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Instructions for authors
Notice to contributors (Dec 2022): Ramus is not accepting contributions at the moment


Download the Ramus instructions for contributors here: Download Instruction for Contributors in PDF. (396 KB)

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Article Types

Ramus publishes:

  • Research Article*

* If publishing Gold Open Access, all or part of the publication costs for these article types may be covered by one of the agreements Cambridge University Press has made to support open access.

RAMUS: CRITICAL STUDIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE

STYLESHEET

Submissions should be sent as an e-mail attachment in Microsoft Word to one of the two editors:

Professor A.J. Boyle: aboyle@usc.edu

Professor Helen Morales: hmorales@classics.ucsb.edu

The text of the submission must contain no indication of the author’s identity. Please note that no responsibility can be accepted for unsolicited material.

If your submission is accepted for publication, two copies, one in Word and one in PDF, should be e-mailed to the handling editor, either Professor Boyle or Professor Morales.

Please visit Open Access Publishing at Cambridge for information on our open access policies, compliance with major finding bodies, and guidelines on depositing your manuscript in an institutional repository.

When submitting articles to Ramus, authors are requested to observe the following conventions:

1. Text should be double-spaced with justified right margins and pages set to standard A4. Preferred font is Times 12pt, with Greek passages in unicode. If the article requires more sophisticated software for reproducing Greek or other ancient languages, please consult one of the editors before submitting.

2. The first line of a new paragraph should be indented 4 mm and no blank lines or spaces should be left between paragraphs. Only one space should be left after a punctuation point (including a period).

3. Quotation marks should be single, not double, and should be in ‘smart quote’ format as should apostrophes. For quotations within quotations please use double quotation marks.

4. Extended prose quotations from primary or secondary material should be typed single-spaced, indented 5 mm on both left and right margins with no additional indentation at the beginning and no quotation marks. Right margin should be justified.

Quotations from Greek should be in Greek script (employing unicode as stipulated above); quotations in Latin should be in normal Roman script (not italics) and follow the orthography of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (i.e. ‘i’ and ‘u’ rather than ‘j’ and ‘v’—‘V’ in upper case, however). Upper case letters in both Latin and Greek should be used only for the initial letters of proper nouns, not for the beginning of sentences or paragraphs.

5. Verse quotations should be indented 10 mm from the left margin and 5 mm from the right. Right margins should not be justified. If the original text employs further indentations (as for example with lyric and elegiac poetry) a further indentation of 4 mm (either a tab or 4 strikes of the space bar) should be used.

6. Short quotations within the body of the text should follow the orthographical rules stipulated in paragraph 4. Short quotations from Greek should be in Greek script; short quotations from Latin should be in italics. (‘Short quotations’ includes single words.)

7. Both extended and short quotations from classical writers must be accompanied by translations, which should be the author’s own. In the case of indented quotes, the translations should be similarly indented, typed single-spaced without brackets or quotation marks and placed immediately beneath the Greek or Latin quotation. For verse, line-by-line translation is preferred, but prose will be accepted; if line-by-line indented 10 mm from the left, if prose 5 mm. The source-reference should come after the quotation and be aligned with the indented right margin; if the translation is not the author’s own, then the translator should be acknowledged (please include that publication in the bibliography):

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi
siluestrem tenui Musam meditaris auena.

(Virg. Ecl. 1.1f.)

Tityrus, you lie beneath spread of sheltering beech,
Studying the woodland Muse on a thin oat-straw.

(tr. Boyle)

In the case of short quotations, the translation (enclosed in quotation marks) should come immediately after the quotation in the brackets where one would normally find the source-reference. For example: arma uirumque cano (‘I sing of arms and the man’, Virg. Aen. 1.1); κτῆμα ἐς αἰεί (‘a possession for all time’, Thuc. 1.22.4). Please note the punctuation.

8. Greek names should either be fully transliterated (employing ‘y’ for upsilon) or fully Latinised (e.g. Klytaimestra or Clytemnestra, Aias or Ajax, Aiskhylos or Aeschylus, Thoukydides or Thucydides), and whichever convention is adopted should be maintained throughout.

9. Notes should be consecutively numbered throughout the article and located at the end of the text. Please use the ‘insert footnote’ facility on your word-processor to create these notes. The reference number at the head of each note should not be superscript, should be followed by a period and the first line of each note (including the number) should be indented 4 mm. There should be no space between notes.

10. Referencing:

10.1 References to ancient authors and works should be consistently abbreviated, using either the OCD or a combination of LSJ and the OLD as a guide. (Consistency and clarity are the primary objectives.) Where the reference is to more than two lines of verse or sections of prose both the first and last line/section number should be given (e.g. Hom. Od. 1.1–10; Tac. Ann. 3.60.2–4); elide number ranges to the shortest possible (e.g. 23–9). Where the reference is to two lines of verse then the first line number followed by ‘f.’ should be given as in the quotation from the Eclogues in paragraph 7 above. The vague ‘ff.’ should be avoided.

10.2 References to modern authors and works employ a modified version of the Harvard system, i.e. by author’s family name and date in the notes and full details listed in a bibliography at the end. Abbreviated references should be confined to the notes (i.e. not included in the text of the article) and follow the formula ‘name (date), page number(s)’—e.g. ‘Penwill (1996), 157’. Wherever possible avoid placing additional text between these elements–so avoiding ‘Penwill in his publication argues (1996) that…(157)’. If the sentence continues after the reference another comma should follow the page number—e.g. ‘Penwill (1996), 157, argues...’ If the reference occurs within a parenthesis indicated by round brackets then the year should be enclosed in square brackets—e.g.‘“...it is the explanation that is thematically significant” (Penwill [1996], 157)’.

When giving page numbers please use the same convention as for citing ancient authors: for two consecutive pages use a single ‘f.’ after the first (not 23–4 but 23f.), for three or more first and last, and avoid ‘ff.’. If the reference is to a whole work (book or article) then page numbers are not required. Entries in the bibliography must be in alphabetical order by author’s family name and in the case of more than one work by the same author by ascending order of date (earliest first) and should follow the following formulae (note punctuation, capitalisation and italicisation; the hanging indent should be 5 mm):

For books:

Boyle, A.J. (2006), Roman Tragedy (London/New York).

Dominik, W.J., J. Garthwaite and P.A. Roche (eds) (2009), Writing Politics in Imperial Rome (Leiden/Boston).

Fitch, J.G. (ed. and tr.) (2002–04), Seneca: Tragedies (2 vols: Cambridge MA/London).

Lattimore, R. (tr.) (1968), The Odyssey of Homer (New York). [NB: this should NOT be cited as ‘Homer (1968)’, and the same principle applies to other modern translations or editions of classical works].

Veyne, P. (1988), Roman Erotic Elegy: Love, Poetry and the West, tr. D. Pellauer (Chicago/London) [orig. publ. 1983].

For articles:

Morales, H. (2006), ‘Marrying Mesopotamia: Female Sexuality and Cultural Resistance in Iamblichus’ Babylonian Tales’, Ramus 35, 76–101.

(Periodical titles cited in the bibliography should be abbreviated as in L’Année Philologique. If it is not listed there, then the title should be given in full.)

For book chapters:

Penwill, J.L. (2009), ‘Lucretius and the First Triumvirate’, in W.J. Dominik, J. Garthwaite and P.A. Roche (eds), Writing Politics in Imperial Rome (Leiden/Boston), 63–87.

If more than one chapter from an edited anthology is cited, then the anthology should be given its own entry in the bibliography and chapters cited by cross-reference. The above entry would then read as follows:

Penwill, J.L. (2009), ‘Lucretius and the First Triumvirate’, in Dominik, Garthwaite and Roche (2009), 63–87.

PEER REVIEW

All submissions will be assessed by one of the editors. Submissions thought suitable for peer review will normally be sent anonymously to two referees, whose recommendations and constructive criticism will be conveyed to the authors. Authors should not include in the typescript their name or any references which may identify them. On occasion one of the editors will act as a reviewer. Proposed, guest-edited special issues or volumes will be sent to two reviewers without the typescript being anonymized.

Last updated 28 November, 2019