Author Guidelines

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The French Review - Guide for Authors

Updated October 18, 2023

The French Review is the scholarly journal of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF): Most articles will fit into one of the following rubrics:      

Dossiers pédagogiques*

État Présent

Film

Focus on the Classroom

Interview

Linguistics

Literature

Professional Issues

Review-Essay of multiple books

Society and Culture

* A Dossier pédagogique’s abstract is published in the TOC of the French Review, and its contents (materials to be used in the classroom at all levels) are posted online here.

Our journal uses a double-blind peer review system. Articles submitted to the French Review are first screened by the Editor in Chief, who determines whether the topic is suitable for our journal and meets our standards regarding length. Articles considered for publication are then sent to two evaluators who are recognized specialists in the relevant field. This process can take one to two months. In the case of a split decision, the author has two months to revise the article before it is sent to a third evaluator (and, if need be, to at least one of the initial evaluators). This second evaluation process can also take one to two months. In all cases, the evaluators’ comments and suggestions are forwarded to the author by the Editor in Chief. The French Review has an enviable record of furnishing a prompt answer on submissions. Articles are normally published within one year of acceptance.

1. AATF membership [more information on which can be found here] is a prerequisite for the submission and publication of articles and reviews.

2.       We publish only material that has not appeared elsewhere (either in the original or in translation). We do not normally publish book reviews of translated or reedited works.

3.       Contributions may be in English or French, but contributors are urged to use the language in which they can write more effectively. Whatever language is chosen for the article or review, quotes in French or English should be left in the original language: authors writing in English should not translate French quotes; conversely, authors writing in French should not translate English quotes.

4.       Send your submitted article as a single file (including Notes and Références / Works Cited) by email attachment to: Carine Bourget, Editor in Chief (editorfr@frenchteachers.org). All files should be in Word.docx format (not .doc).

5.       Authors of articles and reviews that have been accepted for publication must inform Michel Gueldry (managingeditorfr@frenchteachers.org), Managing Editor of the French Review, of any changes to their mailing and/or email address. Authors who fail to do so will not receive page proofs of their text and will thus have no opportunity to check their text prior to publication.

6.       The French Review subscribes to a policy of “anonymous” submissions: Assistant Editors will not know the identity of the author whose article they are asked to evaluate. Therefore, the file of the article should not include the author’s name, university affiliation, or any other reference that would identify the author. The email message should provide the title of the article, the author’s name, address, institution, telephone number, and email address.

7.       The usual length for articles, including endnotes and works cited, is 5,000 to 8,000 words. Articles must be accompanied by an abstract of 100 words maximum in the same language as the manuscript (the abstract should be embedded in the article below the title). Authors have the option to add a translation of their abstract so that the article contains two abstracts (one in French and one in English).

8.      By submitting an article, authors implicitly certify that it is their work, that they have not plagiarized, nor relied on AI to write any part of their submission, and that the manuscript has not been sent to another journal at the same time. Should an author be found to engage in any of the above practices, we will not entertain a submission from that person again.

1.       Submissions to the French Review should be in the latest edition of MLA Style (currently 9th edition, see https://style.mla.org/works-cited/citations-by-format/ for the most common entries). The French Review style does include some exceptions to MLA style, which are listed in this Guide for Authors.

2.       All contributions must be double-spaced throughout, including endnotes, works cited, extracts (indented block quotations of prose or verse), and headings of book reviews. Use a one-inch margin for both top & bottom and left & right. Leave the right margin unjustified. Page numbering should be used throughout the article.

3.         For all articles and reviews, whether in French or English: all words in italics, including titles, should also be underlined.

Quotes should be followed by the page number, in parentheses (add the author’s last name, where necessary). We do not use ibid. or op. cit.

Ellipses: we indicate omitted material within a sentence with three spaced dots, four dots in other cases (see MLA 6.58-60). Ellipses are to be avoided at the beginning of a quote (except when omitting the beginning of a line of poetry).

Do not use the “Track Changes” function.

Do not use section or page breaks. Use 1/n dashes (not hyphens) between years and page numbers, for instance: 1613–1993.

4.       We no longer follow some French typographical norms. For instance, endnote numbers and closing quotation marks do not precede punctuation. We do not insert a space between a word and a subsequent semicolon, colon, question mark, or exclamation mark. We use curly quotation marks, not French guillemets nor straight marks. An illustration of these rules:

• • “De brèves proses que j’en suis venu à écrire . . . ressemblent aussi à des rêves.”

5.        Accents are included on capital letters in French: Barillé, Élisabeth. À ses pieds.

Capitalization of titles in French: only the first word in the title of a work is capitalized (in addition to proper nouns). If there is a subtitle, there is capitalization after the colon (see MLA sections 2.66 & 2.92). Examples:

Machines à écrire: Littérature et technologies du XIXe au XXIe siècle.

La bonne ponctuation: Clarté, efficacité et précision de l’écrit.

6.         Notes: Reference numbers should be typed in superscript, outside punctuation marks (use Arabic, not Roman, numerals). Do not use the “Automatic Endnote” function of Word. The Notes should be in normal text, paragraphed and double-spaced, after the last page of the article.

7.         The Works Cited (“Références” if the article is in French) will follow the Notes. The format of the Works Cited should follow the latest MLA style (currently the 9th edition). The place of publication should not be included. Exception to the MLA style for typesetting purposes: the first bracket (<) is preceded by a period for URLs (see #8 below).

            Sample entries:

Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulations.” Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster, Stanford UP, 1988, pp. 166–184.

Roger, Philippe. L’ennemi américain: Généalogie de l’antiaméricanisme français. Seuil, 2004.

Salmon, Carole. “Branding Frenchness in Mad Men.” The French Review, vol. 92, no. 3, March 2019, pp.153–164.

Sciolino, Elaine. “‘Ridicule:’ The French Reaction to Emily in Paris.” The New York Times, 15 October 2020. <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/style/Emily-in-Paris.html>.

Star, Darren, director. “Emily in Paris.” Emily in Paris, season 1, episode 1, Netflix, 2020.

            For articles written in French, use the following abbreviations in the Références as follows:

For edited works in French, use the standardized abbreviation éd. to replace such phrases as “Édition établie et annotée par...” or “Sous la direction de...”

Example:

Rosello, Mireille. “‘Il faut comprendre quand on peut . . . ’: l’art de désamorcer les stéréotypes chez Emile Ajar et Calixthe Beyala.” L’écriture décentrée: la langue de l’autre dans le roman contemporain, éd. Michel Laronde, L’Harmattan, 1996.

For films, use the abbreviation réal. for réalisateur/trice, Int. for interprété par:

Example:

Auffret, Mélanie, réal. Les petites victoires. Int. Julia Piaton, Michel Blanc, Lionel Abelanski. Quad, 2023.

8.         A URL should be in the following format: <https://www.pole-emploi.fr/candidat> (link should be active and clickable). URLs should not have space after < or before >. Do not underline URLs in the word document. Blue color is fine, as in the example in #7 above.

9.         An author may occasionally wish to acknowledge special assistance, in the formulation of the article, to a colleague or an institution. This should be done sparingly and always as a final endnote to the article.

10.       Interviews should use “Q:” and “R:” (in boldface) to indicate questions and answers. They should also provide an introduction to the author and a list of Works Cited. An interview should be a substantive conversation, which deepens our knowledge of the artist and/or their work, and which enhances our knowledge of literature or film in general (contemporary novel or cinema, changing trends in fiction/theater/poetry/film, art’s relationship to politics, culture, history, etc.).

11.       If the article includes any art (photos, tables), please save it in a separate file (in addition to being embedded in the article) and indicate whether they are your creation or are in the public domain. If not, authors are responsible for securing the copyright permission to reproduce in the French Review. Photos should be scanned at 300 dpi. Figures that only have words should be scanned at 1200 dpi as line art. These files should be saved as jpg, pdf, eps or tiff files.

12.       The French Review respects authors’ choice to follow or not the 1990 spelling reform, to adopt inclusive writing (gendered or gender-neutral) or not. Articles should be consistent in the chosen style.

We publish reviews of books whose subject matter lies inside the field of French and Francophone Studies. We do not publish reviews of tourist guides, cookbooks, children’s books, or other publications unrelated to our field. We do not normally review books that are self-published or published by a vanity press. We normally review only works published in their original language, not translations (very rare exceptions might be made, for example in the case of bilingual works). We do not normally publish reviews of second editions of a work unless there have been major revisions, but we make an exception for second and later editions of textbooks because our readers have a professional interest in them.

1.         Reviewers should contact the appropriate Review Editor before writing a review (see List of Editors). This is necessary in order to check if the work considered for review meets our editorial guidelines, and if it has not already been assigned to another reviewer.

2.         Maximum length of reviews: 500 words (absolute!). The review heading, as well as the reviewer’s name and university affiliation, are not included in the word count. For double reviews, the maximum length is 700 words. The French Review does not publish triple reviews. Reviewers who wish to review three books or more in a single text are invited to submit a full-length Review-Essay.

The body of the review must be in one single paragraph. There are no extracts (or indented block quotes) in a review, which means that no single quote can be longer than 40 words.

3.      The review heading should be double-spaced, with a hanging indent (0.5”). The name(s) of the author(s) should be in small caps.

For edited works in French, use the standardized abbreviation éd. to replace such phrases as “Édition établie et annotée par...” or “Sous la direction de...”

For edited works in English, use ed. or eds. For names of publishers, omit words such as “Éditions,” “Éditeur,” or “Press.” For university presses, use the standardized abbreviations: UP / PU. The place of publication should not be included.

Examples:

Crouzet, Michel. Stendhal et l’Amérique: L’Amérique et la modernité. Fallois, 2008. ISBN 978-2-87706-642-6. Pp. 282.

El Ouadili, Raja. La vierge dans la cité. Guy Saint-Jean, 2009. ISBN 978-2-89455-054-0. Pp. 218.

Gafaïti, Hafid, Patricia M.E. Lorcin, and David G. Troyansky, eds. Transnational Spaces and Identities in the Francophone World. UP of Nebraska, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8032-4428-8. Pp. xxvi + 460.

Gallouët, Catherine, David Diop, Michèle Bocquillon, et Gérard Lahouati, éd. L’Afrique du siècle des Lumières: Savoirs et représentations. Voltaire Foundation, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7294-0959-9. Pp. 307.

Gervais, Gaétan, et Jean-Pierre Pichette, éd. Dictionnaire des écrits de l’Ontario français 1613–1993. PU d’Ottawa, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7603-0757-5. Pp. xxxiv + 1097.

Le Gras, Gwénaëlle. Michel Simon: L’art de la disgrâce. Scope, 2010. ISBN 978-2-912573-52-0. Pp. 128.

Vessels, Joel E. Drawing France: French Comics and the Republic. UP of Mississippi, 2010. ISBN 978-1-60473-444-7. Pp. 305.

For a film review, use the following format and list the main actors/actresses (up to four):

Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, réal. Micmacs à tire-larigot. Int. Dany Boon, André Dussollier, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Yolande Moreau. Epithète, 2009.

4.         The reviewer’s contact info and the review’s word count must appear at the top left corner of the first page of each review:

Name

email

word count

This is the only part of the review that is single-spaced. Everything else should be double-spaced. Leave at least one blank line between this section and the review heading.

5.         Reviewers should take note of the following recommendations:

            The French Review does not encourage reviews that are simply a chapter-by-chapter description of the text. A review should provide a critical analysis of the work, and of its potential value to its target audience.

Reviewers should avoid starting with “this book,” “this volume,” or the like, and should not excessively insert themselves in the review with repeated “I, me, I think that,” “Je, moi, à mon avis,” and similar reviewer-centered wording.

Maintaining academic language and style is expected. Occasional slang or colorful words are acceptable when they are quotes, or when they make a point in the spirit of the work being reviewed. 

A review should not begin with a repetition of the information (title, author, publisher) that is found in the review heading.

            Use quotes sparingly and for illustrative purposes, not for remplissage. Never begin a review with a quote.

            Avoid flattery and superlatives: praising the author as, for instance, a “wonderful scholar” is out of place in an analytical review. Conversely, avoid ad hominem attacks. The tone of the review should remain professional.