AD LITTERAM STYLE SHEET
Abbreviations:
- Please make sure that any abbreviations will be clearly understood by a book’s intended readers. Make a separate list of abbreviations.
- Write abbreviations out in full when they form the first word in a sentence (or rearrange the sentence to avoid this problem).
- As a general rule, leave out full stops in abbreviations made up of capitals (BBC, OUP).
And
- ‘and’ (not &).
Appendices:
- These may follow either individual chapters or the end of the main text.
Chapter:
- In cross-references in the text, the correct style is:
‘In the next chapter…’(lower case)
‘In Chapter 5…’ (capital) - In references to chapters in other books, it is usual to make ‘chapter’ lower-case, in order to make a distinction from the above (e.g. ‘In chapter 3 of her Shakespeare, Germaine Greer argues…’).
- The abbreviation for ‘chapter’ (to be employed in notes and bibliography—not in running text) is ‘ch.’.
Comma:
- The serial, or ‘Oxford’ comma is inserted before ‘and’ or ‘or’ in lists of three or more items:
‘red, white, and blue’.
Compass points:
- When compass points are used to describe recognized geographical areas, they should be capitalized, e.g. ‘the Far East’, ‘unemployment in the North-East’. When the area described is not commonly recognized as a unit, use lower-case (‘western France’), and use lower-case too for simple directions (‘Hannibal attacked from the north’).
Copyright:
- It is normally up to the author to obtain permission to reproduce copyright material.
- Authors must ask for permission to reproduce individual passages longer than about 400 words, or a series of passages from the same work totaling more than 800 words. In the case of poetry, they must ask permission to reproduce a quarter or more of a complete poem (which could be a very few lines in the case of a short poem).
- Unpublished as well as published material (letters, diaries, etc.) may be protected under copyright.
- An author’s work is now protected for 70 years after the date of his death, not 50 years as previously.
Cross-references:
- If these are in the form ‘p.00’, the author will have to complete them at proof stage.
Dates:
- Our preferred style is ‘6 August 1949’.
- 1992-3 (not 1992-93)
- Note: ‘the 1960s’, not ‘the 1960’s’.
- In running text, spell out (e.g.) ‘nineteenth century’ (but ‘19th cent.’ or ‘19th c.’ are acceptable in notes).
- ‘AD’ and ‘BC’ should be marked for small capitals (no full point); ‘AD’ comes before the year, ‘BC’ comes after it.
Diacritics:
- Please mark diacritics (Urdu or Sanskrit) directly on the hardcopy of the MS being sent to us, preferably in red or blue pen. Our typesetter will then incorporate them into the text.
- Please ensure that there are no diacritics in the floppy you are enclosing with the MS, otherwise the words with diacritic marks tend to become gibberish in Word.
e.g.
- Lower-case (even if beginning a sentence), full points.
- Usually expanded to ‘for example’ in running text.
Endnotes:
- These should appear at the end of each chapter . They are easier to typeset and are preferred over footnotes if they contain displayed matter.
Epigraphs :
- Sources to epigraphs should be set on the line below, ranged right with the epigraph text (if verse, with the longest line).
- It is acceptable for the source to an epigraph to be vague (‘Charles Dickens’) or even non-existent.
et al.
Italic, full point.
etc.
Roman, full point
Figures:
- Figure copy needs to be separated from the typescript.
- Author should supply all the figures that are mentioned in the text, and they should be numbered correctly (either all-through), or by chapter, e.g. ‘Fig. 1.1, Fig 1.2…’). No two figures should have the same number.
- Prepare a separate list of captions to the figures.
- Indicate approx. where they are to be placed with an arrow in the margin and with the instruction: ‘Fig. 000 near here.’
Footnotes:
- Authors are asked to supply these on separate pages.
- It is vital to check the sequence of footnotes. See also note cues.
Foreign/ Indian words: to italicize or not?
- Don’t italicize Indian words that are common—e.g. devi, sati, etc. etc. The italicized Indian word, will be italicized only in the first instance, not after that.
- Also, while italicizing, please be careful not to italicize well-known names of epics, religious books such as Bible, Quran, Bhagavadgita, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Guru Granth Sahib, Torah, Talmud, Old and New Testaments, Zend Avesta, and so on.
For compendia of such kinds, please follow this rule: Puranas will not be italicized, but the name of a particular Purana, i.e., the Vishnupurana will be italicized.
Full points
- Delete full points from end of Mr, Mrs, Dr, St, and from abbreviations made up of capitals (e.g. BBC).
Glossary
- A glossary is usually placed at the end of the text (after any appendices), but its position can be varied according to the author’s preference.
Ibid.
- Ibid., or ibid., (roman, followed by stop and comma).
i.e
- Lower case (even if beginning a sentence), full points.
- Usually expanded to ‘that is’ in running text.
Illustrations
- What sort of illustrations will there be (e.g. half-tones on text paper, plates)? We should usually receive either the originals, or transparencies (TPs) of originals, or then have all illustrations scanned using high resolution drum scanning (600 dpi) and burned on a CD.
- Check that each illustration has the right caption (q.v.)
Journal titles
- Mark for italic
- Journal titles in notes often appear in abbreviated form. The abbreviation should be consistently used, and see whether it should be explained in a list of abbreviations. list of abbreviations
- It is usually set in two facing columns, abbreviation on the left, expansion on the right.
list of contributors
- This will appear in multi-author books (such as Festschriften). It should appear among the preliminary pages (q.v.) and be included in the list of contents.
- The list will be usually be in alphabetical order.
list of illustrations
- Appears in the preliminary pages (q.v.).
- The list of illustrations may contain such details as brief credits for the material (‘Photo: J.Scott’), dimensions of a picture (which should be in metric units), or the present repository (‘Victoria and Albert Museum’). Check with your editor, on how much is required.
Newspapers, names of
- The definite article should be in roman, lower-case: the Guardian, the Observer. Our two exceptions are The Times and The Economist.
Note cues
- Notes are usually numbered per chapter.
- Note cues are usually small superior arabic numerals, and should be marked to appear outside any punctuation (except, sometimes, parentheses, brackets, and dashes).
- It is vital to check that note cues are consecutive and that each has a corresponding note in the notes section. Omissions and misnumbering are very common, and hard to put right at proof stage.
Numerals
- Use the smallest possible number of figures in ranges of numbers: 78-9, 101-2; but 118-19 not 118-9 (i.e. the group 10-19 in each hundred: e.g.15-17 and 115-17 (for numbers in the teens)). For twenties and beyond, 21-3 (not 21-23) and 131-9 (not 131-39)Roman numerals do not contract: vi-viii not vi-iii.
- Similarly for dates: 1824-36, 145-8, but 1511-16.
- Numbers below 100 are usually spelled out, those above are usually given as figures. However:
- Numbers attached to units of measurement should be given as figures: 2,700 kilograms, 15 per cent. However:
- Where there is a degree of inexactitude, or in a literary context (widely understood), words may be more appropriate than figures: ‘Few of us were alive one hundred years ago.’
- In literary texts, commas are usually inserted in thousands (6,000, 23,000).
Omission marks
- Use three spaced points…to mark omissions in the text.
- If the sentence before the ellipsis ends with a full stop, this may be set, closed up to the text:
‘She was in a bad mood when she visited the school….’
op.cit.
- It is generally not good practice to use ‘op.cit.’
Per cent
- We prefer to spell out ‘per cent’ in the text itself (two words), but the symbol % is appropriate in figures, tables, notes, and may also be used in the text itself if it occurs very often (e.g. in a book about statistics). Your editor will advise.
Plates
- Should be numbered sequentially. (Sometimes, particularly in art books, capital roman numerals are used.)
Quotations
- We set single quotation marks, reserving double quotation marks for quotes inside quotes.
- Long quotations (more than about 60 words) are generally ‘displayed’, i.e. set as a separate block, in a smaller type-size.
- The original spelling and punctuation in quotations must be preserved even if it conflicts with practice elsewhere in the typescript. However, query anything that looks odd (certainly, do not assume that an author has copied a quotation correctly).
Spellings
- Spellings: Use the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Remember to use ‘z’ instead of ‘s’ in nouns you are creating from verbs, e.g. ‘standardize’, ‘contextualize’. Except for ‘analyse’, not ‘analyze’, and ‘paralyse’. Always use British versions of spellings, eg ‘labour’, not ‘labor’, but please do not change spellings in names of books, places, or in material within quotes.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
- Bibliographical references should be in a consistent style. For detailed instructions we refer to either of the following 3 books: The Chicago Manual of Style, Hart’s Rules, or Butcher’s Copy-editing. Please cross-check references to see that each reference makes sense and matches the relevant bit in the main text.
- For textual and footnote references, provide author, year and page number. For example,
- Morris et al. (1994), p.134
- For a reference immediately following, use ibid. - As far as styling of references is concerned, please note that an authored monograph can have embedded citations (the Harvard style) in text and endnotes/footnotes and a bibliography.
Books
- Single Author
Chaudhuri, Amit, Afternoon Raag, London: Heinemann, 1993.
Surname, First name, Title of Book, Place of Publication: Publisher, (date). - Multiple Authors
Basu, Tapan, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar, and Sambuddha Sen, Khaki Shorts Saffron Flags (Tracts for the Times/1), Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1993.
Surname of first Author, First name of first Author and First name of second Author, Surname of second Author etc., Title of Book, Place of Publication: Publisher, (date).
Edited Volume
- Single author
George, K.M. (ed.), Modern Indian Literature: An Anthology, Plays and Prose, Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1994. - Multiple authors
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds), The Empire Writes Back [1989], London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
Translated Volume
- Kemal, Yasher (trans. from Turkish by Thilda Kemal), The Wind form the Plain [1960], London: Harvill Press, 1989.
Paper in Edited Volume
- Single Author and Single Editor
Masselos, J.C., ‘The Khojas of Bombay: The Defining of Formal Membership Criteria During the Nineteenth Century’, in Caste and Social Stratification among the Muslims, Imtiaz Ahmad (ed.), Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1973.
Surname, First name of Author, ‘Title of Paper’, in Title of Book, First name of Editor Surname of Editor (ed.), Place of Publication: Publisher, (date). - Single Authors and Multiple Editors
Salomon, C.,‘The cosmogonic riddles of Lalan Faqir’, in Gender, Genre and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions, A. Appadurai, F. Korom, and M. Mills (eds), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
Surname of Author, First name of Author, ‘Title of Paper’, in Title of Book, First name of first Editor Surname of first Editor and First name of second Editor Surname of second Editor (eds), Place of Publication: Publisher, (date).
Paper in Journal
- Single Author
Bouiller, V., ‘The Nepalese State and Gorakhnathi Yogis: The Case of the Former Kingdoms of Dang Valley, 18th-19th Centuries’, Contribution to Nepalese Studies, 20 (1), 1993,pp. 29-52.
Surname, first name, ‘Title of Paper’, Name of Journal, Volume number (Issue number), (date), pp. 000-0. - Multiple Authors
Murty, M. N. and R. Ray, ‘A Computational Procedure for Calculating Optimal Commodity Taxes with Illustrative Evidence from Indian Budget Data’, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 91(4), 1989, pp.655-70.
Surname of first Author, First name of first Author and First name of second Author Surname of second Author, ‘Title of Paper’, Name of Journal, Volume number (Issue number), (date), pp. 000-0.
Paper in Edited Journal
- Single author
Gaborieau, Marc, ‘Life-Cycle Ceremonies among Converted Muslims in Nepal and Northern India’, in Islam in Asia, Yohanan Friedmann (ed.), vol. I, South Asia, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1984.
Unpublished Papers/Mimeographs/Discussion Papers/Working Papers
- Chander, P. and L. Wide, ‘Corruption and Tax Compliance’, mimeo, New Delhi: Indian Statistical Institute, 1989.
Surname of first Author, First name of first Author and First name of second Author Surname of second Author (1991), ‘Title of Paper’, mimeo, Place: Organization, (date).