STYLE SHEET


I. Criteria for submission

A. Articles submitted to MERIA Journal for consideration should be original contributions and should not be under consideration by any other publication at the same time. If another version of the article is under consideration by another publication, or has been, or will be published elsewhere, authors should clearly indicate this at the time of submission. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically (via e-mail or computer disk). Articles should be submitted to gloria@idc.ac.il

B. There is no standard length for articles but 5,000-7,500 words (including notes and references) is a useful target.

C. The article should begin with an italicized abstract of around 100 words, which should describe the main arguments and conclusions of the article.

D. Tables should be kept to a minimum and contain only essential data. Each figure and table must be given an Arabic numeral, followed by a heading, and be referred to in the text.

            E. Authors should include a two line bio at the end of the article.

F. There should be no use of the first or second person.

 

II. MERIA Journal Style: Language, Spelling and Grammar

  • American spelling and punctuation should be used throughout (e.g., 'Recognize,' not 'Recognise,' and 'color' not 'colour'). This means punctuation should always come inside quotation marks (e.g. "Many Shi'ites… view Hizballah as too radical. Amal's largely secular leadership also appeals more to many individual members of the community.")
  • Turkish letters may not be used.
  • Numbers from one to ten should be spelled out, other numbers should be written as numerals.
  • Dates should be in the following form: December 21, 1999; 1994-98; the 1990s.
  • Use 'percent' rather than '%.'
  • Hyphenation: if it is an adjective modifying a noun, then it should be hyphenated.  For example: multi-party.
  • Offsetting hyphens should be two lines and no spaces as in: 'The new president—after his election—had a great effect on the country's foreign relations."
  • Acronyms should be in English.  For example, ANAP vs. MP or RRP vs. CHP.  
  • When referring to politics--i.e. fundamentalist groups, parties--use 'Islamist,' not 'Islamic.'
  • U.S. is never abbreviated when it stands alone, only when it is used as an adjective, as for example:  “U.S. interests” as opposed to: “the interests of the United States.”
  • If an abbreviation is introduced into the article, the first time it is used, the abbreviation must be in parentheses following the full name or title [e.g. Former Soviet Union (FSU)].
  • Any foreign word not known by the general public should be italicized, such as hudna or mukhtar.

 

III. MERIA Journal Style: Transliteration
 

  • Avoid e and o in Arabic transliteration. 
  • “al” should be lower case and have a dash.
  • Do not use apostrophe (’) at the beginning of Arabic proper nouns.

OFFICIAL SPELLINGS FOR THE FOLLOWING:

Ahmad

Asad

Bashar

Ba’th

Decisionmaking  (one word)

Hamas

Hizballah 

Faysal al-Husayni

Saddam Hussein

intifada (no caps no italics)

jihad (no caps, no italics)

Koran – We use the most common spellings for clarity to readers.

Khamene’i

Khomeini

Usama bin Ladin

The Maghreb

Muhammad

Muslim

Mustafa

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Policymaking  (one word)

al-Qa’ida

Shari’a

Sharm al-Shaykh

shaykh - not sheikh. Capitalize when used as a title before a name

Shi’a – noun, both singular and plural

Shi’i – adjective

Shiite- is not to be used in MERIA Journal articles      

Yasir

 

IV. MERIA Journal Style: Formatting Your Article
 

  • Title must be all caps and centered
  • 'By' line is center with capital B in By
  • All articles should be in Times New Roman 12 point font (including title and endnotes).
  • Sub-headings should be all capitals, bold, flush left.  Skip one line before subhead.(e.g. OSLO ACCORDS)
  • Sub-sub-headings should be in bold italics, upper and lower case (eg. Negotiating the Accords).
  • Sub-sub-sub headings should be avoided, but if used, should be italics, upper and lower case (eg . The Negotiators)
  • Websites should be linked and have http:// at the beginning. For example, http://meria.idc.ac.il/article-submissions.html 
  • Long quotations (more than four lines) should be preceded by a colon and indented in the text without the use of quotation marks.

 

V. MERIA Journal Style: Endnotes

  • Use the imbedded endnotes function in Word. Endnotes, rather than footnotes, should be used.
  • The number of endnotes (there are to be NO footnotes) should be kept to a reasonable minimum. They should be numbered consecutively throughout the article, using a numeral (but not a roman numeral). 

ENDNOTE FORMAT:

  1. For the endnote text at the end of the article, the number of the note should be followed by a period. For example:

10.  Barry Rubin, The Tragedy of the Middle East (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

  1. All book titles are italicized not underlined. Note: initial capitals are used for all nouns and important adjectives in titles.
  2. All journal titles are italicized not underlined.
  3. For article citations, punctuation goes inside quotation marks.
  4. When sourcing one page of a book or article, p. is used.  When sourcing more than one, pp. is used. There is a space between the p. or the pp. and the number.

EXAMPLES:

For Books:

1. Feroz Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy, 1950-1975 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), p.18.

2. Ronald L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein (eds.), The Culture of National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 33-79.

Subsequent references may appear as:

3. Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment, pp. 20-23.

4. Jepperson et al, The Culture of National Security, pp. 134-39.

 

For Articles (note the sequence of volume, number, date of publication and page reference--and note that no numbers are in Roman numerals):

1. Sabri Sayari, "The Turkish Party System in Transition," Government and Opposition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Winter 1978), p. 40.

2. George E. Gruen, “Turkey’s Relations with Israel: From Ambivalence to Open Cooperation,” in David F. Altabe, Erhan Atay and Israel J. Katz (eds.), Studies on Turkish - Jewish History: Political and Social Relations, Literature and Linguistics--the Quincentennial Papers (NY: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1996), p. 121.

Subsequent references should appear as:

3. Sayari, “The Turkish Party System,” p. 40.

4. Gruen, “Turkey’s Relations with Israel,” pp. 122-25.

 
 
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