"In this year terrible portents appeared in Northumbria, and miserably
afflicted the inhabitants: these were exceptional flashes of lightning
and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air."
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Year 793)
Introduction | Editorial | Contents | Contributors
Notes to Contributors
1. Each contributor is asked to submit an essay of no longer than 4,000 words in length. Contributors must have secured the rights to their use of any audio, graphics, or video used in their essay (though linking to external sites will negate this problem). Articles should be in electronic format, either in Word, WordPerfect, or (valid) HTML. Copies may be sent by e-mail attachments or on disk to either editor (addresses below).
2. The essay will then be reviewed by the Editorial Board and either: accepted, accepted with recommended alterations, or rejected.
3. Your essay for Dragons in the Sky should not be seen as a major research exercise. Instead, contributors should see their contributions as an opportunity to draw together their ideas relating the past to the present. Enjoy the exercise of exploring areas which would normally be excluded from standard academic journals.
4. Assume the need to explain the elementary to the reader without patronizing him or her:
'the liturgy was central ...' [assumes that reader understands liturgy]
'the Church's formal rituals such as daily Mass, special feasts and fasts on prescribed occasions and the sevenfold daily recitation of psalms and prayers known as the 'Divine Service' all fall under the general term 'liturgy,' and the liturgy was central ...' [i.e. this gives the new reader a clue as to what 'liturgy' is]
The former is certainly more economical, and economy is important, because general readers will probably be less patient than academic scholars, but that impatience will be exercised first where the reader does not feel sufficiently informed.
5. You are free to include original languages of everything quoted, but you should provide translations in every case. Follow 'broken out' quotations with the translations in the same format as the original, with a white space between the original and the Modern English translation.
6. We shall use no footnotes as such. Instead, follow the citation style of The Anglo-Saxons edited by James Campbell, and key comments on bibliography to several pages at one time, and add a bibliography for the whole site, and provide a comment on particularly pertinent sources at the beginning of the notes for each new chapter or section of the site.
7. Illustrate, illustrate, illustrate. Cf. Paul Fussell, The Great War in Modern Memory, for examples of what we mean.
8. Use the potential of electronic publishing by exploring intergration with other sites and media beyond the limitations of print-base.
9. Attempt to maintain a balance between then and now, never letting either end fall below 1/3 of the material presented.
10. Your style must convey that you can go beyond mere dilettantism. In order to write with authority in the style we need to use, writers will of course need to know more data than they can ever allude to on any point. One approach might be to write a damned fine undergraduate lecture.
Dr Stuart D Lee
Editor, Dragons in the Sky
University of Oxford
Stuart.Lee@oucs.ox.ac.uk
Professor Patrick W. Conner
Editor, Dragons in the Sky
West Virginia University
pconner@wvu.edu
