Article Submissions

Submit articles about Tolkien’s languages and the research into them here. They will be published as blog posts under the Category “Articles.”

Types of Articles I am Accepting:

  1. All authors of the article must agree to let it be posted here.
  2. Old articles will need to be up-to-date with the latest information, but the fact that they are old or published elsewhere won’t be a factor in accepting them.
  3. The topic can be any of Tolkien’s languages.
  4. The primary topic should be Tolkien’s languages, not other aspects of Tolkien’s work. Articles about fan theories that only mention Tolkien’s languages in passing won’t be accepted.
  5. No surveys of an entire language, unless it is one of the languages Tolkien developed very little of, like Dwarvish, Black Speech, or Nandorin. Reference grammars are very useful, but not what this project is about.
  6. The topic of the article should be narrow and focused, allowing for more nuanced, detailed discussion on that topic.

Submission Guidelines

  1. Use the provided contact form to do the submission – no e-mails, PMs, social media messages. Those get buried too easily.
  2. Multiple submissions is allowed. It make take a while to get through all of them though.
  3. Send me the abstract of your article first – no attachments in e-mails.
  4. If I get back to you wanting to read the rest of the article, make it into a PDF and send it to me.
    1. Font should be Times New Roman, size 12.
    2. Margins should be 1 inch.
    3. Double-space the article.
    4. Page size should be 8.5 inches by 11 inches.
  5. Sources MUST be cited, and there should be a Works Cited list at the end of the article.
  6. Likewise, if there is a lot of spelling errors or typos, your article will be rejected.
  7. I may suggest edits or point out weak areas of the article. You don’t have to change anything, but it may affect whether your article is accepted or not.

Peer Review (Approximation)

We don’t have the power to do true peer review for these articles. That takes more time and money than most people are willing to spend on their hobbies. But, I do know a lot of people very skilled and knowledgeable on the topics of Tolkien’s languages, and I will be consulting them and sharing these articles with them. It’s at this point that you may have edits or weaknesses pointed out in your article.

Posting Process

  1. After your article is accepted, it will need to be made compatible for posting online. I will be posting the PDFs of the articles, but it should also be in HTML so that it can be easily read online.
  2. I can help you convert it to HTML if you don’t know how. If you do:
    • Footnotes should be done with in-page bookmarks so people can easily find them return to the place they were at.
    • Tables can be coded or turned into pictures. Any figure more complex than a table should be turned into a picture. This is easily done with [Print Screen] or something similar.
    • Pictures should have “alt” text descriptions of what they are of.
  3. The PDF version of the article will be put on Google Drive, making it easy for anyone to access or download.
  4. Then tags and categories will be added.
  5. And then it will be scheduled for publication. It won’t be put up right away, but made so it won’t be posted at the same time that another article is posted. That way, only one article is posted and discussed at a time.
  6. There may be comments on the article. Be respectful and courteous, no matter how wrong the other person is.

Your Rights

  • You are the person in control of your article.
  • You can post it elsewhere, like your personal website or anywhere else if you like.
  • You can have me delete it from the website.
  • It won’t be edited after it’s posted. You can request that things like typos you’ve found be fixed, but no big changes to the article are allowed. What IS allowed is submitting another article that fixes, rejects, updates, or points out flaws in other articles, including your own.