The Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE) is published semi-annually in December and June by the Presses universitaires de Rennes (France), under the auspices of the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur les Patrimoines en Lettres et Langues (CIRPaLL), the Department of English Language and Literature, the Service Commun de Documentation (SCD) and the Presses universitaires de Rennes.
The JSSE will publish articles on short stories and novellas in the form of essays (not exceeding 48,000 signs) and notes (not exceeding 12,000 signs).
How to Prepare Your Manuscript
Important:
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All submitted articles must adhere to the JSSE’s Concise Style Guide for Authors, which is based on the MLA Handbook (8th edition, 2008) and the MLA Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd edition, 2008).
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The full Concise Style Guide for Authors is provided below and also available for download as a PDF at the bottom of this page.
>> General Guidelines
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Maximum length of articles 48,000 characters: footnotes and spaces included.
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Name of author and university on first page under title of paper.
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Times New Roman 12 - single spacing in text.
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1.5 cm left at the beginning of each paragraph.
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Two abstracts: one in French, one in English, maximum 400 words (in total).
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A short biographical statement.
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Articles without correct formatting will be sent back to the author to revise before copy editing.
>> Format of Titles in English
Upper case letters for all important words, with the exception of prepositions, adverbs, and articles.
→ example: “The Fall of the House of Usher”
>> Format of Quotations
Any modification of a quotation to be indicated as follows (no square brackets): . . .
It is IMPERATIVE to always verify the accuracy of quotations before submitting your article for publication.
Exceeding 4 Lines:
Indented, without quotation marks, or italics (unless it is a dialogue from a prose quotation). 10-point font for indented quotations.
Dialogue (from theatre):
Indent 10-point font for character’s name (in upper case letters) followed by a period and 12-point font for dialogue.
→ ex:
GONERIL. Hear me, my lord.
What need you five-and-twenty, ten or five.
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?
REGAN. What need one? (2.4.254-58)
>> Format of Notes and In-Text Citations
Footnotes should be used only to elucidate a point you want to make—to explain abbreviations for secondary sources, for example.
Place in-text citations between parentheses after each quotation.
→ ex: (Lee 34) or, if Lee is mentioned before the quotation, only (34) or (Stories 34).
In the case of two different references to the same author, indicate an abbreviated title followed by the page number.
→ ex: (Lee, Stories 45).
>> Format of Punctuation
Use double rather than single quotation marks.
Avoid using straight apostrophes and quotation marks. Use those found in these guidelines.
Punctuation is placed inside the quotations.
→ ex: For Charles Dickens the eighteenth century was both “the best of times” and the “worst of times.”
→ or: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” wrote Charles Dickens.
Punctuation is placed after the quotations when the page reference/ and author of the work cited is/are referred to after the quotation.
→ ex: For Charles Dickens the eighteenth century was both “the best of times” and the “worst of times” (35).
→ or: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (35).
>> Quotations in the text which refer to the list of works cited
If the name of the author is not cited in the text, put the name and the page cited in parentheses after the quotation.
→ ex: One of the issues which comes to the fore in Dabydeen’s Poems in Recession is how to overcome ethnic biases (19).
If you are quoting the same author twice in the same paragraph, you can mention his/her name only once.
→ ex: In a recent article from the JSSE, “Reveal to Reel: Short Fiction’s ‘Special Relationship’ with Cinema,” Ra Page affirms: “The ‘special relationship’ between cinema and the short story is one that has not gone overlooked.” He goes on to note some of the areas which need to be considered when analysing this relationship: “I suggest that we start with the difficulties of translating a text for the big screen, the ways in which cinematic story and prose fiction in general are incompatible” (35-36).
If the list is comprised of several authors with the same last name, add an initial to indicate the first name of each author.
→ ex: (M. Lee 9-10) and (R. Lee 123).
If the list is comprised of two or three authors who have collaborated on the same work, give the name of each person.
→ ex: (Butler, Cox and Hunter 8).
If there are more than three authors, give the last name of the first author followed by et al.
→ ex: (Butler et al. 20-30).
>> Works Cited
Give complete references to works cited at the end of the article (place, collection, date).
Use hanging indents.
No underlining.
Do not use the Vol. and No. abbreviations when citing scholarly journals.
→ ex: 8.2 (instead of Vol.8, No.2).
Indicate page numbers as concisely as possible.
→ ex: 109-08 (instead of 109-108)
At the end of each entry, indicate “Print” if you consulted a paper document, or “Web” if you found the source online. With “Web” sources, do not include the URL.
Examples of Works Cited Entries
Articles in Scholarly Journals
Abouddahab, Rédouane, ed. Ernest Hemingway. Spec. issue of Journal of the Short Story in English 49 (Autumn 2007). Print.
Koch, Vivienne. “The Forest of the South by Caroline Gordon.” The Sewanee Review 54.3 (July-September 1946): 543-48. Print.
Articles in Collected Works
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Woman: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1985. 149-81. Print.
Articles Found in Online Newspapers
McEwan, Ian. “Ian McEwan on Brexit: ‘I hate it – but I can’t leave it alone.’” Euronews 1 Oct. 2019. N. pag. Web. 24 July 2023.
Books
Butler, Robert Olen. From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. New York: Grove Press, 2005. Print.
Films
The Company of Wolves. Dir. Neil Jordan. Prod. Stephen Woolley. Screenplay by Angela Carter and Neil Jordan. Palace Productions, 1984. Special edition DVD with a commentary by Neil Jordan. ITC Entertainment, 2001. Film.
Web
Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. Google Book Search. Web. 3 Dec. 2007.
Translated Sources
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowldy. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988. Print.
>> Permissions
It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that publication rights have been respected; if necessary, they must be purchased by the author who must give proof of authorization to the JSSE.
How to Submit Your Manuscript
Electronic submission is encouraged. Attach the file, in Microsoft Word format (.docx), to an e-mail addressed to gerald.preher@univ-angers.fr (Editor), colette.colligan@univ-angers.fr and xavier.lebrun@univ-angers.fr (Associate Editors); or to seltzercm@vcu.edu (North American Editor) and psbucke@uscsumter.edu (Associate North American Editor). Please also include the address of JSSE managing editor Joane Gautier (joane.gautier@univ-angers.fr).
Please specify the following in the body of the e-mail: title of the paper, a 150-word abstract, in English (and French if possible), a short contributor’s note, your name, current e-mail and postal addresses, and your institutional affiliation (if it isn’t obvious from your postal address).
We prefer submissions be sent as a Word document, as .doc or .docx. If you must submit a paper manuscript, please send only one copy to Gérald Preher, CIRPaLL/MRGT, 5 bis bd Lavoisier, 49045 Angers cedex 01, France, or to Catherine Seltzer, Department of English, Virginia Commonwealth University, Hibbs Hall, Room 306, 900 Park Ave., Box 842005, Richmond, Virginia 23284-2005, USA. The manuscript will not be returned. Before your article can be sent out for review, you will be requested to send an electronic file.
It is understood that manuscripts submitted to the JSSE for consideration have not been published previously, in part or in whole, and are not simultaneously under consideration for publication elsewhere.
The author’s name and institutional affiliation are not to appear, so described, in the manuscript.
Manuscripts chosen for publication should conform to the footnote style of The MLA Style Manual (7th edition). All pages must be numbered.
Copyright Policy
Our current policy gives control of copyright for all material published in the Journal of the Short Story in English to the Presses universitaires de Rennes. (This has not always been the Journal’s policy, and so there are one or two pieces published in the JSSE for which copyright is controlled by the author.)
Authors transfer copyright to the Presses universitaires de Rennes by executing a contract written for this purpose. This enables us to register each individual contribution, and the issue as a whole, with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Copyright Office, which in turn provides for remedies in the event of copyright infringement that would not be available if the work were not so registered.
In transferring the work to the Presses universitaires de Rennes, the author does not give up all rights. The Presses universitaires de Rennes grant the contributor the right, upon request, to republish the work in revised or unrevised form in a book written or edited by the author provided that, in the judgment of the JSSE editors, the proposed use of the work is not in direct competition with the JSSE. Each copy containing our material that is reproduced or distributed must bear the following copyright notice:
Copyright © [year of the copyright] by Presses universitaires de Rennes. Journal of the Short Story in English: Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle [issue number] (Autumn / Spring, year): page numbers. Reprinted with permission.
Permission is granted for non-exclusive world rights in the English language only.
However, the Presses universitaires de Rennes may grant to parties other than the author permission to republish the work.
[Note: This description of copyright policy is provided for information only and is not legally binding; only a contract executed by the University Press and the author has any legal force.]
Document annexe
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JSSE Concise Style Guide for Authors (PDF file) (application/pdf – 493k)

