Comments

All comments on articles and book reviews will be reviewed by at least one reviewer prior to posting. Turnaround time for comments are within a week after being submitted.

To ensure quality and positive discussion, all comments will be moderated.

Subject Matter

Acceptable subject matter:

• Reflections on the practice of Vipassana meditation at home or on retreats
• Applications of Vipassana meditation in daily life
• Reflections on ethics and its applications from a Dhamma perspective
• Scholarly research on aspects of Vipassana meditation and canonical texts
• Dhamma inspired poetry, short stories, photography and films.

Unacceptable Subject Matter:

• Controversial political discussions concerning specific individuals, traditions, and organizations.
• Content not related to Dhamma practice.

Style Guide

Paragraphs

• Paragraphs should not be indented.

Headings

• Headings are boldfaced.
• Main headings have:
  • Capital letters for significant words
  • Times Extended New Roman font
  • One line before first sentence of section.
• Subheadings have:
  • Initial capital only
  • Italic font

Punctuation

• Use serial commas (i.e., place a comma before “and” in a list; e.g., “sīla, samādhi, and pañña”).
• Periods and commas go inside quotation marks; semicolons and colons go outside quotation marks.
• Use commas after “e.g.,” and “i.e.,”
• Use unspaced em-dashes (—). Most word-processors will convert double-hyphens to em-dashes automatically.
• Use apostrophe for possessives of words ending in –s, e.g., “ Jonas' view.”

Quotations

• Use only double quotation marks (except for quotes within a quote, which use single marks).
• Quotes of four lines or longer should be indented, with one line before and one line after. Block quotes do not have quotation marks, and the source is provided at the end of the quote.
• Text within quotations must remain as published

Ellipsis

• Spaced ellipsis, without brackets; four spaced dots when including a full stop.

Spacing

• No space between initials in a name (e.g., S.N. Goenka).

Numbers

• Numbers one to ninety-nine are written out; numbers 100 and over are in numerals. Percentages, however, are written as numerals (e.g., 99%).
• No elision of numbers. For instance, pages 232-238, not 232-38; 1980-1984, not 1980-84.

References & Footnotes

• Use Chicago Manual of Style for Endnotes and Bibliography

Dates

• 1800s, not 1800’s.
• “1960s,” not “sixties.”
• “Seventh century,” not “Seventh Century” or “7th Century.”
• 623 B.C.E., 50 C.E. (B.C.E. and C.E. are preferred to B.C. and A.D.)
• Ranges: 1950-1959 (with a hyphen, not a dash).

Typeface

• Do not use bold anywhere in the document except for headings.
• Use italics for emphasis rather than bold or underscoring

Non-English Language Issues

• All technical non-English terms are italicized and include diacritical marks. However, Pāli terms commonly used in English do not need to be italicized (e.g., sīla, samādhi, pañña, jhāna, mettā, vedāna, vipassanā, Vipassana, dhamma, etc.)
• Use Times Extended New Roman that contains characters with the necessary diacritical marks. Examples of Bibliographic Entries (MLA Style, 8th Edition)
• To type Pāli characters, you may wish to install the Pāli Keyboard