Manuscript: Writing Style and Formatting

Manuscripts submitted to Rising Asia should be double-spaced, with footnotes, indented paragraphs, at least one-inch margins, 12-point, Times New Roman font, in MS Word format. Manuscripts must be between 5,000 to 10,000 words excluding footnotes, although the word limit may be increased in exceptional cases.

Style

Authors should ensure that their manuscripts conform to the style requirements in this guide. Authors may also consult the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition.

Title

The title and subtitle of the article should be limited to a maximum of 10 words.

Anonymous Submission

The author's name and academic affiliation should appear only on a separate cover sheet. Authors should avoid text references that indicate their identity and should limit citations to their own work.

Abstract and Author Bio

Authors should include an abstract in 250 words, and short bio (250 words) with their manuscript submission.

English Standard

Authors should use U.S. (not British) English. A good reference guide is the Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary for spelling, hyphenation, italicization, capitalization, use of numbers, punctuation, and other matters of style.

Footnotes

Lengthy footnotes are discouraged. Use footnotes only to cite books, journals and other sources and not to explain and elaborate. Do not insert footnotes in mid-sentence. The number of footnotes in a sentence or a paragraph can be reduced by grouping several citations into a single footnote. The citations are separated by semicolons and must appear in the same order as the text material.

Works Cited (Bibliography)

All articles must have a Works Cited section, at the end, in Chicago style

Detailed Style Guide

1. PEOPLE & PLACES
   • Order of Names: (a) Write author names in the word order and spelling that appears on the original document, (b) When citing certain Asian names, always cite the entire name: Ho Chi Minh (not Ho, and not Minh); Vo Nguyen Giap (not Vo, and not Giap), (c) Use the exact name as in the original: The British Labour Party (not Labor Party).
   • Punctuation for Titles: (a) Capitalize a title that comes before a personal name; do not capitalize a title that stands alone: Governor-General Hastings; the governor-general. General Secretary Do Muoi; the general secretary, (b) A title preceding a full name may be abbreviated. When it precedes a surname alone, it is spelled out: Lt. Col. Ram Singh; Lieutenant Colonel Singh; Professor Kumar; Prof. Suresh Kumar, (c) Social titles are abbreviated, and must be followed by a period: Ms. Tan, Mr. Tan.
   • POSSESSIVES: Add an apostrophe and an 's' to form the possessive of singular nouns, and an apostrophe only for plural nouns. Exception: For proper nouns and other singular words that end in a sibilant, use an apostrophe only: Professor Marcus' book, not Professor Marcus's book.
   • GEOGRAPHICAL REGIONS: (a) Capitalize formal regions: the West/the East (as cultural regions); the East Coast; Greater Mumbai, Mekong Delta, (b) Lowercase words that refer to direction: eastern; southern; eastward; to turn east, (c) Capitalize North and South when referring to the two Koreas, (d) Lowercase north/south/east/west when referring to simple direction, (e) Lowercase generic terms: the tropics; the inner city; the suburbs; the delta of the Brahmaputra River.
   • TOPOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS: The words "mountain," "river," "ocean," "island," and so forth are capitalized when used in a name: Brahmaputra River or Tonle Sap River.
2. TIME & EVENTS
   • DENOTING PERIODS OF TIME, GOVERNMENTS, ERAS: (a) Time designations are expressed as CE ("of the common era") and BCE ("before the common era"), both written in full capitals with no periods. Use CE and BCE only when indicating a period that is BCE or that begins in BCE and ends in CE (e.g., 21 BCE–39CE), (b) Names of governments should be capitalized. When mentioning a dynasty for the first time, indicate its period of duration in parentheses: Sukhothai dynasty (1569–1629).
   • TIME: (a) Use numerals when exact time is emphasized, and indicate "a.m." and "p.m." when necessary for clarity: the train left at 4:35 a.m. and arrived in Kuala Lumpur at 7:03 p.m., (b) Do not use the twenty-four-hour system: He was born at midnight (not, he was born at 2400 hrs, or 00.00.), (c) Month-day-year form should be used, not day-month-year: August 24, 2005 (not 24 August 2005), (d) Centuries should be spelled out. Use a hyphen when the century is used as an adjective: the twenty-first century; the eighth and ninth centuries; the eighteen hundreds; mid-nineteenth century; nineteenth-century scholar; twentieth-century conflict, (e) Decades may be spelled out or written in numerals. The first decade of any century should be spelled out: the nineties; the mid-fifties; the sixties; the mid-1960s; in the middle of 1968; the first decade of the eighteenth century (or the years 1800–1809); the second decade of the nineteenth century, or the 1810s; the 1960s and 1970s (not the '60s and '70s), (f) Years should be written in full, in numeral form. Do not shorten the second item in ranges: the war of 1939–1945; she lived there during the years 1702–1705; the winter of 1948–1949; he was born in 1980.
   • FORMAL EVENTS: Formal events such as wars and revolutions should be capitalized: The Korean War (1950–1953); the First Indochina War (1946–1954); First World War; French Revolution.
   • CULTURAL PERIODS: (a) Most cultural periods with numerical and descriptive names are lowercased, except for proper names: the twenty-first century; the nineteen hundreds; the sixties; the colonial period, (b) Some names of periods are capitalized by convention: the Cold War; the Cultural Revolution.
3. GENERAL STYLE
   • ABBREVIATIONS: (a) Lengthy titles, names of manuscript collections, personal names, or other entities should be followed with an abbreviation in parentheses in the first instance, and the abbreviation should be used in all subsequent instances. Keep abbreviations in full capitals, with no punctuation except when necessary for clarity in cases of possible ambiguity. If the abbreviation is for the title of a book or newspaper, the abbreviation should be in italic-face type.
   • TRANSLATION AND FOREIGN WORDS: A bracketed translation should immediately follow uncommon non-English words at their first mention.
   • ITALIC TYPEFACE: (a) Non-English words found in most dictionaries do not need to be italicized; other foreign words should be italicized in the first instance, (b) Use italics for all book titles. Use quotation marks for titles of journal articles, (c) All English titles and subtitles should be italicized when mentioned in text, notes, or bibliography. The initial "the" in periodical titles is often lowercased in text and not italicized, and in notes it is generally omitted. Non-English titles retain the original titles: He reads the Rasmei Kampuchea and Saigon Giai Phong.
   • QUOTATION MARKS: Use double quotation marks, not single quotations marks for simple quotations. (a) Quotations within quotations are set apart with single quotation marks, as follows: (i) If the question is inside the double quotation marks, place the question mark between the single and double quotation marks: "The prime minister declared 'why do we have hostile neighbors'?" (ii) If a quote inside a quote is a question or exclamation, place the question mark or exclamation point inside the single quotation marks: JFK said, "LBJ asked, 'Will we eventually lose the war?' " (iii) Use single quotation marks inside double quotation marks if there is a quotation within a quotation: JFK told McNamara, "LBJ said, 'This will never work.' "
   (b) Periods and commas are placed inside double quotation marks: "war," "peace," and "accord," (c) Colons and semi-colons are placed outside double quotation marks: "World War allies": Britain and France, (d) Question marks and exclamation points can be placed inside or outside double quotation marks, depending on the context: The army general declared, "Do you want peace or war?"!; Did he say, "I want to go!"? (e) Sparingly use Block Quotations. Quotations under 100 words can be run into the text, (f) Do not insert quotation marks in indented text because the indented text itself denotes that it is a quote.
   • SQUARE BRACKETS: Use square brackets in quoted material to inject the author's editorial voice, as when providing a missing word or letter, indicating the subject of the passage, or clarifying a translation: The entire nation want[s] peace.
   • ELLIPSES: (a) Use ellipses (spaced periods) in quoted material to indicate the omission of a word or words, (b) Use three dots when the omission occurs within a sentence, and four when one or more sentences are omitted (the first dot is a period, and follows the preceding word directly, with no space): "Mr. Speaker, Sir, may I say that the PAP Government had put its cards on the table before it assumed office. We did it over three months . . . beginning from the famous day of 15th February at Hong Lim." And, "It was there the Deputy Prime Minister said things and set off a chain reaction which finally ended with the routing of the rogues and scallywags that used to haunt this Chamber. . . .We know exactly what is expected of us because we have made these promises. Unlike the previous government, we gave no hostages to fortune. Plainly and simply, we took the stand . . . in the interest of the survival of the democratic state in order, first, to cleanse the system of the evils of the past, and to retrieve some of the liberalism, the tolerance which were the good things we should carry into the future", (c) If the first word after an ellipse is not capitalized in the original, it should appear as a capital in square brackets: "[L]et me tell them that this is not a constitutional position of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Democrats and Republicans in America, or Tories and Labour in Britain." (d) Do not use ellipses at the end of a sentence: "The Vietnamese National Assembly voted to pass the bill on investments . . . "
4. NUMBERS
   • GENERAL GUIDELINES (a) All numbers from one till one hundred should be spelled out. All numbers greater than one hundred should be written in numerals, except when the number is at the beginning of a sentence and when it is round (i.e., ends with one or more zeroes: hundreds, thousands, hundred thousands, millions). Use the following: seven; ten; twenty-five; seventy-three; two hundred; 104; one thousand; three thousand; one million; 10,345,078, (b) In referring to different editions of works in endnotes, the numeral form should be used: 2nd ed.; 12th ed.; forty-fifth; tenth; 196th; thousandth, (c) Write "percent" not "per cent." Percentages are always given as numerals: 3 percent; 75 percent; 100 percent, (d) Use a comma in numerals with four or more digits (1,456; 2,005,000), except when referring to page numbers: "he argued in ... (Foucault, 1085)," (e) Fractions are usually spelled out and hyphenated: four-fifths; three and one-quarter kilometre, (f) Inclusive numbers are always written in full, in numeral form, with a comma if the number has four or more digits, except for page numbers which have no commas: 3–10; 71–77; 98–119; 100–105; 1,122–2,000; 1,200,500–1,200,800; pp. 2333–2340.
   • AGE: Use numeral form for age over ten; use word form for ages ten and under. (a) When used as a noun, "year" is singular and hyphens are used: one-year-old; ten-year-old; 24-year-old, (b) When referring to a general age range, spell out the years: in his sixties; in their early twenties; in his late forties.
   • MEASUREMENTS: Measurements should always be spelled out in text, but abbreviations should be used in tables: three miles; forty kilometers; fourteen hundred years.
   • CURRENCY: (a) If a symbol for the currency is used, the amount should be written as a numeral: US $ 500 million; forty-three cents for a chocolate bar; ten dollars; 245 dollars; $ 1,200, (b) Other currencies using a dollar symbol should be clearly identified: Can $ 300; Mex $ 98, (c) The pound symbol (£) refers to the British pound. Other currencies using the pound symbol should be clearly identified: Egypt £ 80; two hundred Egyptian pounds, (d) Currencies may be indicated by their written form or symbol: one euro; € 40; sixty euros; 90 (euro) cents; one thousand yen; 235 ¥; one million French francs, (e) Where the value of currency in any particular year is in question, the date may be inserted in parentheses: Sing $ 700 (1987).
   • TABLES AND CHARTS: Use commonly understood abbreviations and symbols when possible ($, km, ft, lb). Indicate percent and percentage with %. Numbers should be written in numeral form only, with commas in numbers of four or more digits.
5. LISTS
   (a) Shortlists should run into the text and separated by commas: The new monarchy had all the embellishments of a democratic state (a) a flag, (b) a Constitution, (c) a Parliament, and (d) multiple media outlets. The monarch aimed to exercise control in three quicksteps: (1) warn, (2) repeat warning, and (3) arrest. These items are separated by commas, (b) If items require internal commas, they should be separated by semicolons: The monarch spelled out his priorities in purchasing foreign weapons: (1) fighter aircraft, fifth-generation, long-range; (2) heat-seeking missiles, beyond-visual range capability; (3) luxury yachts, fleets of European cars, (c) Vertical lists should be introduced by a complete sentence followed by a colon, and they may be organized by numbers or bullets.
6. SPACING AND INDENTATION:
   (a) Do not write a section heading (such as "Introduction," "Overview,") before the opening text of the article. Such headings should come after an opening paragraph, (b) Do not put an extra space (two "returns" on the keyboard) between paragraphs. Simply use the indent without any spacing, (c) Use one space after colons and periods in sentences, (d) Do not insert a space between initials: D.J. Trump, (e) For long excerpts of text, preface the excerpt with an introductory phrase followed by a colon. Indent the text that follows an excerpt, if it is a new paragraph. Text that follows a block quote should be flush left-aligned.
7. OTHER STYLE AND WORD RULES:
   Use Cold War; Chiang Kai-shek; Communist: Capitalize when part of an official name (Chinese Communist Party) but lowercase when used generically or when not part of an official name (the communist front; the Indian communists). Use East Asia or eastern Asia (but not Far East; and not the Orient). Use General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh [capitalize when used with name]; the general secretary [lowercase when used as a generic term]; Mao Zedong (not Mao Tse-Tung); precolonial, postcolonial, anticolonial. But use a hyphen if it comes between a repeated letter (semi-independent;) University of Oxford (not Oxford University; "United States" when used as a noun; "U.S" when used as an adjective.
8. HEADINGS:
   First-level headings (e.g. Introduction, Conclusion) should be in bold Roman. Second-level headings (Main Subheads that follow the first-level headings) should be in bold italics. Third-level headings (Secondary Subheads) should be in bold italics.

Chicago Manual Of Style: A Quick Guide

Authors should use the following examples in their manuscripts. These examples are taken from the CMS Quick guide, available online: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

The examples below illustrate the notes system. Sample notes show full citations followed by shortened citations for the same sources. For more details and many more examples, see chapter 14 of The Chicago Manual of Style.

Images

Authors are encouraged to submit relevant graphics (photographs, maps, charts, line drawings, cartoons) that strengthen the manuscript. Such files should be sent as .tiff, or .jpeg, and must have a resolution of 300-600 dpi. The author is responsible for obtaining permission to publish any copyrighted material. Permission to reproduce copyright material, for print and online publication in perpetuity, must be cleared and if necessary, paid for by the author; this includes applications and payments to licensing agencies where appropriate. Evidence in writing that such permissions have been secured from the rights-holder must be made available to the editors. It is also the author's responsibility to include acknowledgements as stipulated by the particular institutions.

Notification of Submission

Authors must indicate that Rising Asia is the sole venue for consideration of your manuscript.