Formatting guidelines
Below you will find the guidelines for publications of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), University of Hamburg (7 Dec. 2020), with minor adjustments.
In general
• File format: Microsoft Word (*.docx)
1 Language and style
All submissions must be in English. We are aware that English is a rapidly changing and pluricentric global language spoken and written in multiple codified varieties, and we do our best to acknowledge and respect this diversity in our editorial practices. This is, however, a work in progress: our limited editorial resources and the dynamic nature of English itself mean that we cannot always do justice to all of our contributors’ linguistic preferences.
Contributors are encouraged to use the national or ethnic variety of English to which they are accustomed, provided they do so consistently and in a way that ensures that information is conveyed with clarity and precision also to readers familiar with other varieties of English. Contributors who do not have a preferred variety of English are invited to use British English and follow the rules of the New Oxford Style Manual. Native speakers of other varieties of English may use their own orthography.
Non-native English speakers should have their manuscripts checked carefully by a native English speaker before submitting their work for publication.
Fonts: Use Times New Roman (12-point) for the whole text. Use as little formatting as possible (no indentation, no spacing and no automatic lists). The whole text (including all the headings and subheads) should be flush left.
Footnotes: To make footnotes (which should be positioned at the bottom of each page), only use the automatic way provided by your word-processing program. Footnote symbols should either come after a punctuation mark or straight after the term to which they refer. It is impossible to attach a note to a title or subtitle in SMC volumes, however (a preliminary note is allowed, but without a number or sign).
Emphasis: To emphasise words, only use italics, not bold characters or underlining. Foreign words that have not been adopted or are considered uncommon in the variety of English in which you are writing should be written in italics. An English translation may immediately follow in parentheses (upright curves), in normal type and surrounded by single quotation marks; including a translation might be particularly helpful in the case of words which readers (particularly those accustomed to varieties of English other than the one you are using) are unlikely to be familiar with. Foreign words that have entered the English vocabulary should be written using the orthography that is most common in the variety of English you are using. If you prefer to use a different orthography, please explain your choice in a footnote.
Dashes: These should be distinguished from hyphens as they have different functions: long hyphens should be used in dates, for instance, as in ‘1992–1998’, and in page ranges like ‘on pp. 52–60’ (use the ‘en’ dash to indicate a range), while short hyphens are used to link parts of words together, as in ‘T-shirt’ and ‘pre-eminent’. An ‘en’ dash can be used in a sentence to add extra information, sometimes as an afterthought. Always write it with a space to the left and right of it. Do not use ‘em’ dashes unless you are an American author.
Headings: Your manuscript will be divided into sections and possibly even subsections. These should all be labelled with left-justified headings (with capitalisation of the first word and proper nouns only) and they should be numbered as well (as in ‘1 Introduction’, ‘1.1 Subtitle’, etc.).
Capitalisation: Historical periods should be capitalised (e.g. ‘the Middle Ages’, the ‘Early Modern Period’). Nouns and adjectives relating to movements derived from personal nouns are capitalised (e.g. ‘Platonism’, ‘Christian’). Note this use of capitalisation in names (nouns), but not adjectives: ‘the Bible’, but ‘biblical’, not ‘Biblical’; ‘south’ and ‘south-east’ (with a hyphen), but ‘South Dakota’, ‘South-east Asia’; and specifically in people’s titles, but not in general: ‘Cardinal Newman’, but ‘a cardinal’, etc. Capitalise references to particular parts of a book (‘Fig. 1’; ‘Table 2’; ‘Chap. 1’ – plural: Figs, Tables, Chaps).
Abbreviations: Use as few abbreviations as possible and explain all those you feel are necessary (either after the first occurrence or in a special section of the bibliography). Avoid the abbreviation ‘ibid.’. Write ‘thirteenth century’ in full rather than abbreviating it (except in tables).
Commonly used abbreviations:
- b. (birth / born)
- c. (not ca.) – it should be italicised
- c. (century) (but it is preferable to write this word in full)
- cf. (compare with; not ‘see’)
- col. (column) / cols (columns)
- d. (died)
- ed. (editor / edited) / eds (editors) / edn (edition)
- e.g. (for example; not in italics, with a comma before, but not after the abbreviation)
- fol. (folio) / fols (folios): fol. 4r (with r or v in superscript)
- l. / ll. (line(s))
- n. (footnote(s))
- no. / nos (number(s))
- p. / pp. (page(s))
- r. (reigned or ruled)
Eras: Write BCE / CE in small caps (not BC and AD). When using other calendars, such as the Jewish, Buddhist or Muslim calendar (AM, BE, AH), the dates should always be supplemented by corresponding BCE / CE dates.
Numbers / dates: Apart from in tables and lists of figures, express numbers below 100 in words (cf. Chap. 11 of the New Oxford Style Manual). As for centuries, it is preferable to write ‘in the eleventh century’ or ‘in an eleventh-century manuscript’ rather than using numerals.
2 Non-Latin scripts and Romanisation
Only use Unicode fonts. If this is an issue, please contact a member of the editorial team for advice.
Texts should be written in their original script. In the case of short passages or isolated words, it may be useful to provide a scholarly transliteration in Latin script.
Use the system of transliteration which is the standard one in your field. You may also use a different transliteration system if you have specific reasons to do so. If you opt for a non-standard transliteration system, please provide details (in the main text or in a footnote) about the chosen system and your reasons for choosing it.
The following sets of rules may be of help:
- Arabic: cf. http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Arabic_2.2.pdf
- Caucasian languages: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/caucasus/geoarmsc.pdf
- Chinese: Pinyin. Cf. Wilkinson, Endymion Porter (2015), Chinese History: A New Manual, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, pp. xvii–xviii
- Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino: use a consistent transliteration based on the Encyclopaedia Judaica online version (2007)
- Indic languages: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/indi/devanaga.pdf
- Japanese: Modified Hepburn system, in Kenkyûsha’s New Japanese–English Dictionary
- Korean: revised McCune-Reischauer system or Revised Romanisation of Korean (National Academy of the Korean Language)
- Slavic languages: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/slav/slavalpx.pdf CSMC
Even common names that have entered English vocabulary should be Romanised according to the same rules, e.g. Tora (and not Torah), Qur’an (and not Quran), Gilgameš (and not Gilgamesh), etc.
3 Quotations
Quotations from a primary source in the main part of the text should be presented initially in the original language and script (a transcription in Latin script may be provided as well if deemed necessary). A translation in modern English should be provided in brackets or in a footnote after the quotation. If you use an existing translation, provide the exact reference to it, otherwise indicate that it is your own translation. Indicate the sources of the quotation in a footnote or in brackets in the text.
When quoting a source, make sure you transcribe the words and punctuation faithfully. To add information or paraphrasing for clarity, use square brackets: [ ]. To skip a section of the source material, use ellipses: [...]. The editorial note [sic] should only be used to indicate that something has been quoted as it was found, including any mistakes it contains.
Short quotes of up to thirty words should be integrated into the body text within single quotation marks (‘’). Use double quotation marks for a quotation within a quotation. Punctuation generally goes outside quotation marks.
Longer quotes of more than two lines should be formatted as block quotes (10-point, block indentation on the left) without any quotation marks.
4 Tables, images and illustrations
Each table or figure should have a short heading and numbering (Fig. 1, Table 1). Note that the type area of an SMC volume is 116 × 183 mm, which makes long tables difficult to accommodate.
Figures should be sent as extra files (preferably as JPEGs; only use TIFF for grey-scale images and pixel graphics). A minimum resolution of 300 dpi is required. A minimum of 1300 pixels in the width is required for SMC volumes.
The files should be named so that they can be easily identified (e.g. ‘contributorXXX_Fig1.jpg’).
Use place-holders such as this one to indicate where an image or a table should be put in the text:
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Insert [file name] here. Fig. 1: image subject / place / date / shelf mark.
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Put the image (or its place-holder) as closely as possible to where it is cited in the text and indicate the format you would prefer: full-page, half-page, third of a page, etc. Provide short captions that are clear.
It is the author’s/editor’s responsibility to obtain usage rights to third-party text material, images or tables. If necessary, we can provide assistance in this matter: please contact the person responsible. Provide a list of images and figures at the end of the article, along with their respective credit or copyright.
A list of figures mentioning the credits (and possibly with a more elaborate description than in the captions) could also be provided at the end of the article or book.
5 Written artefacts (manuscripts, inscriptions and other types)
Do not add ‘MS’ to the shelf mark if this is not officially part of it; follow the way each library catalogues its own manuscripts. The canonical form of a shelf mark is normally as follows: (1) name of city (in English), (2) name of library (in the original language; in Romanised form if in a non-Latin script; if there is a canonical abbreviation, that abbreviation can be used), (3) collection (if any), (4) identification number:
e.g. Vatican City, BAV, Vat. gr. 1612.
Don’t put manuscript names in italics.
Always write the word ‘manuscript’ in full, except in tables or long lists, in which the abbreviation ‘MS’ (or pl. ‘MSS’) can be used.
6 Bibliographical references
If necessary, provide an alphabetic list of sigla and/or abbreviations used and put it before the bibliographical references.
Any literature you quote should be referred to in the footnotes in an abbreviated form. The system of abbreviation is as follows: author’s surname + year, pages. For most Asiatic authors their full name should be used, not just their surname (see below for examples). If more than one work from the same author and in the same year are quoted, they should be distinguished by adding ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, etc. to the year of publication. Don’t uses dashes or abbreviations such as ibid., op. cit., id., ead., f. or ff. (for ‘following’). Use ‘et al.’ in this short form when the number of authors is more than three.
A list of cited works with full bibliographical information should be provided in alphabetical order at the end of each article. Remove any hyperlinks in the URLs you quote (write these in the shortest possible form and between pointed brackets: < >) and add the date when the site was last accessed: ‘accessed on 22 April 2020’ (avoid just using digits here as they can be misleading). If you quote lots of URLs in your article and you accessed them all on the same date, you can state that date once in a note at the beginning of the article.
Use the English name of the city where the article or book was published (if the publishing house has more than one head office, just name the main one). Provide the name of the publisher as far as possible (words such as Verlag, Éditions, Publishing House, etc. should be omitted if they are unnecessary).
If such information is missing, use the following abbreviations: s.n. (sine nomine = no publishing house), s.l. (sine loco = no place), s.a. (sine anno = no year).
For bibliographical items written in a non-Latin script, provide the name(s) of the author(s) and the title (of the book or article) in the original script, followed by a Romanised version of it (see point 2 above); an English translation does not need to be included. The title of the journal (and possibly of the series in which the book is published) may either be provided in the original script, followed by a Romanised version of it, or just in a Romanised form.
All information apart from titles should be translated into English and standardised,
e.g. Alphabete und Schriftzeichen des Morgen- und des Abendlandes, 2nd edn, Berlin: Bundesdruckerei / Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1969.
AND NOT: Alphabete und Schriftzeichen des Morgen- und des Abendlandes, zweite, von Fachwissenschaftlern überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage. Zum allgemeinen Gebrauch mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Buchgewerbes, Berlin: Bundesdruckerei / Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1969.
Depending on the tradition of scholarship you follow, it may be desirable to divide the bibliographical list into ‘primary sources’ and ‘secondary literature’.
Monographs
Leung, Cécile (2002), Étienne Fourmont (1683–1745): Oriental and Chinese Languages in Eighteenth-century France (Leuven Chinese Studies, 13), Leuven: Peeters.
Abbreviated form: Leung 2002, 5.
Amari, Michele (1854), Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, vol. 1, Florence: Felice Le Monnier.
Abbreviated form: Amari 1854, 175–180.
Sbordone, Francesco (ed.) (1936a), Physiologus, Rome: Dante Alighieri di Albrighi, Segati [repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1991].
Abbreviated form: Sbordone 1936a, xlv–lvi.
Sbordone, Francesco (1936b), Ricerche sulle fonti e sulla composizione del Physiologus Greco, Naples: Torella.
Abbreviated form: Sbordone 1936b, 15.
Fabricius’s Tamil and English Dictionary Based on Johann Philip Fabricius’s ‘Malabar-English Dictionary’ [1779], 3rd edn, Tranquebar: Evangelical Lutheran Mission, 1972.
Abbreviated form: Fabricius’s Dictionary 1972, s.v. ‘vēli’
Collective volumes
Alphabete und Schriftzeichen des Morgen- und des Abendlandes, 2nd edn, Berlin: Bundesdruckerei / Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1969.
Abbreviated form: Alphabete 1969, 27–34.
Academic qualification works
Hill, Daniel (2001), Divinity and Maximal Greatness, PhD thesis, King’s College London.
Journal articles
Follet, Simone (2005), ‘Deux inscriptions attiques inédites copiées par l’abbé Michel Fourmont (Parisinus Suppl. gr. 854)’, Revue des études grecques, 118/1: 1–14.
Abbreviated form: Follet 2005, 12.
Arslanbekov, X[asbula Magomedovič] (1970), ‘Samaja drevnjaja nadpis’ Dagestana’, Dagestanskaja pravda 285/14078, 3 Dec. 1970 (non vidi).
Hu Dongbo 胡東波, Zhang Qiong 張瓊 and Wang Kai 王恺 (2011), ‘Beida Xi Han zhu jian de keji fenxi’ 北大西漢竹簡的科技分析, Wenwu 文物, 6: 90–93.
Abbreviated form: Hu Dongbo, Zhang Qiong and Wang Kai 2011, 91.
Monographs published as a journal’s special issue
Michel, Cécile (1987), Nouvelles tablettes ‘cappadociennes’ du Louvre = Revue d’Assyriologie, 81.
Book chapters
Travaini, Lucia and Arianna D’Ottone Rambach (2019), ‘Tychsen, Vella, Adler and Borgia. The Italian Connection in Islamic Numismatics’, in Rafael Arnold, Michael Busch, Hans-Uwe Lammel and Hillard von Thiessen (eds), Der Rostocker Gelehrte Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734–1815) und seine internationalen Netzwerke, Hanover: Wehrbahn, 259–284.
Abbreviated form: Travaini and D’Ottone Rambach 2019, 265.
If the same collective book is quoted several times, you may prefer to refer to it this way:
Arnold, Rafael, Michael Busch, Hans-Uwe Lammel and Hillard von Thiessen (eds) (2019), Der Rostocker Gelehrte Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734–1815) und seine internationalen Netzwerke, Hanover: Wehrbahn.
Travaini, Lucia and Arianna D’Ottone Rambach (2019), ‘Tychsen, Vella, Adler and Borgia. The Italian Connection in Islamic Numismatics’, in Arnold et al. (eds) 2019, 259–284.
Online publications
Provide a doi or failing that a URL address for publications which are only internet-based, but not for printed publications that are also available in internet archives. If you quote a doi address, mentioning the date of access is superfluous.
Online journals
Di Lorenzo, Adele (2019), ‘La tradition manuscrite du Physiologus grec au miroir de témoins conservés en France et en Italie : réflexions pour une étude comparée’, RursuSpicae, 2 <doi.org/10.4000/rursuspicae.666>.
Abbreviated form: Di Lorenzo 2019.
A record in a database
With the author’s name:
Seidel, Martin, ‘Arnold Dreyblatt: Inschriften 2010’, Museum der 1000 Orte: Kunst am Bau im Auftrag des Bundes seit 1950 <https://www.museum-der-1000-orte.de/> (accessed on 2 June 2020).
Without mentioning the author:
BerlPap – Berliner Papyrus Datenbank, ‘P. 9875: Timotheos von Milet, Die Perser’ <http://berlpap.smb.museum/02776/> (accessed on 2 June 2020).
Second edition, reprint, translation, etc.
Bochart, Samuel (1794), Hierozoicon sive bipartitum opus de animalibus sacrae scripturae, ed. Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller, vol. 2, Leipzig: Weidmann [1st edn: London: s.n., 1663].
Abbreviated form: Bochart 1794, 134–135.
Maas, Paul (1957), Textkritik, 3rd edn, Leipzig: Teubner [1st edn: 1927].
Abbreviated form: Maas 1957.
Maas, Paul (1958), Textual Criticism, tr. Barbara Flower, Oxford: Clarendon [translation of Maas 1957].
Abbreviated form: Maas 1958.
7 Acknowledgements
In SMC volumes a special section at the end of the introduction or the end of the article (but before the bibliographic references) may be used to acknowledge funding, practical or linguistic help, etc.
8 Specifications for edited sections
Each contribution should begin with the name of the author, the title of the article and a short abstract of it (5–10 lines long). No affiliation should be added at this point, but do send this information to the editor, who will prepare a list of authors with their respective affiliation and email address, which will be printed at the end of the book. Each article should be sent as a separate Word file. In addition to the Word files, a PDF version of the documents is also requested as a reference to clearly display any special characters or non-Latin fonts. Different peer-reviewers may be assigned to each contribution in a journal section.
