A
brief list of KJ stylistic conventions for contributors
We encourage writers to present their material in the form of English
that they are most comfortable with. In other words, we do not insist
on U.S. spellings or grammatical conventions (noting, however, that
many of our readers are from N. America). We do request consistency
within a particular piece of writing.
Editorially, we always try to ensure that text is easily read, avoiding
words, phrases or idioms that may seem unnecessarily strange to readers
of either American or British English background. Some of our conventions
have evolved during production of this magazine, through giving consideration
to ease of reading, or of layout.
We believe strongly in simple elegance and clarity...
Italics:
Non-English
words should be italicized only on their first appearance. If meaning
is not implied by the context, please give a short definition in parenthesis,
using round brackets, or as an asterisked footnote.
Non-English
words in common use outside their home country (e.g. haiku, karaoke,
futon etc) need not be italicized.
Names
of publications, movies, ships etc. should always be italicized.
Quotes:
Conversation
or quotes should be marked by double-inverted-comma quote marks, with
embedded quotes etc in single inverted commas.
If
quoted speech runs to more than one paragraph, yet remains contiguous,
use quote marks at the beginning of each paragraph of speech, but
at the end of only the last paragraph.
Periods
go outside brackets, but inside quote marks.
Time
and date:
For
Western calendar years, use BCE or CE, where necessary.
Spell
out the century (e.g." the nineteenth century") but for decades, use
numerals (e.g. "the '70s").
We
use the U.S. convention for time, separating hours and minutes with
a colon (e.g. "3:35").
General:
Japanese
names are given with family name preceding given name.
In
romanizing Japanese words, avoid use of double vowels to indicate
a long sound (e.g. use "Ota" or "Ohta", not "Oota").
For
dashes, we normally use a long em dash (on a Mac keyboard, shift +
option + hyphen), with a space before and after it.
When
numbers one through twenty occur within text, they are written out;
from 21 we use numerals.
Titles
of articles, songs, TV programs and works of art etc. appear inside
quotation marks.
United
States is abbreviated with periods: U.S.
