■ ARTICLE LENGTH:
– Op-Ed articles: 4,100 characters (including spaces) per page.
– Book reviews: 3,200 characters including spaces (half page) and 5,000 characters including spaces (full page).
– Sections: 6,200-7,000 characters, including spaces (two pages).
– Topical articles: 12,000 to 14,000 characters, including spaces.
– Topical interviews: 10,000 to 12,000 characters, including spaces.
– Monographic articles: 15,000 characters, including spaces.
– Documentary texts: 18,000 characters, including spaces.

When adding pages to the specified lengths, add 4,000-4,600 characters (including spaces) per page.

■ Submission
–  Articles are to be mailed electronically as an attachment, never as a message, to the following address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or to the coordinator of the section. Once correct receipt has been verified, the journal editor, coordinator or layout designer will acknowledge receipt via e-mail.

– Should the file exceed the maximum size attachable by e-mail, it can be burned onto a CD and sent to the journal’s editorial address or to the section coordinator, who will likewise send the author acknowledgement of receipt.

■ Text
Technical requirements
Software
The text must be submitted in a single file. Preferably this should be done with the word processor Microsoft Word, for Macintosh or Windows.

Font
It is important to present the article in a common font (preferably Times), especially if it includes mathematical formulae or symbols, phonetic or otherwise. In any case, TrueType fonts must be employed.

Typographic style
The criteria for the use of punctuation, capitalization, italics, upper case and other typographic and conventional stylistic aspects should follow the ACS/MLA style guide.

Italics
Italics are used in the following cases:
– Words in a different language to that used in the text (except for proper names of institutions such as Zoological Society of London, to be written in roman).
– Titles of books, plays, works of art and music, films and printed publications.
– The scientific name of species.
– Metalinguistic use of letters, words or sentences (The word propaganda means ...).

When capitalisation is employed (for example in highlighting) or font styles that do not allow italics, the word or phrase in italics will be marked by single quotes (‘THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES’ IS THE MAIN WORK BY CHARLES DARWIN).

The overuse of italics in articles should always be avoided.

Quotes
–  Quotation marks are to be used to indicate citations within the text or to indicate a special meaning or emphasis. They should also be used to indicate titles of articles, chapters, poems, etc.
–  When necessary, use in accordance with the following order: « “ ‘ ’ ” ».

Hyphens and em dashes
Hyphens are to be used for compound words. Em dashes can be used instead of parentheses and are set closed (without spacing). In this case, when the item between dashes is followed by a full stop new paragraph or text end, the em dash does not close. However, it does close before a period within a paragraph.
For cases outside these rules, the author can follow the guidelines proposed by the ACS/MLA style guide.

Lowercase
In the literature, names must be written in lowercase /small caps, except the initial letter to be capitalized.

Linguistic requirements
Texts should preferably be submitted in Catalan, this means they should be written in this language. It is unadvisable to write texts in another language and run them though an automatic translation programme (Salt, for example). Without exception, articles should undergo a thorough review, including automatic correction (e.g., Wordcorrect, Salt.3).

Regarding spelling and grammatical aspects, Mètode follows the criteria set by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) and the Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana (IIFV).

For further details please consult Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana, 2002. Guia d’usos lingüístics. IIFV. València.

Format
The article should contain the following elements:
• Title
• Subtitles
• Summary or abstract, preferably in English (only for articles included in the monograph).
• Text. It is always best to structure the text with marginal notes (unnumbered), as done in print, but without overuse of subsections or alpha/numeric organisation, which may be clear and suitable for a manual but not for a popular science article, which should be reader friendly.
• Legends and captions to accompany images.
• Formulas and graphs, if the author sees fit.
• The author’s name/title and affiliation should appear at the end of the article (main activity, title, department, university, etc.):

Julio Perez Diaz. Center for Demographic Studies, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

• If the author sees fit, a basic bibliography should accompany the text, and without exception, references to works cited in the text should be supplied (see sections on Abbreviated References and Bibliography). It is always best to cite editions that are more easily accessible to the reader. The bibliography should not be too long and each publication must contain all necessary data:

Author, year. Title. Editorial. Place of publication.

Citations
Text citations must be incorporated in the main body of the text between guillemets («»). When necessary, they must be ordered as follows:

« “ ‘ ’ ”».

Longer citations (more than three lines) should be copied, without quotes or italics, in a separate paragraph, with the margin indented from the main text and a smaller font size.

Should part of the text be omitted, the position of the missing text should indicated by square brackets: [...]. Any aside/statement written by the person quoting should also be placed between square brackets. The text citations must be preceded by the abbreviated citation (author, year: pages), thus significantly reducing the number of footnotes.

In the case of literary citations, it is preferable to reproduce them in the original language and, when necessary, accompany them by a translation into Catalan in an endnote.

Footnotes
Footnotes should be avoided unless strictly necessary. It is best to include any clarification within the text, like the references.

■ ARTWORK
When the author attaches images with the text (graphs, charts, illustrations or photos), they must be presented separately, properly numbered, indicating the location within the text with footnotes, legends, titles and explanations.
    Digitized artwork should be presented observing the following:
    1. The size of the image should be at least as large as the one to be published.
    2. Scanner input resolution should be at least 300 dpi. Scanned images should be saved at this resolution and a screen ruling of 133 lpi (lines per inch).
    3. Preferably images should be in TIFF (uncompressed) or EPS.

If the author does not attach images, suggestions as to whom could illustrate the article are welcome.