Current tendencies seem to envision different points of equilibrium for the classical and modern languages. See our Reference page for word divisions in romanized Chinese.

Numerals. Humanistic reluctance about numerals accounts for many of the less defensible conventions of academic prose. The Project is somewhat concerned to unify methodology with the sciences, and in that spirit the journal intentionally adopts a more numerate stance. Numerals rather than written-out number words are preferred for all quantities which are in principle susceptible to computation. Thus "died at 76," because of the possibility (for ancient Chinese elite males) of the statement "died at an average age of 47·4." Beginning a sentence with a numeral is not forbidden if that is the most natural spelling of the most natural spoken form; thus

1993 was the year the owls were so bad.

Conversely, there are places where words can clarify, especially when contrasted with numbers in the immediate vicinity, as "the four sayings LY 9:4-7." Don't give decimals to unreal lengths. Do identify what statistical process you are using, when stating confidence levels or other statistical results. The reader should be able to check your calculations as well as your citations.

Italics. We prefer to reserve italics only for sentence emphasis. When used for every foreign word in copy such as ours, they imply a constant grimace of unfamiliarity which is ultimately unprofessional. When used to distinguish Book Titles from "Article Titles," they imply a snobbery which underrates the value of journals such as ours. Capital letters will adequately distinguish both book and article titles from the surrounding prose, and the Works Cited information will adequately distinguish books from articles.

Exclamation Points. We have never encountered an exclamation point in scholarly writing which did not suggest a tone inappropriate to scholarly writing. Parenthesized exclamation points are particularly offensive (as is "sic" in the sense of "duh)." If something is stupid, either ignore it, or take more time to say why you think so. If it's not worth that much time, it's not worth any time at all. Use bracketed [sic] only where the reader might validly wonder if you have quoted a form or passage correctly. If you are intentionally quoting a misspelled form, it may help to write "sic" in your manuscript, for the guidance of the editors.

Boldface is normally reserved for section headings and for keywords in citations. Do not use it for emphasis. Italics are reserved precisely for sentence emphasis.

Latinisms. With JAOS and some other journals, we recommend that authors avoid ibid, op cit, and loc cit, deservedly the most hated abbreviations in scholarly writing. But some Latinisms are useful, especially in close philological arguments. Their abbreviated form should normally be written in lower case, without italics, closed up, and without periods, to save space and to avoid interfering with the sentence flow. They include ie (id est, "that is"), eg (exempli gratia, "for example"), aet (aetate, "at the age of"), sv (sub verbo, "under the rubric or heading of"), ap (apud, "next to, in connection with," as a commentary attached to the cited text passage, eg Karlgren ap Shr 57A3), vs (versus, "as against"), v (vide, "see"), qv (quod vide, "which see"), and cf (confer, "compare; see also"). Latinisms not fully abbreviated or closed up include ad loc (ad locum, "at the passage in question"). Many expressions derived from Latin (ad hoc, etc) now function as regular English words, and should be treated as such.

Capital Letters are used for the first word in a sentence, for the main words in titles (in all languages, including French), and in proper nouns. Proper nouns (and their corresponding adjectives) are nouns of specific rather than general reference. Our paradigmatic contrast for proper vs common nouns is

Adjectives follow the capitalization of the corresponding noun, hence Biblical (contra CM14), as derived from Bible (following CM14). Do not follow the French practice of decapitalizing all adjectives.

Calligraphic Separator

These are the main editorial preferences. Reasoned departures from them are nearly always discussible.

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