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7The editors are pleased at the number of articles and student essays from so many universities across Russia, which have been submitted for Footpath-4. We have read all the contributions very carefully and discussed them before deciding whether to accept or reject them. One problem has emerged. Many articles sent to us are really about language studies, on themes such as: 'How to use this novel as a source of vocabulary, grammatical constructions, and curious idioms...'
We know that most teachers, whether they like it or not, are obliged to spend most of their time on such matters as vocabulary enhancement, patterns of speech and the rules of grammar. But the ORF project on Contemporary English Literature was established specifically to focus on literary approaches to the study of English. Literature is both a joy and a necessity for anyone who wants to study a language and a culture at a profound level; and the articles published in Section Six of the journal bear witness to how important and exciting literary study is for your students.
We have therefore rejected a number of perfectly reasonable articles on linguistic matters, because they do not conform to the aims of Footpath. On the other hand we have welcomed literary essays on novels which are not part of the ORF project. (The journal would be very boring if we confined ourselves to discussing the nineteen novels on the list!) We are also pleased to publish articles on other literary genres.
We had some excellent student essays. Our criteria were clear. We asked: Has this student read the work carefully? Does he or she have original ideas? Is there a real connection between the ideas and the text? We believe that the essays published in this issue of Footpath fulfil this criteria.
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Contributors should send their articles, letters, etc. to Karen Hewitt as email attachments. <karen.hewitt@conted.ox.ac.uk> The articles will then be kept until it is time for them to be circulated to all members of the Editorial Board. Decisions about whether each article should be accepted or rejected will be made at that time. Once the decision has been made, all contributors will be informed. Do send student essays which you think are exceptionally good, but please do not send more than two (or, at most, three) for consideration by the Board. We will publish the best three in the next number, and we do not want to disappoint students whose essays have no hope of being accepted.
Remember that all contributions should have the name of the author, their university, and, for student essays, their year of study. If the students are not philologists, their course of study should also be mentioned.
Should articles be in English or Russian? You can submit articles in either English or Russian, but please give a very brief abstract at the beginning in the other language. The editors are reluctant to accept articles which have been written solely on the basis of a translation. We may decide to accept an outstanding article by someone who does not read in English, but we have to face the serious problem that many translations are very inadequate. We expect quotations in our articles and all quotations must be given in English. (You can give a Russian variant as well, if this seems important - it will enable us to decide whether the translation is good.)
Style notes for contributors.
If you wish to submit an article, a review, a letter, or an essay by your student, we ask you to note the following details of editorial style which are standard in English journals.
(1) Titles of books should be in italics, not in 'inverted commas'.
(2) Titles of short stories and poems should be in single inverted commas: 'An Arundel Tomb'. (Not double inverted commas "A Mistake".)
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(3) Authors should be referred to by the name they have chosen:
e.g.
Jonathan Coe, W.H.Auden. Not J.Coe or Wystan Hugh Auden. Once you have referred to the author using the correct name or initials, you can, on second and subsequent occasions, refer to him or her by surname only (Coe, Auden). You should, however, always use the full version for your first reference.
(4) Quotations. If the quotation is from a poem and consists of more than one line, it should be set out as verse, carefully copied from the original. Prose quotations if they are more than two lines should also be set out on a new line, and indented so that they are clearly separate from the surrounding words (see the article by Karen Hewitt). If your quotation is short it should be indicated by single inverted commas: 'To be or not to be'.
(5) Citations. If you mention or quote from other English writers in your article, you can either identify the author and book in brackets immediately after the quotation, or you can list the authors and books at the end of the article. You should give the details in the following way:
Bradbury M. The Modern English Novel. Penguin Books, 1994.
Hewitt K. (editor). A New Book of Contemporary British Stories. Perspective Publications, 2001.
If you mention or quote from Russian writers or academics and their works, use for your help the last issues of Perm State University Herald “Russian and Foreign Philology” (2009; 2010). They are easy
to look at: http://www.rfp.psu.ru/ There you may see some most recent requirements for bibliographical lists and footnotes in Russian. If you happen to have no access to the Internet, consult your University Publishing Houses’ people.
