Notes for book authors

The Society aims to publish books that are written in plain and lucid language. Technical terms may be used where appropriate, but should not be allowed to obscure meaning for a wider readership. The following notes provide guidance on the minimum standards that must be observed by authors. Further information on more detailed aspects of house style may be obtained from the Society’s Publications Manager. Authors with specific worries should contact the Publications Manager well before they intend to submit material for publication.

Authors of works that depend on extensive data, or which have supplementary material that could be made more generally available, might consider using the Society’s Web site. Please contact the Publications Manager if you are interested in this medium of publication.

Submission of material to the Society

The process of refereeing, acceptance and publication:

• Author sends proposal or draft text (two copies, with photocopies of illustrations) to the Society. No disk or original illustrations to be submitted at this stage.

• Work is refereed and goes to the Society’s Publications Committee for consideration.

• Author receives notice of acceptance together with details of any revisions suggested by the referee and Publications Committee and/or Publications Manager.

• Author assigns copyright of the work to the Society at the point of acceptance.

• Author submits the revised work (two copies plus originals of the illustrations).

• Author responds to copy-editing queries.

• Text is sent to the typesetter.

• Author receives page-proofs, checks and returns them. The Society normally commissions indexes from professional indexers but welcomes authors’ guidance on the form that an index should take. Corrections to proofs should be minimal and changes to the design and layout are to be avoided at all costs. Excessive amendments will be charged to the author.

• Corrections are returned to the typesetter, revised proofs checked if necessary and the book is printed.

Submission of works accepted for publication

Two hard copies of the text should be submitted, accompanied by a disk (see below). The typescript should be double-spaced and printed on one side only of A4 paper with generous margins. Please keep one copy of the typescript, exactly as it has been submitted to the Society.

The following order of contents should be observed: Prelims (to include forewords, acknowledgements, etc), main text, appendices (where necessary), endnotes, abbreviations (where necessary), bibliography.

Footnotes are not employed by the Society. Endnotes are to be used (with note indicators in the text) for abbreviated references and any other matter. Full references should be given in a separate bibliography (see below).

A word-count of the text (including endnotes) should be included with the typescript.

Headings and subheadings should be delineated in a logical hierarchy. No more than three (in exceptional circumstances, four) levels of heading should be used, and headings should be flagged in the margin as A, B, C, D, etc.

No extra line spaces should appear between paragraphs. Use the single tab key for new paragraphs (except under headings, where the first paragraph is full out).

Do not incorporate tables or figures in the text.

Use only one space after punctuation marks.

Justify only the left-hand margin.

A complete set of photocopies of the illustrations should be included with the initial submission. Original artwork and good-quality photographic prints should be sent with the final text. Authors are responsible for obtaining permissions and clearing reproduction fees, and copies of letters giving permission to reproduce copyright material should accompany the text.

Copyright of all works published under its imprint is retained by the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Submission of text on disk

Articles should be submitted on high-density, 3.5-inch disks, which should be clearly marked with the author’s name, the title of the work and the word-processing software used. Authors are strongly encouraged to submit copy in RTF (Rich Text Format) form.

Most PC word-processing packages can be handled by the Society. If you are using Mac disks, make sure the file is saved for PC; please do not submit Mac disks without doing this.

Do not compress files.

Do not use sophisticated features for formatting and styling a document.

Do not use automatic footnote/endnote or hyphenation facilities, or include design techniques such as rules, boxes or tints. Notes should be typed as normal text and held in a separate file.

You may safely use typographic features such as bold and italic. Underlined text will normally be replaced with italic. Please mark in the margin if you wish the underline to be printed in the final text.

Distinguish between the letter ‘O’ and the number zero ‘0’ and the number ‘1’ and the lower-case letter ‘l’.

Provide a list of any special fonts or characters you have used, and highlight their occurrence on the hard copy.

Turn off automatic page numbering and headers and footers, and number pages by hand.

Illustrations can be presented on disk; specify the software used and always supply a hard copy.

House Style

Spelling

Spelling conventions used by the Society follow Hart (1983) and OUP (1990).

Use -ize/-ization rather than -ise/-isation (eg, civilize, organize) but note that some words always take an ‘s’ (eg, advertise, chastise, analyse, paralyse, supervise).

Do not use apostrophes in dates or plural abbreviations: eg, 1960s, UFOs.

Use hyphens adjectivally and to prevent ambiguity: eg, full-scale work and north-west corner (but the north west).

Note: artefact not artifact; medieval not mediaeval.

Punctuation

Use spaces between initials in names, not full stops: eg, D G Biggs.

Note indicators should fall outside any punctuation: eg, gold rings,1 not gold rings1.

Use single quotation marks, and double quotation marks for quotations within quotations.

Quotations over 50 words long, or comprising more than two sentences, should be indented without quotation marks.

No full point at end of headings.

In headings, use initial capital for first word and proper nouns; all other text should be in lower case. Indicate the hierarchy of headings in the margin, using the letters A, B, C, D, etc.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be explained in full when they are first used, with the appropriate abbreviation cited in brackets: for example, ‘Material first published in the Victoria County History (VCH) has since been …’

The following do not take a full point: St (saint), Dr, Mr, Mrs, Revd (not Rev), Ltd, measurement abbreviations (eg, mm, km, etc). There is no space between the number and the measurement abbreviation: eg, 5km.

Counties should be abbreviated only in endnotes, not in the main text.

In the text, ‘per cent’ should be in full. The abbreviation ‘%’ may be used in endnotes and tables.

Placenames

Placenames should follow the usage of the latest edition (9th) of The Times Atlas of the World Comprehensive Edition.

Numbers

Always use the minimum form: ie, the shortest way you could speak the figures (13–14, 23–4, 115–16, 200–1).

Spell out numbers below 100 in continuous text unless statistical or scientific: eg, twenty sites but 45 kilometres, 50 per cent.

Spelled-out numbers are hyphenated (eg, sixty-two) but use numerals for compound adjectives (eg, 62-year-old man).

Always spell out a number if it forms the first word in a sentence (or rearrange the sentence).

Use commas in numbers with four or more digits: eg, 2,987.

Include a zero before decimal numbers of less than one: 0.5, not .5.

References

All references should be given as endnotes in the Harvard style, punctuated and spaced thus: Jones 1991, 26–7.

If there is more than one work published by an author in the same year, add a, b, etc. (Smith 1990a).

Specific page references should be given in the note but the full page-reference should appear in the bibliography (see below).

f and ff should not be used.

Joint authors may appear in the notes as et al, but must appear in full in the bibliography.

Internal cross-references (eg, see p 00) should be avoided. Instead, refer the reader to the section-heading or use the phrases ‘above’ and ‘below’ wherever possible.

No books or papers under consideration should be included in the bibliography – work of this nature should be cited as ‘pers comm’.

Dates

Century numbers are always spelled out: eg, fourteenth century (hyphenated if used adjectivally).

BC (and BCE) follows and AD (and ACE and AH) precedes a date (except where descriptive: eg, ‘in the first century AD’).

Use BCE (before Christian (or Common) era) and ACE (after Christian (or Common) era) to denote non-Christian usage.

Use AH for the Muslim era (ie, after the hegira, Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina, which took place on 16 July AD 622).

Dates should take the form 22 July 1963.

Spell out months in full.

Note use of italic and space in c 1346.

Money

Sums of money should be written as follows:

• £4,000 (for amounts in whole pounds).

• 75p, not £0.75 (for amounts expressed in decimal pence).

• £6.65, not £6.65p (for mixed amounts of pounds and pence).

Always include two figures after the decimal point: £39.17 and £16.02.

Amounts expressed in pre-decimal currency should appear as £3 6s 9d. In quotations only, this may be given as ‘66/9d’.

Measurements

Units of measure have neither a full stop nor a final ‘s’.

Always use figures with measurements, without a space: eg, 25mm.

Use mm, not cm: eg, 55mm, not 5.5cm

Tables

Tables should be saved in a separate file and a printout supplied.

Avoid vertical lines.

Put a dash or zero in blank cells.

Specify what table software has been used.

Mark in the margin of the text where tables are to be included.

Bibliography

All references should appear in alphabetical order by surname in the following forms.

Use lower case for article titles but upper and lower case for books, periodicals and journals.

Book and journal titles should be in italics; article titles should be in single quotes.

If you cite two or more articles from the same book/monograph, the book should appear as a separate entry and cross-references made to it.

Journal titles should be abbreviated according to the principles laid down in British Standard (1970) 4148. The form of bibliographical abbreviations to be used is based on the CBA’s standard list published in Signposts for Archaeological Publication (see below).

Part numbers of journals are not necessary if the pagination is continuous. Otherwise, give as ‘pt 1’.

If repeated references are given to unpublished manuscript sources, these may be listed separately (quoting both the institution and the shelf-mark).

Examples of bibliographical references

Single-volume books: Brown, G B 1915. The Arts in England, London

Multi-volume books: Down, A 1981. Chichester Excavations, V, Chichester

Multi-edition book: Adams, J 1994. The History of Needlepoint, 2nd edn, Oxford

Article in a journal: Fletcher, J and Crook, J 1984. ‘The date of the Pilgrims’ Hall, Winchester’, Proc Hampshire Fld Club Archaeol Soc, 40, 130–3

Article in a book, or edited work: Stead, I M 1971. ‘Yorkshire before the Romans: some recent discoveries’, in Soldier and Civilian in Roman Yorkshire (ed R M Butler), 21–43, Leicester

Unpublished theses and dissertations: Mortimer, C 1990. ‘Some aspects of early medieval copper alloy technology, as illustrated by a study of the Anglian cruciform brooch.’ Unpublished DPhil thesis, Oxford

RCHME 1939. City of Oxford, Roy Comm Hist Monuments Engl Inventories, London

VCH 1924. The Victoria History of the County of Berkshire, IV, London

Illustrations

Please consult the Society’s Publications Manager for guidance on the type area of your book; the Society is in the process of defining a series of book formats, suitable for a range of publication types. Illustrations must fall within the limits specified, and allowance should be made for captions.

All illustrations, whether halftones or line drawings, should be numbered in one sequence, as Fig 1, 2, etc. In the text, they should be referred to in full as ‘Figure 1’.

Illustrations may be presented on disk. Please always supply a hard copy and specify what software has been used.

Mark the approximate position of illustrations in the margin of the text.

Folding plans and colour illustrations may be included only if absolutely necessary, and usually only if accompanied by a grant towards the cost of publication; please consult the Publications Manager in such cases.

Scales should be included as appropriate. Metric scales are required for line drawings and maps, etc.

A separate list of captions must be provided. Captions should start ‘Figure 1’.

Good-quality glossy prints should be provided for photographs.

Illustrations need not be titled, but should be identified by their figure number, written on the back.

Never write in pencil or biro on the back of photographs. It is recommended that only blue Chinagraph crayons should be used to mark illustrations.

Permissions and copyright

It is the responsibility of the author to clear permissions for prose extracts, poetry, diagrams, tables, photographs and other illustrations. All necessary permissions must be secured before submission of the final text.

Copyright in the UK extends over the life of the author and seventy years from the end of the year in which the author dies.

Different rules apply in other countries.

Copyright is to be cleared for prose as follows: any extract longer than 400 words; a series totalling more than 800 words; a series of which any one is more than 300 words; an extract or series of extracts comprising quarter of the work or more.

For poetry: an extract of a quarter of a complete poem; a series of extracts comprising a quarter or more of a complete poem.

Useful sources

Council for British Archaeology (CBA) 1991. Signposts for Archaeological Publication, 3rd edn, London. This includes the CBA ‘list of standard abbreviations’ as Appendix A. It can be obtained from: Council for British Archaeology, Bowes Morrell House, 111 Walmgate, York YO1 2UA; telephone 01904 671417.

Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) 1996. MHRA Style Book: notes for authors, editors and writers of theses, 5th edn, London. This is available from W S Maney and Son Ltd, Hudson Road, Leeds LS9 7DL.

Hart, H 1983. Hart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, 39th edn, Oxford

Oxford University Press (OUP) 1990. Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, Oxford