• References and bibliography
• Type styles and format
• Punctuation
• Spelling
• Capital letters
• Foreign words and languages
• Style Guide 2016

Notes on Style
2016

When we publish the Transactions we want to inform our readers and offer them new ideas. Clear writing that follows our house style helps us do so. As in any specialised field, ours has many terms that are esoteric or arcane (or both) even as the field grows with changes to academic dress. The editors try to ensure we use words consistently so that our readers can concentrate on your ideas instead of being distracted by imprecise usage.

To that end, these jottings should not be considered a comprehensive style book but a work in progress that attempts to answer the most common questions that arise in our copy. The editors welcome your questions and suggestions as we improve our notes to authors.

The most helpful preparation authors can provide before submission is following our citation style. Starting with Volume 13 (published in 2014), the editorial board adopted two citation styles, giving each author the choice of the one that she or he is most comfortable with. They are:

SOCIAL SCIENCES
Short citation in footnote in all references; full citation in list at the end.

HUMANITIES
Full citation in footnote on first reference, short citation in footnotes in later references; no list at end.

A few more adjustments to your text will let the editors spend more time on your content and less time on style adjustments.

References and bibliography

For this, as for the other copyediting conventions, we follow the, MHRA Style Guide (formerly the MHRA Style Book), downloadable as a free pdf here. We allow the author to choose the style used in either the humanities or the social sciences.

Transactions of the Burgon Society has no general rules about the formatting of articles upon initial submission. There are, however, rules governing the formatting of the final submission. See Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for details.

NOTE: Where available, DOIs (digital object identifiers) for the references must be provided and hotlinked in the Word document. As a member of CrossRef, our publisher, New Prairie Press, is required to include DOIs. Use the free DOI lookup on CrossRef's website to check your citations.

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In humanities footnotes and in the bibliography that is part of the social sciences style the general order is:

for books or complete web item:

• author (surname and first name or initials reversed in a bibliography, but not a footnote)
• title of work in italic
• editor, in the form ‘ed. by Firstname Surname’
• series and number of volume in the series, in roman numerals
• edition in the form ‘2nd edn’
• number of volumes in the form ‘4 vols’
• details of publication in the form ‘(place: publisher, date of publication)’.
• In a footnote reference, volume and page are shown in the form ‘Vol. III, p. 125’.

for articles:

• author (surname and first name or initials, reversed in a bibliography but not a footnote)
• title of article within single quotation marks, any quotation within the title within double quotes
• periodical title in italic + comma
• volume number in roman
• year of publication (within parentheses) + comma
• page span of the article in the form ‘pp. 129–37’.
• In a footnote a specific page within an article is shown in this form: ‘pp. 129–37 (p. 133)’.
• Where an online reference is given we put the URL within angle brackets: .

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Here are a couple of examples of citations from the an issue of TBS that illustrate the way we write a footnote in the humanities style:

H. E. Salter (ed.), The Oxford Deeds of Balliol College, Oxford Historical Society, 64 (Oxford: Horace Hart, 1913), plate facing p. 364, Fig. 1.
Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, new edition edited by F.M. Powicke and A.B. Emden, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936, reprinted 1997), Vol. III, pp. 385–93.
A. Kerr, ‘Layer upon Layer: The Evolution of Cassock, Gown, Habit and Hood as Academic Dress’, TBS, 5 (2005), pp. 42–58 (pp. 45, 53)
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, s.v. ‘George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie’ (by Peter Burroughs), Vol. VII, p. 723.

In the social sciences style, the bibliography or list of references at the end would include full citations such as those listed above (except with the author’s surname first and Christian name or initial second). The footnoted citation is, however, shortened so that it includes only the most relevant details: author’s surname, title (often abbreviated), year, page number(s).

Salter (ed.), Deeds of Balliol, 1913, plate facing p. 364, Fig. 1.
Rashdall, Vol. III, p. 388.
Kerr, A., ‘Layer upon Layer’, 2005, pp. 45, 53.

In the third example, the author’s first initial is included to differentiate him from a different author with the same surname.

Manuscripts and other unpublished material in archives have a variety of local reference styles. In citing them the basic principle is to work from the general to the particular: place (unless this is obvious or will be known to all readers); institution, department or library or archive; collection within that; specific shelf mark or identifying details, narrowing down if need be through boxes to folders to files to numbered folios. Examples:

Columbia University in the City of New York, University Archives, Central Files, Box 1, Folder 13: Commencement 1789.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, G. A. Oxon. a.72.

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As with published work, a much shorter form can be used in subsequent references.

Recent issues of Transactions will provide plenty of examples of the conventions followed.

Where available, DOIs (digital object identifiers) for the references must be provided and hotlinked in the Word document. As a member of CrossRef, our publisher, New Prairie Press, is required to include DOIs. Use the free DOI lookup on CrossRef's website to check your citations.

Type styles and format

If you feel the urge to format your article, resist it. You will save the editor the time he would spend fixing coding errors that occur between Word (the preferred editing software) and InDesign (the program used to paginate TBS).

Please follow these basic guidelines that will ensure your typographic details appear in your final proofs.

• Use the same font throughout, ignoring the sans serif you see occasionally in the journal. All the coding is changed after your text leaves Word and arrives in InDesign. Any standard font will do, such as Times. If you want to mimic the look of the journal’s body copy, you may select Georgia, 10 points, 1.15 space, justified and hyphenated.
• Do use italics where appropriate.
• For chapter heads use bold roman (in whatever font you’re already using). For subheads use italics (not bold).
• Artwork should be placed on a separate document because in Word, images and text fight each other in the coding that goes on behind the scenes.
  • In the article file, place your caption near the text where you would like the image to appear (but bear in mind that the final placement is often determined by design, and colour images appear where convenient in four-colour printing).
    
  • In the image file, place the same caption adjacent to the image, with one image per page. (After the image and caption, select Insert-->Break-->Page Break.)

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Punctuation

Abbreviations follow current British fashion. If the abbreviation ends in the letter with which the full word ends, no full point (a period, to American ears); if it does not end with the letter with which the full word ends, put a full point. Although Latin abbreviations should be kept to a minimum (author’s name or short title preferable to ‘loc. cit.’, ‘op. cit.’, ‘ibid.’), common ones should be set in roman and not italic: ‘etc.’, ‘e.g.’, ‘cf.’

Stops are omitted in abbreviations like ‘UK’, ‘USA’, ‘CNAA’, and in degrees: ‘BA’, ‘DCL’, ‘DPhil’, ‘LLD’.

Quotation marks are a headache. We follow the complicated British convention of putting a closing quotation mark outside punctuation such as full point, comma, colon, semicolon only if the quoted text would be a complete sentence if standing alone. Or if a question mark or exclamation mark is part of the quotation. This is different from the simple American rule of always putting the quotation mark outside the other punctuation. A short phrase or other quoted text, however long, usually has the quotation mark inside the other punctuation. Examples:

A little over a fortnight later, on 14 February, Linfoot further remarked that he had asked Austin ‘to start thinking—on traditional lines’. Quotation mark inside the stop
He further remarked ‘Does not 54 years’ study of this subject command a value and respect? You can lose NIL, you might gain, if merit counts there [is] no fear.’ Quotation mark outside the stop

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Spelling

When in doubt follow the guidance of a standard dictionary like the Concise Oxford (which is the British version, of course, not one of Oxford’s American versions). Various terms that come up frequently in academic dress discussions are listed at the end of this document.

We let authors chose either ‘academic dress’ or ‘academical dress’, but of course in quotations and titles of books and articles the original form must be retained. Whichever term you choose, use it consistently.

Numbers are spelt out in letters up to a hundred, except in a statistical context, in measurements, etc. For dates use the style ‘30 August 2011’ (no ‘th’ or commas); for centuries use the style ‘nineteenth century’ (spelt out), with a hyphen when used attributively: ‘in the nineteenth century’, but ‘a nineteenth-century gown’.

The old principle of using a hyphen in groups of words used attributively (called a compound adjective in the US) is worth maintaining. So ‘a doctor in full dress’ but ‘the Doctor of Medicine was wearing full-dress robes’.

Spelling notes for Americans; or, British is more than iambic pentameter

Those of us, the Transactions editor included, who have made it this far thinking that the Queen’s English means adding a ‘u’ to color and flipping the last letters of center are surprised by the much greater range of differences in spelling. Definitions sometimes change, too, as well as the occasional rule of punctuation.

Apart from a good dictionary, no single list can account for every variation. We are happy to help in this area. The following list is part of a growing set of notes to help those for whom British English not their native tongue.

From the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2011):

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Capital letters

As a general principle, when in doubt whether to use a capital initial, don’t.

It may be controversial but we tend to the practice of historian and journalists of giving officers of institutions, etc., a lowercase initial (unless the title precedes a name). Thus, ‘the vice-chancellor visited the dean this morning’. But we use ‘Vice-Chancellor Marmaduke Snodgrass’, giving the office as a title before the name.

However, we do follow the convention—and this may be inconsistency—of giving an initial capital to words that are an elliptical form of the full name of an institution: ‘There are now two universities in Oxford. The University of Oxford has a very long history ... . The University [for University of Oxford] is the oldest in the UK.’ These sometimes subtle approaches are applied consistently to the extent that the editors recall their own rules.

Degrees need careful handling. Note the contrast:

Generally, bachelors and masters wear black gowns; however, Bachelors of Music and Masters of Music wear blue gowns.

We assume plural people wear plural garments while a singular person wears a singular garment: ‘a bachelor’s hood’; ‘a range of bachelors’ hoods’; ‘doctor’s full-dress robe’; ‘the master’s gown’; ‘masters’ gowns’ However, common sense sometimes suggests otherwise. If it’s established that an institution has doctorates in umpteen disciplines but they all wear the same robe (like the old Victoria) you can put ‘the doctors’ gown’, and so on.

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Foreign words and languages

While we set in italics words and phrases from other languages that need an explanation or translation, some foreign words are part of common English usage and require no translation. These are set in roman. For example, e.g. is set in roman, as are terms like vice versa, zeitgeist and tête-a-tête. If the word or phrase isn’t part of common speech, it probably needs to be italicized (and translated). An exception is a quotation long enough to stand in offset type. See foreign words in style guide, below.

When a using a term from a language that does not use the roman alphabet (with the exception of Greek), follow this style: English spelling in italics, ([term in native type], ‘English translation’), and then use the italicized English spelling thereafter. For example:

It was worn with a putout (幞頭, ‘black cap’) from 618 to 907 (during the Tang Dynasty). The putout can be seen …

Another approach, when the foreign term is less specific and more of a concept, is to explain it first and then use the English spelling followed by the foreign language:

The outfit of academics and officials at the time consisted of a long, red, round-collared robe with long sleeves, called a panling lanshan (盤領襴衫).

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Style Guide
2016

abbreviations
In British usage, stops are omitted when an abbreviation ends in the word’s terminal letter. Thus Rt Hon., Rev’d Dr, Prof. Shaw, UK, USA, CNAA, and in degrees, q.v.

academicals
Either academic dress or academicals is acceptable; remain consistent within the article.

AD
No stops in the abbreviation for academic dress.

ampersand
For consistency’s sake, use the ampersand in business names unless some overriding exception can be made. Ede & Ravenscroft. Retain ‘and’ for a pair of authors: Smith and Sheard.

appendices
Ordered by upper-case letters.

bibliography vs references
If full references are given in the footnotes, the list of works at the end (if there is one) would be ‘Bibliography’. If the footnotes point the reader to the list at the end for full publication details, the list would be either ‘Works cited’ or ‘References’.

Burgon Society Annual
Cited thus: Burgon Society Annual 2004, pp. … No volume number; year in italic.

calendars
University calendars (called ‘catalogues’ in the US) are printed in italics, with sections, chapters and the like in roman with single quotes: University of Reading, Calendar 2010/11, ‘G5 / Regulations for Academic and Official Costume’.

circa
In text, abbreviate (with stop) and italicize: c. 1700.

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cf.
Set in roman.

crow’s feet
Singular possessive.

degrees
No stops. BA, DCL, DPhil, LLD, etc.

discoloration
No ‘u’.

DMuses
Our form of the plural of DMus, approved by Council, 2014.

e.g.
Set in roman.

envisioned
An American term, acceptable in articles about the US. In other articles, visualized is preferred.

etc.
Set in roman.

folio, folios
Abbreviated fol. in the singular (with a full point) and fols in the plural (with no full point).

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foreign words
Foreign and Latin or Greek words normally go in italic, but there’s an argument for printing blocks of text in a foreign language in roman. The other thing to put in italic is words or phrases cited for glossing, translation or commentary, any translation being given within single quotation marks in current British usage.

Groves’ Key
No ‘s’ after the apostrophe and italicize ‘Key’. On second reference Key alone is acceptable for the book by Nicholas Groves, Key to the Identification of Academic Hoods of the British Isles (London: Burgon Society, 2002; 3rd edn: 2008).

Pears Cyclopaedia
Italicized, no apostrophe. Pears Cyclopaedia, ed. by L. Mary Barker (Bungay: Richard Clay, 1968-69).

Hon.
Unless at the beginning of a sentence, do not capitalise ‘the’ before this honorific: The chancellor, the Rt Hon. Barroness Bottomley, spoke briefly.

honorary
No ‘u’.

ibid.
Italicize when needed; the author’s name and/or a short title are generally preferred.

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loc. cit.
Italicize; use when needed. The author’s name and/or a short title are generally preferred.

licence, license
A licence (n) has two c’s. To license (v) a thing or person has an s.

MB, CH
No comma after the CH (Surgery): After earning his MB, CH he moved to Canterbury. The comma after MB serves as an ‘and’ in this usage.

Middle Ages
Upper-case.

medieval
Use the Oxford spelling (neither mediaeval nor mediæval).

modelled
Double l.

mortar-board
‘Square cap’ or ‘trencher’ is preferred, but in a US context mortar-board is acceptable.

op. cit.
Italicize; use when needed. The author’s name and/or a short title are generally preferred.

oxford cap
The soft cap for women is rendered lower-case.

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professor
Do not abbreviate on first reference, i.e. with full name (given and surname).

quotation mark and punctuation
The punctuation mark (full-stop or comma, e.g.) typically goes outside the quotation mark when the quotation does not include it, such as in a partial quotation. However, when linking text is used within quoted text, the comma before the link goes inside the quotation mark:
‘There was,’ the minutes reported, ‘an irregularity about it’.

Reverend
Abbreviated Revd, without a stop or apostrophe (before the ‘d’) and with ‘the’, and always with Christian name or initial (ie the Revd James Smith but never the Revd Smith). Avoid on second reference, using only the surname or another appropriate honorific (Dr, Prof, etc.).

Revised (by)
In a reference, use ‘rev. by [Name]’ as in:
Chichester, H. M., rev. by J. S. G. Blair, ‘McGrigor, Sir James, first baronet (1771–1858)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004).

Right
As an honorific, abbreviated Rt without a full stop.

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serial comma
The MHRA Style Guide (2002) says: ‘In enumeration of three or more items, the words “and” and “or” should be preceded by a comma to avoid the possibility of ambiguity’.

sic
When needed in quoted material, set it off with square brackets: [sic]. Avoid using it for simple mistakes and grammatical errors.

state, State
References to a US geographical political unit by its term and name are capitalized: the State of New Jersey. Referring to a state without using the name use lower-case: no university in the state grants a DMus.

sub fusc
Roman.

robemaker, robemakers
One word.

taught doctorate (etc.)
Use professional doctorate (etc.) instead. ‘Taught’ is considered rude.

TBS
In footnotes, the title of the journal is shortened to its monogram and is set in italics. The comma after it is set in roman, thus: ‘Wearing Mummie’s Clothes’, TBS, 7 (2007). Spelled out in lists of references. The Burgon Society Annual is always spelled out, q.v.

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the Burgon Society
When the phrase does not appear at the beginning of the sentence, ‘the’ is set lower-case.

UK, USA
No full stops in these abbreviations or in others.

Universities
When referring to two (or more) universities at the same time, capitalise it: Kent and Greenwich Universities.

use
Often preferred over multisyllabic usage (n, the action of using something or the fact of being used; habitual or customary practice) or utilize (v, make practical and effective use of). [Definitions from Concise Oxford Eng Dict, 2011]

vice-president
Hyphenated.

visualized
Preferred in most cases over envisioned, q.v.

years, academic
When referring to an academic year that spans two consecutive years, separate the years with a virigule instead of an en dash: 1843/44.

zip
British usage prefers zip (n.) over zipper, the American term.

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