The Encyclopedia of the Early Republic and Antebellum America

Style Guidelines

You have been commissioned to write original material for a new encyclopedia by Sharpe Reference. Students and general readers use encyclopedias to find quick answers to reference questions, for background reading on a topic of interest, or as a starting point for research. As a general matter, people do not read encyclopedias from cover to cover for entertainment, editorial opinion, or academic disputation. Encyclopedias are organized, objective compendia of essential information, "settled" knowledge, and current perspectives by experts in the field. Please observe the following guidelines as you prepare your submission.

Basic Guidelines and Instructions

Detailed Guidelines and Instructions
     • Audience
     • Informational Content
     • Objectivity and Balance
     • Organization and Structure
     • Further Reading
     • Format
     • Tables, Figures, Graphics
     • Submission
     • Style: General Information
     • Style: Alphabetization
     • Style: Spelling
     • Style: Dates and Times
     • Style: Numbers
     • Style: Punctuation
     • Style: Capitalization
     • Style: Italicization
     • Style: Hyphenation
     • Style: Internet Terms
     • Style: Miscellaneous
     • Style: Bibliographies
     • Style: Bibliographic Samples

Basic Guidelines

Here are the 10 most important things to keep in mind as you prepare your submissions:

1. The focus of this encyclopedia is the years between 1787 and 1861. While it is appropriate to make brief mention of events and developments outside that time span, when relevant, the bulk of your discussion should focus on events between 1787 and 1861.

2. Make your work accessible. Interesting quotes, statistics, clear organization, and connections to the broader context are good. Difficult words, historiographic debates, convoluted prose, and footnotes are not. This work is aimed at high school students, college undergraduates, and the general public.

3. Any entry longer than 1,000 words should be divided into sections with a title for each section. See the sample articles on California's Native Americans and James Buchanan for examples.

4. Each entry should be accompanied by a selection of further readings. The further readings should ideally be books or articles that are readable, available at most libraries, and addressed specifically to the subject of the article. Websites are discouraged.

5. Encyclopedias have a great deal of information, too much for the editorial staff to double-check it all. It is therefore the author's responsbility to make sure all their facts are correct.

6. Be objective and balanced. Avoid judgments, sexist language, political opinions, etc.

7. In most cases, M.E. Sharpe uses the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. Feel free to consult that work for any style issues not addressed by this webpage.

8. Be mindful of the assigned length. Try hard not to vary more than 10% from your assigned length (thus, a 1500-word article should check in at somewhere between 1350 and 1650 words). If you must go outside that boundary, contact the editor.

9. Try to meet your deadline. If you cannot, contact the editor as soon as possible to discuss an extension.

10. Contact the editor if you have any questions whatsoever.

Audience and Reading Level

The reference work to which you are contributing is aimed at students (high-school and college) and general readers, rather than a scholarly audience. Your writing therefore should be clear, organized, and accessible, so that an average reader unfamiliar with the subject can easily grasp the material you present. Your prose should be both engaging and informative, on a level comparable with an article for The New York Times or a news magazine. Avoid jargon, complex terminology, and esoteric allusions. Rule of thumb: write as if you were explaining the subject to a high-school student or college freshman. Remember, you are preparing an encyclopedia entry, not a journal article or scholarly monograph. Re-read your first draft and edit it rigorously before submission.

Wherever an uncommon term or technical phrase is introduced, include a succinct definition.

Where a person is referred to for the first time in an entry, use the full name and title or some other identification.

Where a specific historical event, place, book, theory, or other proper-noun subject is introduced, include a basic identification, location, date of publication, or definition.

Informational Content

Pack the article with information and substance so that it is as thorough as possible within word limits. Stay close to the assigned length-within 10% of your assigned length; if you have to go significantly over or under, contact the editor.) Make every word count.

Keep your writing fact-based. Do not focus on what other scholars have written. Emphasize who, what, when, where, and how.

Check your facts! Use multiple-and reliable-sources (beware of non-institutional Web sites). Double-check all dates, name and place spellings, and other factual details. An encyclopedia is too information-intensive for any one person to corroborate all facts in all entries. The accuracy of your article is ultimately up to you.

Maintain focus on the time, place, or subject matter in question. Avoid long digressions or excessive background on other periods and places.

Use quoted material sparingly and include no footnotes. If quotes are used at all, keep them short and confine them to ones by notable non-academics (such as politicians and writers and activists) or an occasional scholar of importance. Always introduce the quote with the name of the person and title of the work (with publication date) from which it derives- e.g., As John Hope Franklin wrote in From Slavery to Freedom (1997), "Despite the prohibitory state laws, the African slave trade ... continued to flourish during the [1790s]."

Objectivity and Balance

Bring an objective, unbiased point of view-in a straightforward declarative style-to your text. Avoid advocacy, editorializing, or special pleading in any form. An encyclopedia is not a vehicle for personal opinion, no matter how expert, or for taking sides in any debate, argument, or controversy. Where there is a fundamental disagreement over facts, evidence, or their interpretation, all sides should be presented in a fair and balanced manner.

Wherever appropriate, information about and the perspective of minority groups, women, non-mainstream religions, and dissenting voices should be included.

Entries on related topics should be complementary and mutually supportive, rather than repetitive or contradictory. Consult the complete entry list before writing your article to identify related topics and, if necessary, seek clarification from the editor on the division of subject matter.

Organization and Structure

Without being rigid or uniform, entries should follow a basic "pyramid" structure. The lead sentence should provide a succinct identification or definition of the subject at hand. The rest of the initial paragraph should summarize the essential information about the subject, with a statement of its importance to the particular period or field of study; assume that many readers will stop there. Succeeding paragraphs should follow a logical progression-chronological or otherwise. Do not end the article merely by reiterating information or observations, nor with critical judgments. Instead, provide an objective assessment of influence or reputation, or suggest future possibilities.

Longer articles should be broken up by subheads every 500-1000 words for topical organization, giving the reader a clear outline of the structure of the text. Subhead titles should be succinct, informative, parallel in construction, and consistent in style.

The contributor's name should appear at the end of the article, above any supplementary material (i.e. Further Reading), in italic type, flush left.

Further Reading

Entries of more than 500 words should include a bibliography or "further reading" list. Rather than merely identify sources the contributor used in researching the subject, the bibliography should cite books, articles, and other sources recommended for further reading by the target audience. As a general rule, include one citation for every 250-300 words. Sources listed in the bibliography should be:

Authoritative works directly on point with the subject of the entry (avoid newspapers and popular magazines)
Appropriate in topical coverage, interest-level, and writing style to the target audience (high school students and up)
In English (no foreign-language titles)
Recent and widely available works, or "standards" in the field
Published works, especially books (no academic dissertations)
Online sources are discouraged, but can be included if absolutely necessary. In that case, references must be to home pages (top-level URLs) of "evergreen" sites (institutions and online publications that are unlikely to move).

Format

All articles must be double-spaced and paginated with standard 1" margins. 12-point Times New Roman font is preferred.

Do not use hyphenation or justification.

Do not use automatic functions for numbering, outlining, or bullets. Please insert these items manually.

Use carriage returns only at the end of a paragraph, not the end of each line.

Do not use a line space between paragraphs.

Do not use footnotes or endnotes. Remember, this is a reference book, not a monograph.

Do not use in-text citations as you would in a scholarly essay. Instead, cite the person and work you are quoting as part of the "conversation" within the text.

Tables, Figures, Graphics

Feel free to include tables, charts, diagrams, and graphs with your article, if appropriate. Depending on the size of the item, each can count for one-third to one-half a page of manuscript. Please do not include more than one table per 1,000 words.

Create tables using the table utility in Microsoft Word or as an Excel spreadsheet. Do not construct tables by using tabs in a Word document. If you are not sure how to create a table, please contact the editor for help.

Submit each item in its own separate file. Include source information and indicate the program used to create it. Make sure that each table or chart printout is clearly identified.

Submission

Once you are satisfied with the quality of your entries, submit them via email to the editor. Be sure to keep backup copies of the entries, as well as all notes and source materials, until the book is published.

Style: General Information

The Sharpe Reference style is essentially that of The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition. Usage and spelling are essentially those of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition. If you find that the following instructions are unsuitable or inadequate for your entry, and that the Manual of Style and Collegiate Dictionary offer no solution, please contact the editor before you proceed.

Style: Alphabetization

Tables of contents and indexes in all Sharpe Reference publications are alphabetized according to the word-by-word system (see Chicago Manual, 18.56 and 18.58-18.59).

Style: Spelling

Geographical names should be given in standard English spellings when available.

Use American English usage and spelling, not British English: labor, not labour; defense, not defence; among, not amongst.

In Sharpe publications, the preferred transliteration system for Russian is the modified Library of Congress system (without diacritical marks or ligatures) (see Chicago Manual, 10.116, Table 10.3).

For the romanization of Chinese we prefer pinyin (Beijing, not Peking; Qing, not Ch'ing).

Avoid the use of contractions, except in dialogue.

When adding a suffix to a multisyllabic root word, it is not necessary to double the terminal consonant of the last syllable (even if it contains a short vowel) if the syllable is unstressed.
Examples: traveling, propelling; canceling, excelling; totaling, appalling; prohibiting, forbidding; offering, conferring; benefited, profited, refitted.

Style: Dates and Times

Keep dates standard and consistent.
    Examples:
       June 12, 1988, not 12 June, 1988, not June 12th, 1988 (unless in a title)
       January 1991, not January of 1991 or January, 1991
       October 1994, not Oct. 1994

Spell out centuries: seventeenth century, twenty-first century.

Delete apostrophe in decades: 1790s, not 1790's.

Do not abbreviate decades: 1830s, not 30s or '30s; 1850s and 1860s, not 1850s and 60s.

Keep seasons in lower case: spring 1797, not Spring 1797, not the Spring of 1797.

Date-range style: 1862-1865; 1797-1802 (en dashes, not hyphens); from 1864 to 1868, not from 1864-1868.

Style: Numbers

Do not begin a sentence with a numeral.

Use a comma in a number of four or more digits, unless a page number or year (1,000 and 26,552, but page 1000 and 1942).

Spell out ordinal numbers: (first, ninety-ninth, not 1st, 99th).
Exception: 37th Congress, 106th Congress

Spell out percent: 25 percent, not 25%.

Spell out and hyphenate fractions: one-eighth.

Large numbers: 1 million or 6 million, not 1,000,000 or six million; 100,000 not 100 thousand.

Use a zero to open decimal fractions (0.3).

Monetary values: $17 million, not 17 million dollars; �45, not 45 pounds sterling.

Time: 4:00 A.M. or 9:45 P.M. not four o'clock or nine forty-five.

Leave spaces before and after the colon in a ratio (1 : 1).

Elide page numbers (153-76).

Style: Punctuation

Use serial comma: I like coffee, tea, and beer; not I like coffee, tea and beer.

No periods in abbreviations or acronyms: USSC, not U.S.S.C.
Exception: U.S./C.S. (used as an adjective only), not US/CS.

Close spaces between initials: T.S. Eliot; W.E.B. Du Bois.

When using full dates, commas precede and follow the year; when using full place names, commas precede and follow the state.
Example: Before I visited Washington, D.C., on October 26, 1794, I visited Hartsdale, New York, and Burlington, Vermont.

Style: Capitalization

Minimize capitalization; as a rule of thumb, capitalize only singular proper nouns and true proper adjectives: Middle East, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, East European, South Dakota, but southern Mexico, eastern Pennsylvania.

In titles, lowercase conjunctions, articles, and prepositions (and, the, in) unless they contain more than four letters (Around) or are integral to a verb (Work Out).

Style: Italicization

Italicize the titles of books, periodicals, plays, operas, motion pictures, poetry collections or long poems, works of art (paintings, statues), and television and radio programs.

Italicize legal cases; use abbreviation v. for versus; and give date in parentheses if not supplied in sentence/context.
Example: In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Supreme Court said the government has supremacy over interstate commerce.

Use roman type and quotation marks for the titles of articles, chapters, essays, short stories, songs, and unpublished works.

If a relatively unfamiliar foreign term will be used repeatedly throughout a text, it is advisable to italicize and define the term the first time it is used, and thereafter leave it in roman type.

Do not italicize Latin or other foreign-language expressions that are in general use or appear in the dictionary (status quo, ad hoc, vis-�-vis, etc.). More obscure Latin terms and phrases, however (status quo ante, sic semper tyrannis) should be italicized.

Names of institutions or organizations (e.g., B'nai B'rith) should not be italicized even if the translation is provided.

Style: Hyphenation

Hyphenate adjectival forms (middle-class neighborhood, well-regarded attorney, eighteenth-century England, long-term results), but not adverbial modifiers ending in -ly (fully automated systems, newly arrived immigrant).

"Object + gerund" compounds (problem solving) are generally not hyphenated except when used adjectivally (word-processing systems, decision-making abilities).

Close up prefixes (prewar) unless the root is capitalized (post-Jeffersonian), or complex (post-Civil War), or begins with the same vowel that ends the prefix (anti-intellectual).

Style: Internet Terms

Web site
World Wide Web, the Web
Internet
Intranet
home page

Style: Miscellaneous

Diacritical marks should be retained in proper names and foreign words, even when they are not italicized (e.g., Poincarè, èmigrè, vis-á-vis, raison d'être).

Use e.g., i.e., and etc. in parenthetical and technical contexts only; in the main text, spell them out.

Always provide full names and titles of persons referred to in article upon first mention.
Example: President James K. Polk precipitated a war with Mexico.

When citing a U.S. representative or senator, write out full title and name, and identify their home state and party. Do not use the 20th century NAME (PARTY-STATE) convention, however.
Thus: Senator Charles Sumner, a Republican from Massaschusetts; Republican Congressman James G. Blaine from Maine, and notSenator Charles Sumner (R-MA); Representative James G. Blaine (R-ME).

Most titles are lowercased unless followed by a personal name: the president, the president of the Confederacy; President Lincoln, Vice President Johnson.

Do not include honorifics: Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms.

When citing an organization, always write out the full name. If you are going to cite it again, place initials in parentheses after first mention. If you are not citing the organization again, omit initials.
Example: The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) was founded in order to ... The USSC was shut down in 1866.

Use U.S. as an adjective only (U.S. citizen); otherwise spell out (citizen of the United States). Do not use United States in the possessive: either reword or use America's.

Use United States, not United States of America.

When describing events in narrative form, generally present them chronologically within an article, section, or paragraph.

Avoid and/or and most phrases with slashes.

Avoid he/she and (s)he.

Avoid sexist, dated, ethnically slanted, and inappropriate language.

Style: Bibliographies

The terms Inc., Co., Publ., Ltd., Press, and the like should not appear in the bibliography with the publisher's name; but do include Verlag, and include Press when referring to a University Press.
Thus: Basic Books; McGraw-Hill; Wiley; Springer Verlag; New York University Press.

Use two-letter Postal Service codes to abbreviate the names of states in bibliographic entries (NY, CA, MA); do not use periods between letters (including Washington, DC);

Do not include the state abbreviation for publishers in major metropolitan areas (New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, London) or if the state is evident from the publisher (Albany: State University of New York Press).

Spell out author's full first name where available, not initials.

Style: Bibliographic Samples

Books by authors:

Doe, John, Jr. American Immigration. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Smith, Anne B., and Richard Jones. No Going Back: The High-Tech Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998.

Books by editors:

Treadwell, Edward F., ed. The Constitution of the State of California. San Francisco: Dutton, 1923.

Articles in books/compiled volumes:

Roe, Richard. "Immigration in Texas." In Immigrants of America, ed. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 499-513. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999.

Articles in journals:

Roe, Jane. "Immigration in California." International Immigration Review 50:2 (August 1974): 432-59.

Government Reports:

House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities. Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 79th Cong., 2d Sess., January 30, 1999.

This page last updated: 15 January 2007