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Editorial policy

English Today (ET) is a quarterly journal whose aim is to be compact, comprehensive, attractive, and accessible. For four decades English Today has brought readers cutting-edge scholarship on all aspects of the English language, including its uses and abuses, its international variations, its history, neologisms, literature and linguistics. In short, no aspect of English Studies is beyond its scope.

One of the attractions of ET is that it regularly publishes new and up-to-date research reports that give academics (and others) the opportunity to reach a far wider audience than is the case in most academic journals. Our quarterly publishing cycle and Cambridge University Press’s online 'FirstView' publication platform allows English Today to publish suitable articles promptly.

Journal scope and audience

English Today is unique among academic journals in that it is aimed at a very wide audience of educated readers ⏤ indeed, anyone who is interested in understanding recent developments in the English language in various parts of the world or in different domains of use. The readers of ET include educators, broadcasters, EFL/ESL teachers and teacher trainers, journalists, students and many others, in addition, of course, to those who would describe themselves as professional linguists.

Bearing in mind this wide audience, we encourage authors to write accessible and thought-provoking articles that illuminate some recent development in the way English is used. Please keep in mind that your article must say something interesting about the English language. It may focus on the functions of English (e.g. in advertising, social media, popular culture, etc.), on its forms (e.g. variation in English pronunciation, lexis, grammar or discourse) or on the status of the language (e.g. official or unofficial status in a location, development or norms or standards, etc.).

In ensuring the scope and quality of its content, the Editor is assisted by two Associate Editors, a Reviews Editor, and the Editorial Board.

Manuscript preparation

English Today generally leaves the orthography of articles unchanged wherever possible. Spelling notwithstanding, we would appreciate your cooperation in following the style set out below.

For Book Reviews, please review the specific submission guidance provided on ET's Book Reviews page.

1. Length and article types

English Today’s allows for two types of open (non-invited) submissions: (1) Shorter Articles and (2) Research Articles.

Shorter Articles that are intended for editorial review alone are usually not less than 2,000 words, but may be no longer than 6,000 words total (including notes and references). Shorter articles will normally only be reviewed by the editorial team.

Research Articles, which are normally sent out for double-blind peer review, are substantially longer and can range up to c. 8,000 words.

Authors should understand the two different article types when submitting a manuscript on the ET online submission platform. All articles submitted to ET should also include:

• Abstract: All articles should include an abstract (maximum 250 words).
• Keywords: All articles should include a set of relevant keywords (maximum 6 keywords).
• Author bio: The author of an accepted article should provide 100-150 words of biography and, if possible, a recent photograph.

2. References

Authors should follow the Chicago Author-Date Style for references.

2.1 In-text citations
Citations should use an author’s citation name, usually a family name (or surname). For citations of names that include patronymics, dual surnames or other features of naming, English Today will strive to render citations and references according to the preferences of the authors being cited.
In-text citations are (Author Year) and page numbers should only be included when citing a direct quotation as (Author Year, #-#). Multiple author citations can be separated with a semicolon as (Author Year; Author Year). Multiple citations may be listed in either alphabetical or chronological order, but this must be consistent throughout the article. For citations without a by-line (e.g. newspapers, online sources), the journal or source title can be used instead as (Title Year, #–#). Authors given name initials can be used when disambiguation (resulting from two authors with the same family name) is needed. Use letters for multiple sources sharing the same author(s) and date. Citations with three or more authors should be given as First Author et al.

Examples:
(Crystal 2008, 5–6)
(Social Weather Stations 2013)
(Mesthrie 2005; 2006)
(Murphy et al. 2015)
(Kachru 1996a; Kachru and Nelson 2006)
(Kachru 1996b)
(H Xu, 2013; Z. Xu 2013)
(Greenbaum and Nelson 1996)
(Pérez Firmat 1990)
(Daily Telegraph 12 October 2008, 3)

2.2 Final references
References should be gathered in a section entitled “References” at the end of the article. Please use the author’s complete name as it appears in the publication. References should appear in alphabetical order of the (first) author’s citation name. Use a comma to denote that the order of names has been altered. When the name appears without alteration, a comma is not necessary.
Article/chapter titles are in title case and book/journal titles are italicised in title case. Whenever possible, DOI (digital object identifier) followed by a full stop should be included at the end of the reference.

Examples (in alphabetical order):

References
Algeo, John. 2006. British or American English?: A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511607240.
Hashim, Azirah, and Norizah Hassam, eds. 2006. English in Southeast Asia: Prospects, Perspectives and Possibilities. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press.
Crystal, David. 2008. “Two Thousand Million?” English Today 24 (1): 3–6. doi:10.1017/S0266078408000023.
Dowd, Norman Lee, and Allison Kujiraoka. 2002. “English in Japanese Pop Music: Analyses and Perceptions.” Higashi Nihon Kokusai Daigaku Kenkyuu Kiyou [Higashi Nippon International University Research Bulletin] 7: 11–28. 
García Márquez, Gabriel. 1970. One Hundred Years of Solitude, trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper Collins.
Greenbaum, Sidney and Gerald Nelson. 1996. “The International Corpus of English (ICE) Project.” World Englishes 15 (1): 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971X.1996.tb00088.x.
Kachru, Braj B. 1996a. The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions, and Models of Non-native Englishes. Oxford: Pergamon. Illini Books edition, 1990. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kachru, Braj B. 1996b. “English as Lingua Franca.” In Contact Linguistics: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, edited by Hans Goebl, Peter H. Nelde, Zdenek Stary and Wolfgang Wölk, 906–913. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson. 2006. World Englishes in Asian Contexts. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Mesthrie, Rajend. 2005. “Assessing Representations of South African Indian English in Writing: An Application of Variation Theory.” Language Variation and Change 17 (3): 303–326. doi:10.1017/S095439450505012X.
Mesthrie, Rajend. 2006. “World Englishes and the Multilingual History of English.” World Englishes, 25 (3/4): 381–390. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971X.2006.00477.x.
Murphy, Victoria A., Ernesto Macaro, Sonia Alba, and Claudia Cipollla. 2015. “The Influence of Learning a Second Language in Primary School on Developing First Language Literacy Skills.” Applied Psycholinguistics 36 (5): 1133–1153. doi:10.1017/S0142716414000095.
Pérez Firmat, Gustavo, ed. 1990. Do the Americas Have a Common Literature. Durham: Duke University Press.
Queiroz de Barros, Rita. 2009. “Expanding the Tomato Controversy: An Exploratory Study of the Perception of Standard British and American English in Portugal.” English Today 25 (3): 35–40. doi:10.1017/S0266078409990253.
Salbrina Sharbawi, and David Deterding. 2010. “Rhoticity in Brunei English.” English World-Wide 31 (2): 121–137. doi:10.1075/eww.31.2.01sha.
Schneider, Edgar W. 2003. “The Dynamics of New Englishes: From Identity Construction to Dialect Birth.” Language 79 (2): 233-281. doi:10.1353/lan.2003.0136.
Social Weather Stations. 2013. “Fourth Quarter 2013 Social Weather Survey: 94% of Filipinos Enter 2014 with Hope.” Accessed 15 January 2014. https://www.sws.org.ph/swsmain/artcldisppage/?artcsyscode=ART-20151217111940.
Xu, Hao. 2013. “From the Imagined to the Practiced: A Case Study on Novice EFL Teachers’ Professional Identity Change in China.” Teaching and Teacher Education 31: 79–86. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2013.01.006.
Xu, Zhichang. 2013. “Globalization, Culture and ELT Materials: A Focus on China.” Multilingual Education 3 (6): 1–19. doi:10.1186/2191-5059-3-6.

Individual references should follow the following style guidelines:

BOOKS

Last Name, Name. Year. Title of Book: Subtitle of Book. Place: Publisher.
Last Name, Name, and Name Last Name, eds. Year. Title of Book: Subtitle of Book. Place: Publisher.

Examples:
Bolton, Kingsley, Werner Botha, and Andy Kirkpatrick, eds.2020. The Handbook of Asian Englishes. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Lippi–Green, Rosina. 2012. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Mufwene, Salikoko. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTERS

Last Name, Name. Year. "Chapter Title: Chapter Subtitle." In Title of Book: Subtitle of Book, edited by Name Last Name [of the Editor], #–#. Place: Publisher.

Examples:
Kachru, Braj B. 1985. “Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle.” In English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and the Literatures, edited by Randolph Quirk and H. G. Widdowson, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Phillipson, Robert. 2002. "Global English and Local Language Policies." In English in Asia: Communication, Identity, Power and Education, edited by Andy Kirkpatrick, 7–28. Melbourne: Language Australia.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Last Name, Name. Year. "Article Title: Article Subtitle." Name of Journal Vol (issue number): XX–XX.

Examples:
Brown, David West, and Teo Shi Jie. 2014. “Singapore English and Styling the Ah Beng.” World Englishes 33 (1): 60–84. doi:10.1111/weng.12070.
Martin, Assunta. 2004. “The 'Katakana Effect' and Teaching English in Japan.” English Today 20 (1): 50–55. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078404001087.
Mariko, Takahashi, and David Calica. 2015. “The Significance of English in Japanese Popular Music: English as a Means of Message, Play, and Character.” Gengo Shori Gakkai Dai 21-kai Nenji Taikai Happyô ronbun-shû [Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Association for Natural Language Processing] (March): 868–871. Accessed 13 August 2023. https://www.anlp.jp/proceedings/annual_meeting/2015/pdf_dir/D6-4.pdf.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

Last Name, Name. Year. "Article Title: Article Subtitle." Name of Newspaper, Day Month. URL.

If article is from print edition:
Last Name, Name. Year. "Article Title: Article Subtitle." Name of Newspaper, Day Month, #–#.

If no byline:
Name of Newspaper. Year. "Article Title: Article Subtitle." Day Month. URL.

If article is from print edition:
Name of Newspaper. Year. "Article Title: Article Subtitle." Day Month, #–#.

Examples:
Chung, Carol. 2008. "Blast Off." Hong Kong Standard, 27 September, 2.
Hong Kong Standard. 2008. "HK Ranks Second to Mainland in FDI." 27 September, 14.
Zhang, Cat. 2021. “The Endless Life Cycle of Japanese City Pop.” Pitchfork, 24 February. Accessed 10 August 2023. https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-endless-life-cycle-of-japanese-city-pop/.

ONLINE SOURCES

Last Name, Name. Year/n.d. "Title of Online Document." Accessed Day Month. URL.

Examples:
Callcentres.net. 2005. "Philippines May Face Staff Shortage." Accessed 8 September. http://callcentres.net.
Lutz, Ashely. 2012. “These Six Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America.” Business Insider, 14 June. Accessed 13 August 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6.
NPR. 2013. “Bittersweet at No. 1: How a Japanese Song Topped the Charts in 1963.” Special Series: The Summer of ’63, 28 June. Accessed 13 August 2023. https://www.npr.org/2013/06/28/196618792/bittersweet-at-no-1-how-a-japanese-song-topped-the-charts-in-1963.

THESES

Last Name, Name. Year. "Title of Thesis." Type of dissertation, University.

Examples:
Martinez, Norma D. 1972. "An Integrative Approach to Teaching and Learning Standard Filipino English Pronunciation." MA thesis, Ateneo de Manila University.
Yamamoto, Shiho. 2019. “Japanese Female Aidoru Identities.” PhD diss., University of Arizona.

3. Quotations

3.1 Shorter quotations
Shorter quotations (e.g. fewer than 50 words) should be enclosed within single quotation marks.

Example:
By 2020, it is estimated that ‘300 million, or 40 per cent of the Chinese population to be in the middle class by 2020’ (PBS, 11 January 2006).

3.2 Longer quotations
Longer quotations (e.g. more than 50 words) should be indented and use a smaller font size.

4. Citing linguistic data 

4.1 Non-Roman scripts, non-English words, translations and glosses
Linguistic data from non-Roman (i.e. Latin alphabetic) scripts can be included, but only when the non-Roman script form is essential to the discussion. For example, a discussion disambiguating two Chinese characters like 士 shi ‘soldier’ and 土 tu ‘dirt’ might require the author to render the words in their original non-Roman script.

Whenever non-Roman scripts are used, they must be accompanied with a Romanised transliteration. Non-Roman scripts should not be used in the manuscript’s title or strapline.

Text that is not English (including Romanised transliterations of non-Roman scripts) should appear in italics immediately followed by a translation in single quotes.

Example:
The written form of the Chinese character 茶 (Putonghua chá ‘tea’) includes the grass radical, which is common for words semantically related to plants.
The contrast between long and short vowels, which is retained in the hiragana rendering of Japanese words like おばさん obasan ‘aunt’ and おばあさん obaasan ‘grandmother’ can be difficult for English speakers to reproduce.

4.2 Linguistic data in sequence
Linguistic data in the form of multi-word phrases or clauses can be numbered sequentially throughout the paper for ease of reference within text. Use Arabic numbers without punctuation surrounded by round brackets, such as (1) or (2). If an example has multiple forms, these can be listed as under a category description and lettered sequentially from a. These can then be referred to in the text collectively, such as (4) in the example below, or individually, as in (4a) or (4b) below.

Examples:
(1) þa wearð he & ealle his geferan forcuþ ran
     ‘then became he and all his companions wickeder’
     (ÆLFRIC Catholic Homilies 1stSer. (Royal) 1997. I. 180, OED)
(2) Is it everyone likes Jane Austin?
     ‘Does everyone like Jane Austin?’
     <ICE-SIN:S1a-078#172:1:b>
(3) English modals:can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must and ought to
(4) a. John ate an apple for an hour.
     b. John ate an apple in an hour.

4.3 Transcribed data
Longer transcribed data quotations (from, for example, interviews or field recordings) should appear in normal English orthography, but with recognition of the original language and the translator (when appropriate). Transcribed data may be numbered for easy reference within the text.

Example:
(5) Winnie
My parents are also Hong Konger who was born and raised in the British colonial period. I prefer British English, the kind of clear, beautiful and elegant English David Cameron speaks. (Female university student, 2nd year, English major)

5. Tables and figures

5.1 Tables
We suggest that the heading of a table (in bold) should be enclosed in the table, and that the number of the table be followed by a colon, and that the table heading should be the same size as the rest of the table, and the same size as the body copy of the article.

Example:

Table 3: TOEFL scores for individual Asian societies, 2005-06
Rank	Country	Paper-based (computer-based)
1	Singapore	- - - (255)
2	India	586 (236)
3	Malaysia	572 (232)
4	Philippines	566 (238)
5	Pakistan	562 (238)
6	Bangladesh	557 (228)
7	China	557 (216)
8	Sri Lanka	548 (234)
9	Hong Kong	539 (216)
10	South Korea	538 (218)
11	Nepal	535 (218)
12	Indonesia	535 (214)
13	Vietnam	534 (207)
14	Taiwan	530 (206)
15	Burma (Myanmar)	518 (206)
16	Cambodia	- - - (206)
17	Thailand	500 (200)
18	Japan	497 (192)

5.2 Figures
We suggest that the name of the figure (in bold) be placed below the figure (rather than above), and, again, should include a colon.

Example:

~*~*~*~@~*~*~*~ Figure X: Title of figure

5.3 Colour charges
Charges apply for all colour figures that appear in the print version of the journal. At the time of submission, contributors should clearly state whether their figures should appear in colour in the online version only, or whether they should appear in colour online and in the print version. There is no charge for including colour figures in the online version of the Journal but it must be clear that colour is needed to enhance the meaning of the figure, rather than simply being for aesthetic purposes. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.

6. Text preparation

Distinctive usage (such as British and American spelling, special kinds of punctuation, and IPA symbols) is as far as possible kept as authors provide it.

If subheadings are not provided within a longer text, they may be added.

All statements of sources for quotations and other data should be thorough and consistent.

Last updated: 17 December 2024