Canon Paper Guidelines
Word Limit and Desired Length
While Canon considers each piece on its own merits and does not have a strict word limit, articles between 1,000 and 4,000 words are desirable. At this length, the author has enough space to give an in-depth discussion of her topic. On the other hand, it is short enough to edit and post online. In fact, articles falling on the lesser end of this spectrum are the most likely to be read in full since the online format is most congenial to short pieces.
Submissions of poetic or other genre may be of a shorter length.
Citations and Bibliography
Citations should be in-text when possible. For example, suppose I want to quote page 81 of Jacob Klein’s book, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, printed by The MIT Press in 1968. In the text, I will have:
“…every number of things belongs to these things only in respect to their community, while each single thing taken by itself is one” (Klein 1986, 81).
In my bibliography, Klein’s work will appear as:
Klein, J. Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1968.
If necessary, you may use endnotes to make “asides” or points relevant but not central to your argument or methodology. In any case, it is preferable to keep such asides short and to a minimum since they can take the focus off of the article itself, which is what you want your readers to focus on.
Titles and Sections
When possible, articles should be split into sections. The first section or abstract does need not have a title appended since it is meant to be an overview of the entire article. The last section, on the other hand, may have the title “Conclusion” and should contain a summary of your argument (or at least of your thesis).
Non-connectives in section titles should be capitalized. Hence, if my section title is “The Origin of Algebra”, “The” is upper-case since it is the first word, “Origin” and “Algebra” are upper-case since they are non-connectives, and “of” is lower-case because it is a connective.
Section titles (and for that matter, article titles) should not be too long. While there is no strict limit, a rule of thumb is that a title should be no more than 8 words.
Finally, section titles should be in bold, as they are in this document.
If your paper does not meet all the criteria of these guidelines with absolute precision, do not worry. The editors at Canon are happy to help authors format their pieces for publication. At the end of the day, we are most interested in getting good submissions. However, the more your text generally adheres to the guidelines, the more likely it is that the editing process will go smoothly, resulting in fewer errors in your final draft. Good formatting won’t turn nonsense into groundbreaking scholarship but it will make your groundbreaking scholarship accessible and intelligible to your readers.
We look forward to receiving your submissions in .doc format at canon@newschool.edu.
Rachel Signer and Justin Humphreys, editors
March 2010