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New Theatre Quarterly provides a lively international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet, and where prevailing assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning. The journal publishes articles, interviews with practitioners, documentation and reference materials covering all aspects of live theatre. These explore the actuality and the contemporary relevance of theatre history, investigate and extend the methodology of theatre studies, and utilize and develop the language of theatre criticism.

Manuscript preparation

Observing the text conventions below is more important than such traditional requirements as double spacing and wide margins – though of course clarity of layout is always desirable. Please bear in mind that papers accepted for publication are imported into a page-layout programme, and that text reflows to a different line-length. Accordingly, hard paragraph returns should only be used for intended paragraph breaks and tabs avoided where possible. Tabs and multiple spacing should never be used for such purposes as increasing indention in quoted matter. Two paragraph returns should be used before and after quoted matter, and a style sheet used for indention.

While most types of word-processing file are acceptable, in practice we find that most contributors now use Microsoft Word. In this case, please ensure that the Fast Save option has not been enabled, and that all footnotes have been converted to endnotes. If the ‘Track Changes’ option is used, ensure that desired changes have been confirmed. Please do NOT send files in PDF format.

Illustrations embedded within computer files are not suitable for press-quality reproduction, for which TIFFS or JPEGs at a resolution of 300 dpi should be provided. Please indicate your own order of priorities for illustrations, and provide suggestions for captions and (if not embedded as placeholders in the file) for positioning within the article.

We can also scan illustrations from good quality prints. While every care is taken of prints and other documentation submitted for scanning, which will be returned on request, neither the Editors nor Cambridge University Press can accept responsibility for such materials, and contributors are strongly advised to send copy-prints of material of intrinsic or personal value.

Charges apply for all colour figures that appear in the print version of the journal. At the time of submission, contributors should clearly state whether their figures should appear in colour in the online version only, or whether they should appear in colour online and in the print version. There is no charge for including colour figures in the online version of the journal. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.

All NTQ articles are prefaced by a brief ‘blurb’, which also serves as an abstract on the journal’s website. Contributors are welcome to submit their own draft for this, but if you would prefer the Editors to prepare the 'blurb’, please submit some biographical notes to assist them.

NTQ also uses keywords. Please submit between four and eight keywords with your article. Keywords will be used by Cambridge Journals Online to link to other articles and as online search terms. The choice of keywords is therefore important: words already included in the title need not be repeated.

In addition to references through keywords, please bear in mind in assigning titles to an article and in preparing the ‘blurb’ that these will be the first points of access for all readers, including non-subscribers, before making a decision on whether to read (and possibly pay for) the full article. Without going overboard, take the opportunity to ‘sell’ the article attractively as well as informatively!

Text conventions

Please follow NTQ house style at all times, particularly in the respects mentioned below, both within the article and in the bibliographic format used for Notes.

Spellings

Use UK spellings.

The authority is Chambers Twentieth-Century Dictionary.

Where Chambers lists more than one spelling, use the first.

Use ‘-ize’ spellings (e.g. organize, not organise) when there is a choice.

Titles and Emphasis

Use italics or underlining for play and book titles, with upper and lower case mixed: The Importance of Being Earnest, The Way of the World. Use quotation marks only for short poems, chapter titles and similar. NEVER USE ALL CAPITALS FOR TITLES OR EMPHASIS.

Dates

For dates, use day, month, year in the form 1 May 1832 (not 1st May or 1 May, 1832).

Use the twentieth century (or twentieth-century dramatists), not 20th or Century.

Use the shortest form for page ranges (172–4, not 172–174 or 172–74), BUT

Elide AD years to two digits (AD 346–48, 1924–25), but do not elide BC years: 341–340 BC.

Use c. 1846, d. 1846.

Numbers and Measurements

Spell out up to twenty, except in mixed passages (356 employees including 72 actors and just 6 actresses), and in measurements and other statistical usages (6 miles, 18 inches). 2,000 not 2000

12 per cent, not 12 %, except in tables of statistics.

Use imperial measurements where possible (miles, pints, not kilometres, litres).

Punctuation

Apostrophes For modern names (and classical names with a single syllable) use Dickens’s, Jones’s, Zeus’s, etc. For classical names with more than one syllable, apostrophe alone (Euripides’, Aeschylus’).

Hyphens Use adjectivally, as in ‘eighteenth-century architecture’, ‘the music-hall bill’, but ‘in the eighteenth century’, ‘going to the music hall’. A slow-moving actor (in distinction to a slow, moving speech). A well-made book (but: this book is well made). No hyphen in compounds with adverbs ending in -ly (for example: expertly written texts).

Commas Use Siddons, Kemble, and Kean, not Siddons, Kemble and Kean.

Parenthetical Dashes Use en-dash with space before and after (the outcome – a delay in publication – was regrettable).

Quoted Matter

Single inverted commas for quotes; double for quotes within quotes. (He said: ‘The word she used was “patriarchal”.’)

No inverted commas around extracts of more than about 60 words. (Extracts over 60 words will be set in a smaller size type, unindented, with extra space above and below.)

Commas and full stops fall outside inverted commas around phrases, inside inverted commas around complete sentences. (He maintained that the article ‘broke new ground’. He maintained: ‘The article breaks new ground.’)

Use three points only for ellipses to indicate omissions in quoted matter, with a fourth point close up to indicate the end of a sentence. Do not use ellipses at the beginning or the end of quotations, or place them in square brackets (unless genuine confusion with the original is possible).

Quoted matter normally to be made consistent in style with the rest of the journal.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Full points for Mr., Mrs., St., vol., vols., ed., eds., e.g., etc., but not for capitalized acronyms or similar abbreviations in general use (BBC, NATO, BC, AD).

Capitals

Minimum use (the king pondered, the Peloponnesian war, western influence, classical tragedy, ancient authors).

Accents

Minimum use (role, premiere, regime, elite in English usage, none on French capital letters).

Paragraphing and Headings

NTQ tends to disallow lengthy paragraphs where the sense suggests logically shorter units of argument (as in most cases it should). We also like to break the visual greyness of the page with the use of bold sub-headings, intended also to help readers find their way round the material. Such sub-headings employ upper and lower case mixed:

The Sub-Headings for the Article

Contributors are welcome to suggest their own sub-headings or sectional breaks, but the Editors reserve the right to modify these where considerations of layout require.

Notes

These should be keyed within the text in a consecutive numerical sequence, and collected at the end of the article, observing the following conventions for citation of books and articles:

Aphra Behn, The Widow Ranter in Behn, Five Plays (London: Methuen, 1990).

Marc Silverstein, ‘“Body-Presence”: Cixous’s Phenomenology of Theater’, Theatre Journal, XLIII, No. 4 (1991), p. 507–16.

Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XV (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967), p. 174–86.

Towards a National Arts and Media Strategy (London: National Arts and Media Strategy Monitoring Group, 1992).

Tate Wilkinson, The Wandering Patentee (York, 1795), p. 227.

See, for example, Christine Eccles, The Rose Theatre (London: Nick Hern Books, 1990).

Sybil Rosenfeld, ‘Landscape in English Scenery in the Eighteenth Century’, in Kenneth Richards and Peter Thomson, eds., The Eighteenth-Century English Stage (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 171–8.