HJS

Style Sheet for Hypermedia Joyce Studies

[Content] -- [Conventions] -- [Submissions] -- [File Format] -- [Typesetting] -- [Hypertext]

CONTENT

Hypermedia Joyce Studies (formerly known as Hypertituitary Joysis) seeks articles of relevance to any aspect of Joycean studies. As a refereed journal with a distinguished board of advisory editors, HJS maintains high standards of scholarship. Articles should contribute to the scholarly discourse surrounding Joyce's work and should demonstrate familiarity with the issues of Joycean criticism and literary criticism at large. HJS welcomes articles from all schools of critical theory.

Although the length of a hypertext piece is a variable rather than a fixed quantity, we advise contributors to write articles of up to 8000 words in length. Slightly longer pieces will be considered if they make extensive use of multiple nodes (see the section titled "Hypertext" below). HJS also seeks book reviews of 1000 words in length.

Hypertext adaptations of articles previously published in another journal will be considered for publication in HJS. Contributors submitting previously published pieces, however, must arrange to secure written permission to re- print from the previous publisher, in order to avoid copyright complications.

The multimedia capabilities of the World Wide Web -- the electronic medium through which HJS will be published -- permit authors to include drawings, photographs, audio recordings, and motion pictures within their articles. While frivolous or overly ostentatious use of these resources can detract from the scholarly content of an article, we encourage the judicious use of multimedia items when they effectively augment the text. If contributors choose to include such elements, they must obtain written permission for HJS to publish any materials which might be copyrighted.

CONVENTIONS

The primary language of HJS will be English, although we will consider articles written in another language when attended by an English translation. To standardise orthography, HJS will use International English spellings in all cases in which International and Amererican English spellings differ.

Articles should use MLA conventions except where otherwise specified. When citing a source, provide parenthetical documentation within the text itself and include full bibliographic information in an appended list of works cited.

References to Joyce's works are to be cited according to the format perscribed by James Joyce Quarterly. Please see the inside back cover of any recent copy of JJQ for specific details. (Although not specified in JJQ's guidelines, citations of Finnegans Wake should include both page and line number.)

Footnotes should contribute to the content of the article, rather than merely providing bibliographic information. Because of the hypertextual format of the journal, it may be useful to think of such textual digressions as "nodes" rather than footnotes. (The concept of "nodes" will be explained later in this style sheet, in the section "Hypertext.")

If you intend to submit the article as a plain-text ASCII file (see "File Formats" below), we suggest that you save footnotes or other nodes as separate documents. This procedure will possibly prevent confusion and mayhem since some word processors lose, misplace, or otherwise mangle footnotes when converting a document to a text-only (ASCII) file.

SUBMISSIONS

E-mail submissions to joyce_inc@une.edu.au. Or post a 3.5" diskette (preferably DOS format, but Mac will be accepted as well) to the following address:


Hypermedia Joyce Studies
c/o R.L. Callahan
Temple University
Department of English
Anderson Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19122
U.S.A.

Submissions should be in the form of one of the file formats described below (see "File Formats").

Ideally, contributors should provide their own graphics and/or audio files, if they make use of such items in their articles. Since many contributors may have neither the necessary equipment nor the necessary expertise at their disposal, however, we can scan images and record sound-files from cassette tape or CD. (We do not at present have the resources to record MPEG -- motion picture files -- from videotape, although we can of course publish MPEG files if they are provided by the contributor.) If you need us to scan/record your graphics/audio, send the photographs, drawings, or sound recordings to the above address.

Hard copy may be sent to the above address as well, or faxed to (215) 204-9620. We must receive soft copy in order to consider a piece for publication, but sending hard copy may prove useful in order to describe desired formatting using handwritten marginal notes.

If you have questions about how to transmit a submission, you may contact the journal's technical coordinator, R.L. Callahan, at callahan@astro.ocis.temple.edu. Include in the subject header of your message the text,

_HJS_ submission info

Callahan often handles heavy e-mail traffic, so please await response patiently.

FILE FORMATS

Contributors should submit the text of articles in one of the three following formats:

  1. A plain ASCII file: This type of file is the easiest to send via e-mail, since binary files need to be encoded before they can be sent along standard e-mail channels. All major word processors permit you to save documents as text- only (ASCII) files. The difficulty with submitting an article in the form of this type of file is that all formatting is lost. See the section titled "Typesetting" below for an explanation of how to add formatting information to an ASCII file.
  2. A word processor file in a major format: We will accept submissions in the form of Microsoft Word (Windows, DOS, or Mac) or WordPerfect documents. In order for you to send such files via e-mail, you must first encode them using a program such as Uuencode or BinHex. These programs translate binary files into an ASCII format which can be transmitted by means of e-mail and later decoded by the recipient. In the event that you need assistance sending a word processor file as an e-mail message, please contact the computer consultants at your institution. If you still experience difficulty, place the files on a 3.5" diskette and send by conventional post.
  3. An HTML file: HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) is the format used by the World Wide Web. It allows for hypertext links, in-line images, and formatted typesetting. All published articles will be eventually translated into HTML files. Since most contributors will probably not be familiar with this format, we will convert from other formats into HTML. We will of course, however, welcome HTML submissions.

Graphics files should conform to the .GIF format, sound files to the .au format (we may be able to convert .wav files, but we can give no guarantee at this point), and motion picture files to the .MPEG format. Any such file would need to be Uuencoded or BinHexed before being sent by e-mail. Alternatively, these files could be sent by conventional post on magnetic media (3.5" DOS or Mac formatted).

TYPESETTING

When e-mailing the text of an article by means of ASCII (plain-text) files, send each node (see the explanation of nodes in the section "Hypertext" below) as a separate message. Because saving a word-processor's file in ASCII format strips it of typesetting codes, use the following marks to indicate how text should be formatted:

  1. Indicate italicised text by enclosing it within curved brackets ({}). Italicise the following items: words and phrases from foreign languages; the titles of books, films, musical compositions, and works of art; and words emphasised in a cited passage. Follow this example:
    In {Peculiar Language} Derek Attridge explores the way in which the language of {Ulysses} ascribes agency to individual bodily organs.
  2. Use the "at" symbol (@) and a note to the typesetter enclosed in square brackets ([]) to describe a link to another node. Follow this example:
    Although we generally imagine {Finnegans Wake} as "set" in Dublin, ALP is as much the @Nile [link to the passage describing Egyptian imagery in Book I, Chapter 8] as she is the @Liffey. [link to the photo of the R Liffey flowing through the quays of Dub]
  3. For other formatted text, use asterisks (*) to mark the text, and include a note to the typesetter enclosed in square brackets ([]) to specify the nature of the formatting. Follow this example:
    *{Giacomo}'s Italian Seductress and Masoch's {Venus in Furs}* [format this as a sub-heading]

HYPERTEXT

Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy amuses and fascinates us precisely because it refuses to stay in line. Our expectations as readers are pleasantly frustrated because Sterne has broken apart the chain of events, melted down the links, and reforged them into a contrivance wonderfully jumbled. As Shandy himself remarks,

. . . the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too,-- and at the same time. . . . Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;-- they are the life, the soul of reading;-- take them out of this book for instance,-- you might as well take the book along with them;-- one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;- - he steps forth like a bridegroom,-- bids All hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail. All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author . . . (95)

But despite Tristram Shandy's delightful subversions of linear plot structure, the book is in once sense strictly progressive, as indeed is all traditionally printed text. Although it plays marvelous tricks with the progression of narrative, Tristram Shandy depends upon an invariably progressive sequence of textual material; it has a clearly defined beginning and end, and it offers only one way to go from the former to the latter. Any printed text leads the reader through a sequence of pages; page three will necessarily follow page two, which itself must come after page one.

Not so hypertext. While the author of a traditional text paves a single, narrow path for her reader to follow, the author of a hypertext constructs an intricate network of trails through which her reader navigates. Rather than pages, hypertext is broken down into units called nodes. (Nodes are often casually referred to as "pages" -- especially in the context of the World Wide Web -- but these hypertext nodes are pages only in the sense that they are distinct chunks of text; they may consist of only a few words or of a few hundred thousand.) A given node might offer links to many other nodes; the reader has the choice of what "page" in the document she will read next.

These links tend to be context-related. A chunk of text which contains a passing reference to Richard's desire to be cuckolded in Exiles might link to a node discussing in greater detail the theme of adultery in Joyce's corpus. In turn, this node might itself offer the reader links to other nodes or even to external documents: a separate article pertaining to Joyce's representation of the institution of marriage, a node containing biographical notes about Joyce's own adulterous inclinations, a node citing a passage from Ulysses illustrating Bloom's ambivalent feelings towards Boylan, and so forth.

Such context-sensitive links are, in a sense, analagous to footnotes. An important distinction, however, is that while footnotes are assumed to be secondary to the main body of the text, no such hierarcy of nodes need be established. In a printed text, footnotes permit the author to contain digressions so as not to derail the progress of the "real" text; in a hypertext, nodes permit the author to contain discrete units of text and to establish patterns of interconnectivity between these units, without priveleging one unique reading sequence.

Well-crafted hypertext is protean, mutable. It can be read a number of times but can, in a certain sense, never be read twice -- since it will not yield precisely the same content upon different readings. Since the reader's choices largely determine the shape of a hypertext upon a given reading, hypertext highlights the manner in which meaning is constructed in the interaction between author and reader.

Hypertextual scholarship allows, therefore, for new relationships between the scholar and her audience. Much of print scholarship posits a reading, argues for the validity of that reading by proceeding from point to point in a linear fashion, and eventually reaches the inevitible (pre- destined) conclusion. In contrast to this linear and authorially dictated approach, hypertextual scholarhip can serve as a space in which the reader explores patterns of interconnected ideas, eventually discovering her own reading.



joyce_inc@une.edu.au