General Guidelines for Submissions

Submissions are evaluated using a blind peer review process. Inks uses a house style based on the 17th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (endnotes). Manuscripts should generally be limited to roughly 7000-8000 words and should be submitted via Scholastica with 12-point font and double‑spacing throughout, including notes, and with one-inch margins with left margin justification only. After manuscripts have been accepted for publication, revisions should also be submitted as an attachment in Microsoft Word. Questions should be sent to: editor.inksjournal@gmail.com.

Copyrighted Material

Authors are responsible for obtaining worldwide print and digital permissions from and paying any required fees to copyright holders to use material (e.g., long quotations or quotations that constitute a sizable proportion of a complete work, tables, photographs) that has been published and remains under copyright. Select reproduction of a small portion of a longer sequential work may fall under fair-use as quotation. Cover images are never covered by fair-use. Many, but not all, pre-1923 works are public domain. The manuscript cannot go to press without all signed permissions in hand, as well as a signed copy of the contributor’s agreement that will be issued by the Ohio State University Press.

Images

Xeroxes will not be accepted. Digital photographs submitted with the final draft must be of professional quality (scanned at 300 dpi or above). Images should be submitted as .tiff files, with notations on the files. If there is any potential for doubt, provide separate instructions indicating “top” of image. Please provide captions for the images at end of document file, and indicate approximately where the images should be placed in the text, with the following annotation: < Figure 1 here >. Keep in mind that final placement of the image will be determined by the typesetter during production.

Biographical Statement

After an essay has been accepted for publication, the author should submit a 2–3 sentence biographical statement to accompany the article. Authors should include their full titles, such as “John Doe is Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University,” and any publications/accomplishments/other information they wish to tell Inks readers.

Style Guidelines

Quotations

Check all quotations against originals; such cite checking is the responsibility of the author. In all cases, ask whether quotations are necessary, paraphrasable, or able to be deleted. Quotations of fewer than eight lines are run into the text. Quotations of eight lines or more are indented five spaces from the left margin and double‑spaced; such quotations should be used only when absolutely necessary. No quotation marks are needed in block quotes or epigraphs, unless dialogue is included within the selection. Place parenthetical cites for a block prose quotation after the closing punctuation.

For extracts of poetry, use a hard return at the end of each line. Type poetry extracts with line breaks and stanza indents exactly as they occur in the original poem. If special formatting is required, submit a photocopy of this poem in published form for the compositor to consult. For short poetry quotations (2−3 lines) run into the text, use a slash with a space on either side to indicate line breaks. Place parenthetical cites for a block poetry quotation one line below it.

Ellipses and brackets that were part of the original quotation should preserve the integrity of the original. In general, do not use ellipses before or after a run-in quotation; before a block quotation; or after a block quotation ending with a grammatically complete sentence. Three dots should be used to indicate an omission within a quoted sentence or part of a sentence; replace “. . .” with “…”. Square brackets with ellipses should be avoided. Only use end-of-sentence ellipses when ellipses are part of original quotation or as specified in 13.52 , CMS 17ed.

Italicize “sic” and use it only when necessary.

Endnotes and Citations

Inks uses endnotes (double-spaced) for all citations, using Microsoft Word’s endnote feature. Please do not type notes separately. No “Works Cited” list will be included; all bibliographic information must be contained in endnotes. Reserve parenthetical citations only for frequently cited references to a central text discussed in the essay; such texts should first be cited in a note with the stipulation that further citations will be given in the text. We do not use ibid for repeated references in endnotes; instead, use a short title format for all endnotes after the first reference. Do not use abbreviations in lieu of the short title format. As a rule, superscript note numbers in the body of the essay should always be at the end of a sentence; avoid having multiple notes in the same sentence. As a rule, discursive information belongs in the text, not in the endnotes.

Unnumbered note. The first, unnumbered note, if desired, can be keyboarded in the file as a normal text paragraph, a few lines below your concluding sentence, but before the start of numbered endnotes. Such a note can express gratitude to others for helpful discussion or any other general explanations about the article.

Proofs

Contributors will be sent a copy of the copyedited manuscript and will have until the deadline given to respond to changes and queries and communicate any final revisions to the associate editor. “Rewriting” at the proof stage will not be acceptable. For this reason, great care must be taken in ensuring accuracy and felicity of style in the preparation of the manuscript prior to final submission. Two to three weeks are allotted for author review of editing and a similar amount of time for reviewing page proofs; such a time limit is important to keeping the publication on schedule.