Guidelines
for Contributors
The Chinese Text Sampler
is a constantly expanding resource, and new contributions of appropriate Chinese
text materials are always welcome. Potential contributors should carefully follow
the following guidelines.
Text Selection Criteria:
- The Chinese Text Sampler
is intended to be a high-quality cultural resource. Texts to be included in
the sampler, then, should have genuine literary, historical, linguistic, or
other cultural significance. They should be widely known among people living
in China, and their study should make a tangible contribution to the foreign
student's cultural literacy. They should be the kinds of texts, in other words,
that a foreign student living in China would be expected to have read or at
least heard of.
-
The
Chinese Text Sampler is intended primarily as a resource for students of
the Chinese language. Therefore, the text selections it contains should
be reasonably accessible to students in their second to fourth years of
study. Texts with a high percentage of rare or obscure words or usages should
be avoided, as well as those whose comprehension requires specialized knowledge
of the classical or literary tradition.
- As a text sampler, this
resource is intended to give students an initial taste of a wide variety of
reading materials. Individual documents, then, should be no more than a typical
book chapter in length, and they may be much shorter.
Text Formatting Guidelines:
- Every
text file should begin with a header. The header should be left justified
and separated from the body of the text by a single blank line. The header
consists of two or three lines containing the following information:
- The first line of
the header should give the title of the text.
- If the text is a
selection from a longer work, the next line should give the name and/or
number of the chapter or section.
- The final line of
the header should indicate the author's name.
- The body of the text
should contain no fixed line breaks or other formatting codes.
- Each paragraph should
begin with a single TAB character. There should be no blank lines between
paragraphs.
- Every text file should
end with a footer. The footer should be left justified, and should be separated
from the body of the text by a single blank line. If the text is taken from
a printed work, the footer should provide, in standard bibliographic form,
the complete citation for the work. If it is taken from a website, the footer
should give the complete URL of the source website.
- Texts should be thoroughly
proofread prior to submission.
- Texts should be saved
as GB text files or as plain Chinese TXT files.
Text Submission Guidelines:
- Completed
exts should be submitted
as email attachments to dporter@umich.edu.
The email accompanying
the text should include the English title of the text, along with a brief
description of the text to be included on the Sampler
web page.