Notes for Contributors
CRITERIA
1. This is a wholly new edition of the Dictionary: by all means refer to the relevant entries in the previous edition (especially if you wrote them!), but we hope that you will approach entries for the 5th edition with a fresh mind.
2. Please remember that this is an English-language dictionary intended for a large international audience. We’re aware of the contradictions in that sentence, but it is highly unlikley that the only important contributions to the terms for which you are responsible will have been made by your friends or writers in your own country. Similarly, please try to use a wide geographical range of examples wherever appropriate. In short: be ecumenical!
3. We need entries that are up-to-date without ignoring the history with which all terms are freighted: it would be a mistake to limit your discussion to developments in the last six weeks (or days).... At the same time, we know that the Dictionary has played an important part in shaping developments in and extensions of our field: the trick is to avoid the flashy and the ephemeral.
4. Please strive for clarity: we want the Dictionary to be accessible to an undergraduate audience and to readers for whom English is not their first language.
5. We need entries that are constructively critical; this is not the place to merely castigate or canonise. This applies to everything from Central Place Theory to Non-Representational Theory: readers need to be shown why the terms in the Dictionary are still important, and to be alerted to critical responses to them. Entries should thus be lively and engaged, conveying the sense of a discipline in motion.
CONTENTS
6. Every headword will have an Entry, a list of References referred to in the body of the text, and a shorter list of Suggested Readings, as follows:
| Category | Entry (words) | References | Suggested Readings |
|---|---|---|---|
| A+ | 2500 – 3500 | 30 | 6 |
| A | 1000 – 2500 | 20 | 6 |
| B | 500 - 1000 | 10 | 4 |
| C | 250 - 500 | 4 | 2 |
| D | 100 | 2 | 1 |
Note: Word-lengths for each entry exclude lists of References and Suggested Readings; Suggested Readings can include sources given in the References but need not be limited to them.
The figures in each column are maxima: please adhere to them. The Dictionary simply cannot get any longer, so entries that exceed these limits will be returned for editing. If you think we have got any of them dramatically wrong, please explain your reasons to your Editor who will then make the decision.
7. Begin each entry (wherever possible) with a one-sentence definition of the Headword. Where there is controversy – and hence several definitions in play – various strategies are possible: provide a lowest common denominator definition that you then elaborate, for example, or identify different definitions in turn (using italics and separate paragraphs) as you proceed through the entry.
8. All entries should follow the style conventions of the 4th edition of the Dictionary: i.e. the Harvard system of referencing. Cross-references to other entries in the Dictionary (see Headword list) should be given in CAPITALS throughout the entry. End the entry with your initials.
9. Please list all References at the end of each entry following the style conventions of the 4th edition:
BOOKS
Livingstone, D.N. and Withers, C.W.J. eds, 1999: Geography and Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
BOOK CHAPTERS
Ahmad, A. 1992: Orientalism and after: ambivalence iand metropolitan location in the work of Edward Said. In his In theory: classes, nations, literatures. London: Verso, 159-219.
Hetherington, K. 1997b: In place of geometry: the materiality of place. In K. Hetherington and R. Munro, eds, Ideas of difference: social spaces and the labor of division. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 183-199.
ARTICLES
Mitchell K. 1997: Different diasporas and the hype of hybridity. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15: 533-53.
For the 5th edition, all References will be grouped at the very end of the Dictionary so it is vital that your lists are correct in every detail (including edition and place of publication). Consolidating the References like this creates more space for entries by removing duplication – imagine how many times Harvey (1989) is set out in full throughout previous editions – and allows readers who want some sense of the range of an authors’s work to have the relevant references gathered in one place.
Suggested Readings will, however, appear in full at the end of each entry for ease of use: these should therefore be set out in full at the end of each of your entries.
10. Please think visually: we don’t want images for the sake of images, but the Dictionary is enlivened by the judicious use of graphics. Do not hesitate to devise your own maps, diagrams or tables to clarify your discussion.