REVIEWER'S NOTES

Thank you for agreeing to review material for NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL.

The notes here are intended to help you produce your reviews in ways which make it easier for the editor to swiftly transform your reviews into web pages. As everyone uses different tools [software] and some people are more computer-literate than others, nothing here is absolutely mandatory, but an understanding of these issues will put a smile on the editor's face and help him pull out fewer grey hairs!

Please use UPPER CASE for titles of books, poems and other works. Leave author's names in lower case — Amy Harrison's poem LIFE AT FORTY rather than AMY HARRISON'S poem "Life at Forty" — and no quotes around titles.

Magazine titles are generally given in italics but see the note about italics and formatting below.

Give titles of poems BEFORE the quotation NOT after. When quoting from the work please make it clear when a passage is a quotation. Poetry quotations are generally coded using ‹pre› and ‹/pre› tags in order to preserve spacing and line-endings. In your review text either set lines out as per the original or indicate line/ and stanza// breaks with slash marks that can be removed when editing. Only use a tab for the first indent rather than spacing as the editor will delete spaces before inserting a tab.

Prose quotations are coded using ‹blockquote› and ‹/blockquote› tags in order to allow them to wordwrap within the browser window of the reader. Reviewers do not need to include these tags, but you can if you want and understand how they work. From the editor's point of view, I just need to be clear about what is and is not a quotation.

Please double-check the spelling of any names quoted, and also double-check quotations for typos as the editor doesn't usually have another copy with which to verify their accuracy. If you think text should be italicized flank the text with ‹i› and ‹/i› as shown.

Please use a text-editor rather than a word-processor, or save your review as a "text" file before cutting and pasting it into an email. The editor will apply his own formatting.

As the reviews are hand-coded in plain-text in order that they will be viewable by any browser, word-processing formatting [such as bold, italics, special characters] will be lost so where such formatting is crucial, please indicate using notes which can be deleted from the final text. Please avoid the use of "smart-quotes" [the curly ones] as created by MS Word in particular. The editor has to painstakingly replace them!

The table below is a handy reference for those who want to know the codes needed to ensure special characters such as em-dashes and accented letters are reproduced accurately on web pages.

There is no need to restrict the length of your reviews. If you are being critical, try to justify your criticism, but without labouring the point. Remember also that the reviews have an international readership. Do not assume that you are reaching only a British audience.

If you dislike something so badly that you are totally unable to review it or for some other reason do not wish to review an item you may return it for sending to another reviewer.

Unless otherwise told you can of course keep all material sent to you for review.

If you have several items to review and some require more time for evaluation it is quite in order for you to send in completed reviews and to write others at a later date rather than holding early reviews back.

Please email your reviews as text inside the body of the message. Do NOT send as an attachment unless this is unavoidable.

Give the author or magazine title as the "subject" of the email.

If you cannot email your review, please type or print, single-spaced on A4 paper in clear black on white and, if possible, also include a copy on floppy-disc or CD

There are no deadlines, but if you think it may take more than three months for you to complete the reviews, do let us know. If, for whatever reason, you can't complete reviews then please return the items sent.

Leave at least seven days before querying whether reviews haven't been received or posted.

Please check published reviews, especially quoted passages, and let me know if you spot any errors.

If there are other points you think should be covered in these notes, then please do not hesitate to say so.