Style guidelines

1. Format

Font: Times New Roman

Font size: 12 

Line spacing: 1.5

Indentation: first line of every paragraph at 0.5 cm

Text alignment: justified

Avoid using bold type. Use italics for titles of books and articles in journals, for linguistic examples, for notions in foreign languages and for emphasis.

2. Headings

Include headings with numbers, according to the following scheme:

Introduction (without specific subheading and without number)

1. First Level Subheading (Times New Roman, 12, bold)

1.1. Second Level Subheading (Times New Roman, 12, bold)

Leave one line between the text and the next subheading.

3. Title, abstract, keywords and contact information

The complete article must be submitted in German or Spanish, although articles in Portuguese, Italian, French or English may be accepted with the approval of the Editorial Board. In addition, the title, abstract (max. 150 words) and 5-7 keywords, separated by commas, must be in both English and the language in which the article is written.

Presentation will be as follows:

    Title in the language of the article

    Title in English

    Abstract (Zusammenfassung/Resumen) and keywords (Schlüsselwörter/palabras clave) in the language of the article.

    Abstract and keywords in English.

To ensure anonymous peer blind review for articles submitted to the central section authorship and contact information should NOT appear on the text until the anonymous peer blind review has been completed and the evaluation is positive. Authorship and contact information (name, institutional e-mail and ORCID) must be included in the article registration form during the online submission process.

4. Illustrations

If your text includes tables, graphs, images, etc., they all will be named as illustrations. Not only should they be placed in the right location within the article, but they must also be sent as a separate file during submission (file formats: .jpg, .jpeg, etc.). 

Within the article, a especific, clear and precise title must be given to each illustration. The titels appear at the bottom of the illustration in Times New Roman, font size 10 (without bold nor itallic letters) and are numbered. In all cases, the body of the text should refer to the images. Make sure you only use images with free or acquired copy right.

In both cases (within the text and in separate files), illustrations should be numbered with Arabic numerals according to the order in which they are mentioned in the text, and the name of the file should be the same as the description included in the article.

5. Footnotes

Use footnotes and not endnotes. The notes will never be used for bibliographic references, but for clarification, explanation or additions to the content of the text. The notes must be Times New Roman, font size 10, with a line space of 1.0 and justified text alignment without tab indentation.

Footnotes markers will be indicated by Arabic numerals in superscript placed immediately after the sentence or word to which they refer, without separation space. They will not go in parentheses and will precede the punctuation mark (in the case of an article in English they will go behind the punctuation mark). 

6. Quotations

Quotations of three lines or less in length (aprox. 40 words) will be included in the text in quotation marks (“...”).

Quotations of four or more lines will be separated from the body of the text by one blank line at the beginning and one at the end of the citation. Do not use quotation marks, but a 1 cm bleed on the left and font size 11 (Times New Roman with justified text alignment, 1.5 line spacing and without intendation). Omissions within the quotations will be marked by three points in brackets: [...]. It will not be necessary to indicate omissions at the beginning and at the end of the text with brackets.

7. Acknowledgements

If your manuscript contains acknowledgements, they should be placed before the Bibliography section.

To ensure anonymity during the manuscript review process, make sure that you leave this section blank until the review process is completed.

8. Bibliography

The bibliography should include the complete list of all documents cited in the article, and follow the APA style guidelines (version 7, section 10.1-10.16), which can be accessed via the following link.

  • To reference several works by the same author, the author's name(s) should be repeated each time (instead of using a dash).
  • If including a work of a single author as well as shared work of that same author along with other authors, first, the single author is indicated and then the shared work.
  • When referencing several works by the same author, they should be indicated in chronological order (from the oldest to most recent).
  • If there are multiple references by the same author from the same year, the works are specified in alphabetical order with "a, b, c, ..." after the year.
  • The whole bibliography is formatted in Times New Roman, font size 12, line spacing 1.5, justified alignment and 0.5 cm hanging indent. 

Books:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the book. Publisher.

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the book (7th ed.). Publisher. http://DOI or http://URL [if it exists]

Chapter in an edited book:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the book chapter. In A. A. Editor (Ed.), Title of the book (pp. xx-xx). Publisher.

Author, A. A. & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the book chapter. In A. A. Editor, B. B. Editor, & C. C. Editor (Eds.), Title of the book (2nd ed., pp. xx-xx). Publisher. http://DOI or http://URL [if it exists]

Journal article:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the article. Name of the Journal, volume(issue), pp-pp.

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article. Name of the Journal, 6(2), 57-88. http://DOI or http://URL [if it exists]

9. References

References in the body of the text should follow the following scheme: the author's surname, separated by a space from the year of publication, and all of this in brackets. If a reference does not mean the work as a whole, but there is a direct or indirect quotation, you have to indicate the page of this quotation. Put the number of the page after a colon and a space, for example:

  1. Reference without page number (when you refere to the whole work): (Nord 1988)
  2. Reference for a quotation with page number: (Nord 1988: 214)

If a reference is cited in the syntax of your text it is a narrative reference and the author's name is not in brackets. For example: "... as Nord (1988: 214) points out ..."

Two or three authors: To join two or three authors, it should be used "&" (or "y", when writing in Spanish). For example:

  1. Narrative reference: Gutiérrez, & Rojas (2013)
  2. Reference in brackets: (Castiblanco, Gutiérrez, & Rojas 2013)

More than three authors:  Always name the surname of the first Author followed by et al.

  1. Narrative reference: Hühn et al. (2009).
  2. Reference in brackets: (Hühn et al. 2009).

If a footnote is referenced, it will be marked by n., for example: (Cano Aguilar 2021: 43, n. 3). If several works are referenced, they will be ordered chronologically and separated by semicolons, for example: (Long 2013: 36; Schultz 2015). If the citation includes several pages, the number of the first page and the final page will be given, separated by a hyphen: (Long 2013: 311-318). The use of following or followings (f and ff.) will be avoided as much as possible. If the reference refers to several places (pages, notes) within the same work, the page or note numbers will be indicated separated by commas and space, for example: (Schultz 2021: 465, 467, 470).

IAbbreviations and acronyms: Latin abbreviations will be marked in italics and lowercase (vid., ibid., et al., cf.). Acronyms will be capitalised (UN, UK) and written in italics, if they refere to titles of books (DLE, DCECH). If a fixed abbreviated bibliographic system will be used, the complete bibliographical references have to be listed in the bibliography.