Manuscript Format

What follows are some basic formatting guidelines. For other matters, contact the editor or consult the fifteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS). The journal departs in a few minor ways from the CMS. At times, that venerable manual seems too fussy or arbitrary. Cambridge University Press has its own copyediting guidelines, but all relevant points are covered in the journal’s own guidelines or will be familiar to authors with a working knowledge of Chicago Manual style.

Style within Text

  • Use “Smart quotes” and ‘apostrophes.’
  • For dashes: — rather than --
  • Ellipses: leave one space on both sides—e.g., “said … nothing”
  • Numbers: spell out up to 100; use numerals for 100 and above; and use numerals for percents—e.g., 5 percent.
  • Do not use superscripts for ordinals in the text or notes—i.e., 108th rather than 108th.
  • If ordinals can be spelled out in one or two words, do so—e.g., second or twenty-second.
  • Italicize book, journal, magazine, and newspaper titles.
  • Italicize foreign-language words.
  • 1 space between sentences rather than 2.
  • Follow American spelling conventions—e.g., favor, realize.
  • Follow American practices regarding serial commas—e.g., hop, skip, and jump.
  • Format dates according to American practice: Sept. 16, 2011. Abbreviate all months except May, June, and July.
  • Follow American practice regarding quotations—i.e., double quotation marks and punctuation inside the quotation marks:
    • The teacher said, “Take your book.”
    • Or: “Take your book,” said the teacher, “before I lose my patience.”
  • Hyphenate compound adjectives with “century” as follows:
    • Nineteenth-century politicians; early twentieth-century feminists; late nineteenth-century fashion. But no hyphens in nouns: “In the late nineteenth century, people began to bicycle.”
  • Ethnic/Racial compounds: A debate is currently underway as to whether this should be exception to the rule of hypenating compound adjectives. CMS expresses ambivalence about the matter. For consistency’s sake among this journal’s authors, please omit the hyphen:
    • African American literature; Italian American neighborhoods.
    • Of course no hyphen in noun form: Irish Americans.
  • Unless there is a reason to do otherwise, use “U.S.” as an adjective and “United States” as a noun:
    • “Blundering U.S. diplomacy” versus “The United States sometimes engages in diplomacy.”
  • Permutations of populist and progressive: Over time, the journal has adopted the inadequate but comprehensible practice of capitalizing only the proper noun forms of these pervasive terms, to wit:
    • The Progressive Era, the Progressive Party, but progressivism, progressive ideas “James Weaver was the Populist candidate in 1892,” but “The Farmers’ Alliances formulated numerous populist proposals.”

Style within Notes

Regarding place names in book citations:

Like most people, if not the CMS, we now use “MA” as opposed to “Mass.” For smaller cities with well-known universities, omit the state—e.g., Chapel Hill, Urbana, New Haven, Princeton. On the other hand, include state abbreviations where needed to differentiate: e.g., Bloomington, IL, vs. Bloomington, IN. Cambridge, England, can stand alone as Cambridge, but Cambridge, MA, should include the state.

Book with a single author:

  • First citation: Christine Stansell, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (New York, 2000), 120–37.
  • Subsequent citations: Stansell, American Moderns, 47, 309.

Book with an author and editor/translator:

  • First citation: Randolph Bourne, The History of a Literary Radical and Other Papers, ed. Van Wyck Brooks (New York, 1956), 127–29.
  • Subsequent citations: Bourne, History of a Literary Radical, 134.

Book with multiple authors:

  • First citation: Walter Muir Whitehill and Lawrence Kennedy, Boston: A Topographical History, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA, 2000), 18–19.
  • Subsequent citations: Whitehill and Kennedy, Boston, 243–47.
  • *Note: For books (or articles) with more than three authors/editors, list only the first, followed by et al.—e.g., Smith et al., Book Title (City, year).

A citation with multiple sources:

Treat such notes as a complete sentence; when listing many citations in a row, separate each with a semicolon. An exception: Several books from one author may be separated with a comma. Restate only the author’s last name:

  • See esp. Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (New York, 1998), and Ambrose, Band of Brothers (New York, 2004).

Multivolume works:

Always use Arabic numerals to indicate volume numbers. Omit the word vol. if the volume number is immediately followed by a page number.

To cite a particular volume:

  • First citation: Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital, vol. 2 (New York: 1916), 574; or, alternatively: Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital (New York: 1916), 2:574.
  • Subsequent citations: Bryan, History of the National Capital, 2:574.

Journal articles:

Give the volume number, month (or, if applicable, the season in upper case: Spring, Summer, etc.) of publication, and the year. For the first citation, use a colon after the close parentheses and then give the page number. In general, omit the issue number. If, however, you accessed the article via an online service that does not provide the month of publication, and that information is not evident from the online version of the article, then issue numbers are acceptable in the format: Vol.:no. (Year): pp; for example, 8:3 (2009): 367.

  • First citation: Kyle E. Ciani, “Hidden Laborers: Female Day Workers in Detroit, 1870–1920,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4 (Jan. 2005): 23–51.
  • Subsequent citations: Ciani, “Hidden Laborers,” 29–32. {Note: Use a comma, not a colon, between abbreviated title and page number.}

Article from an edited collection:

  • First citation: Thomas J. Schlereth, “Burnham’s Plan and Moody’s Manual: City Planning as Progressive Reform” in The American Planner: Biographies and Recollections, ed. Donald A. Krueckeberg (New York, 1983), 75–99. {Note: no comma before “in”}
  • Subsequent citations: Schlereth, “Burnham’s Plan,” 88.

Dissertations:

  • First citation: Melissa McLoud, “Craftsmen and Entrepreneurs: Washington, D.C.’s Late Nineteenth-Century Builders” (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1988), 87–104.
  • Subsequent citations: McLoud, “Craftsmen and Entrepreneurs,” ch. 4.

Website citations:

When a URL begins with “www,” omit the prefix “http://” The date in parentheses is the access date. Be aware of the decay of online sources:

Newspaper citations:

Omit The from the names of newspapers. For newspapers from before World War I, in almost all cases authors may omit section and page numbers, but should indicate when an article comes from a supplement. If there is a reason to think specificity necessary, then do add, for example, B, 7. In most cases, a newspaper may be cited without author, article name, or page:

  • New York Times, Dec. 3, 1914.
  • Occasionally, one will want to cite a newspaper article by author and title: Monica Davey and Jodi Wilgoren, “Signs of Danger Were Missed in Troubled Teenager’s Life,” New York Times, Mar. 24, 2005, B, 1.
  • When the city is not on the masthead: Oregonian (Portland), Dec. 21, 1913; Sun (New York), July 26, 1901.
  • When the paper comes from a smaller or lesser-known city: Aberdeen (South Dakota) Daily News, Dec. 15, 1913.
  • For a string of articles from the same newspaper: New York Times, Apr. 2, 1875, June 3, 1876, and May 25, 1892.

Mass-Circulation Magazines:

Treat similarly to newspapers, omitting volume information.

  • Harper’s Monthly, June 1896, 372–76; Nation, Nov. 7, 1872, 24.

Professional or organizational publications:

These can be a judgment call in terms of treating them as magazines or as specialized periodicals.

  • James H. Eckels, “The Association of Credit Men as Viewed by the Banker,” The Lawyer and Credit Man 8 (May 1898): 8; or
  • James H. Eckels, “The Association of Credit Men as Viewed by the Banker,” The Lawyer and Credit Man, May 1898, 8.

Manuscript collections:

These have no hard or fast citation rules. The CMS requires only that a subsequent researcher should be able to find the item. Folder numbers are preferred. At a minimum, supply a box number, reel number, or similar locating information for unpublished documents. Use common sense and streamline where possible.

  • First citation from a collection: Lewis Hine to Frank Manny, Aug. 7, 1910, folder 6, box 3, Lewis Hine Collection, George Eastman House.
  • Subsequent citations: Lewis Hine to Alfred Stieglitz, Nov. 9, 1911; Hine to Frank Manny, Dec. 12, 1912, folder 7, box 4, Hine Collection.

Documents from the National Archives:

The National Archives is a fertile source of convolution and inconsistency. After the first citation from any National Archives collection in an article, please abbreviate citations from all other collections as NA or NA–College Park. After the first citation of a record group, omit the collection name and abbreviate as RG x. For example, Records of the District of Columbia, RG 351, can become simply RG 351. If you have all the information, a full citation from a National Archives document may take the form:

  • Division of Venereal Diseases to Oregon Social Hygiene Society, Nov. 25, 1918, folder 1918–19, file 235.4, box 90, entry 42, U.S. Public Health Service, Record Group 90, National Archives, College Park, MD. At a minimum, this will suffice:
  • Charles Brand to Samuel Harrison, Feb. 17, 1917, box 285, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, Record Group 16, National Archives, College Park, MD.

Congressional Globe or Congressional Record:

  • Congressional Record, 61st Cong., 2nd sess. (May 5, 1910), 5823–30.

Congressional Serial Sets:

For shorter Serial Set documents

  • “Expenses of the Government of the District of Columbia,” 66th Cong., 2nd sess. (Jan. 5, 1920), H rept. 531.

For full-length reports or books published in the Serial Set

  • Charles Moore, ed., Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia, 57th Cong., 1st sess. (Jan. 15, 1902), S rept. 166, 44–45; or Charles Moore, ed., Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia (Washington, 1902), 44–45. {*Note: In the second case, the Government Printing Office serves as the publisher.}

Abbreviations in Notes:

  • esp. for especially
  • ch. for chapter
  • ed. or eds. for editor or editors of a collected volume
  • 2nd ed. for second edition
  • trans. for translator
  • vol. for volume

Avoid Latin terms such as idem, passim, or op. cit. Use “ibid.” where common sense seems to demand it. The CMS wisely advises not to italicize “ibid.”

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