Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines

Once your manuscript has been accepted for publication, the Editor may ask you to format your manuscript according to these guidelines. Feel free to use manuscripts published in the most recent issue of Kansas English as a guide when formatting your work. You can review the archives at https://journals.wichita.edu/index.php/ke/issue/archive

1.   Ensure that the page size is 8.5 x 11 inches and that all margins (left, right, top, and bottom) are 1 inch, including tables, figures, images, etc.

2.   Single-space your text.

3.   Use a single-column layout with left margin justified.

4.   Font/style/format of manuscript

a.      Font size:  Use 12-point font, except for title.

b.      Font:  Use Garamond, if available on your device. Otherwise, use Times New Roman.

c.      Title: Bold, centered, top of page.  Font size = 36 point. 

d.      Line space between title and author name.

e.      Author name:  Bold, centered.

f.       Author affiliation:  Centered, single-spaced immediately below author name. 

g.      Line space between author affiliation and abstract heading.

h.      Abstract heading:  Bold, left-justified (Abstract).

i.       Abstract: Left-justified, single-spaced immediately below abstract heading. 

j.       Line space between abstract and keywords heading.

k.      Keywords heading:  Bold, left-justified (Keywords:)

l.       Keywords: directly following colon after "Keywords:", lower-case (unless proper nouns), single-spaced.

m.     Line space between keywords and main body.

n.      Main body:  Left-justified, single-spaced throughout, indent new paragraphs.

o.      Headings within the body:  Bold, centered, line space before but NOT after.

p.      Subheadings within the body:  Bold, left-justified.

q.      Line space between main body and references heading

r.       References heading:  Bold, centered.

s.       References:  Single-spaced (no lines of space between references cited).  Follow APA Style (current edition).  First line of each citation is left-justified with additional lines indented. Include digital object identifiers (DOIs) when available in each citation (review the APA guidelines on DOIs and URLs HERE.

t.       Line space between references and author biography heading.

u.      Author biography heading: Bold, left-justified (Author Biography)

v.      Author biography:  Left-justified, no more than 150 words, including an email address where you can be contacted at the end of the bio. (e.g., [name/pronoun] can be reached at [email address]).  Feel free to include additional social media handles, websites, etc.

5.   Do not include page numbers, headers or footers.  These will be added by the Editor.

6.   No page breaks between references, appendices, author bio, and the manuscript body.

7.   Proofread your manuscript

a.      Pay special attention to titles of works, including when to use quotation marks (generally for shorter works) and when to use italics (generally for longer works). 

b.      Ensure that all sources are cited according to APA Style.  The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) has excellent tools to help you.

c.      Ensure that your manuscript is no longer anonymized (e.g., you've included author names if you are self-citing your work in the manuscript or references).

8.   Submit your manuscript, including tables, figures, graphs, appendices, images, photos, author biography, etc., as a single file (Word or RTF).  Keep tables, etc., simple and photographs at high resolution.