Style Guidelines for Contributors to SDNQ

Articles (of 4000-6000 words) and shorter ‘Notes’ and ‘Queries’ should be submitted electronically to the appropriate editor: Mark Forrest (mfdorseteditor@gmail.com) for material relating to Dorset, or Adrian Webb (somersethistorian@gmail.com) for material relating to Somerset.

The following are guidelines for contributors to SDNQ. If you have any questions please contact the appropriate county editor.

TEXT

  1. Texts submitted to SDNQ should usually be unpublished research and authors are requested to inform the appropriate editor if they have submitted the article to other publishers for publication.
  2. It would be wise to have your text read by several people before it is submitted to SDNQ for consideration.
  3. All texts should be supplied by email in Word or RTF.
  4. If articles are to be amended in line with referees’ comments, then authors must acknowledge this accordingly with the phrase, ‘I am (we are) grateful for the comments of anonymous referees’.
  5. All endnotes should be consistent and kept to a minimum; avoiding unnecessary repetition. Style guidelines can be found below.
  6. The size of the text used is 10pt, 9pt and 8pt. 10pt for the main text, 9pt for any lengthy quotes running over two lines, and 8pt for the endnotes.

ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. All proposed illustrations should be scanned in their original colour at 300dpi if the image is being reduced.
  2. If an image is to be enlarged please make sure it is scanned at 400dpi.
  3. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission from the owner and / or copyright holder of the image for permission to have it reproduced. Please note that SDNQ will not pay any reproduction fees.
  4. All images should be captioned in the text approximately where you would expect to see the image reproduced. At the end of the caption the name of the copyright holder or reproduction rights owner should be shown in round brackets, e.g. (Author’s collection), or (The National Archives, reference ABC/123).
  5. Some authors have provided funds to cover the cost of printing illustrations, which have been gratefully received. If you are in a position to support SDNQ in this way please speak to the appropriate editor.

LITERARY CONVENTIONS

  1. Figures: To be used in measurement as ‘6 inches’, ‘88 feet’, but time to be in words, as ‘six minutes’, ‘seven years’, ‘the eighteenth century’, ‘the thirties’; but use figures where the century is named – ‘the 1920s’. All other figures up to ten in words; (six canoes), and over ten in figures; (16 men on a dead man’s chest). Percentages to be given in figures and in full (‘25 per cent’, ‘per annum’) except in tables and in endnotes where ‘%’, and ‘p.a.’ should be used. Avoid numbers of more than five figures in the text wherever possible; spell out round numbers up to ten, but ‘5.5 million’ rather than 5,500,000 or ‘five and a half million’. Fractions with hyphens: two-thirds.
  2. Years: Use 1801–1804 when from 1801 to 1804 is meant. Use 1801/2 for regnal years only where the date is uncertain. Use 1644/5 for dates from January the 1st to the 25th of March prior to 1752.
  3. Time: Adhere to contemporary usage, for example 2.30 am; 6.20 pm; 23:50.
  4. Dates: Wherever possible give dates in full, as 30 January 1938. In endnotes abbreviate the months as follows: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec.
  5. Quotations: Within single quotation marks ‘…’.
    Quotations within quotation, within double quotation marks ‘… “…”…’.
    Punctuation within quotation marks should be as in the original quotation; thus the closing quotation mark should be placed before the following punctuation only if the quoted phrase is not a complete sentence.
    Quotations of two lines of type or more (more than 20 words) should be broken off from the text and set in single space:

For maritime history it was both the best and worst of times; no one would have believed this to be the case a decade or more ago but ships had ceased to sail and the sea had been relegated to the footnotes of history.

Single quotation marks are used for titles of articles and chapters.
Spelling and punctuation in quoted matter should remain as in the original. If clarification is necessary this can be inserted by the author in square brackets.

  1. Italics and Roman: Commonly used abbreviations should be roman type, thus et al, i.e., e.g. Foreign words and phrases should be in italics (eg. le Boudin), but not names of foreign services or organizations (eg. Kreigsmarine). Names of journals, newspapers and books should be in italics but not unpublished theses.
  2. Punctuation: Avoid redundant punctuation if at all possible, in both text and endnotes. There should be minimum use of the dash (–) for punctuation purposes.
  3. Alternatives: Use medieval, not mediaeval. Use guild, not gild. Use ‘above’ and ‘below’ in endnote references, not supra and infra.
  4. Capitals: Use initial capitals for Act or Bill. Use initial lower case for ‘south western England’, with upper case for the ‘South West’. Use initial lower case when referring to titled people generally, but capitals when referring to one specific individual by title. Thus ‘captains’, ‘admirals’, ‘mayors’ but ‘the Prince of Denmark’, ‘King Alexander III’, ‘Admiral Benbow’, ‘Captain Trelawney’, ‘the Mayor of Casterbridge’.
  5. Hyphens: In general, hyphens should be used as sparingly as possible. However, when two words are used adjectively (provided one of the two is not an adverb) the two words should be hyphenated; thus ‘working-class housing’, ‘nineteenth-century urbanization’, but ‘very rapid municipalization’. The following compound words are now deemed not to need a hyphen: ‘prewar’, ‘interwar’, ‘postwar’ (but still ‘macro-economic’).
  6. Abbreviations: Well-known abbreviations should be used where appropriate. Abbreviated words should be followed by a full stop except in cases where the abbreviation comprises the first and last letters. Thus ‘prof.’, ‘Co.’ and ‘ed.’, but ‘Dr’ ‘jr’ ‘eds’, ‘pt’ ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’. Use ‘&’ in titles of firms, not ‘and’, e.g. Babcock & Wilcox. Number should be no. not nr. In endnotes, part should be pt, appendix app. and volume vol.
  7. Numbers. In general when referring to numbers in sequence avoid unnecessary repetition, thus 20–6, 151–7, 101–7; but for numbers ending between 10 and 19 use 10–13.

ENDNOTES

Several people have asked us for some guidelines for the preparation of endnotes for articles. The following are a few guidelines to help us all present a standard format. Do not worry too much if you are having problems with this as the editors edit all the submissions so they are all in a standard format. We have tried to keep it as straight forward as possible. Please bear in mind the following:

  1. Please use endnotes to show what sources you have consulted and try to keep any commentary to the main body of the text. If you quote from the same source at a later stage, after quoting from a different source, you must quote the reference again.
  2. Please try and be consistent.
  3. Please do not use a bibliography.
  4. The figure in the text marking an end note should be placed after punctuation at the end of a sentence or clause.

Note below that the use of commas has been kept to a minimum, but full stops are included in line with our ‘house style’. In endnotes, part should be pt, appendix app. and volume vol.

Citing printed works, not part of a series:

Initials Surname, Title (year), page(s).

e.g. J.G. Smith, Bristol Mariners (1888), 45.

Citing INDIVIDUAL articles in printed works, from a series e.g. Somerset Record Society:

Initials, Surname, ‘Title of article’ Title of book (year), page(s).

e.g. F.J. Pope, ‘Dorset seamen in the Second Dutch War’ in Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset 13 (1913), 118.

[note the volume number is shown in upper case Arabic numerals]

Citing INDIVIDUAL articles in printed works, not from a series:

Initials, Surname, ‘Title of article’ Title of book (place of publication, year), page(s).

e.g. F.J. Pope, ‘Dorset seamen in the Second Dutch War’ in Collected maritime essays of Dorset (1913), 118.

Citing printed works from a series e.g. Somerset Record Society:

e.g. R.W. Dunning ed., The Hylle cartulary, Somerset Record Society 68 (1968), 34.

[note the volume number is shown in upper case Arabic numerals]

Citing unpublished works, manuscripts, etc:

Location, Full reference folio(s) [if any] brief description, date.

In the first instance

e.g. Somerset Heritage Centre (S.H.C.), DD/BW 123 fol.122-34 order, 13 Jan. 1641.

Thereafter

e.g. S.H.C., DD/BW 123 fol.122-34 order, 13 Jan. 1641.

e.g. Author’s collection, Diary of William Hobbs, 1909-1888, fol.33.

Citing web pages:

e.g. www.hrofi.demon.co.uk/dutch.html [brief description of site], (accessed 22 May 2005).

Citing oral material, interviews, etc.:

Ex inf name, place of residence of the person, date interviewed.

e.g. Ex inf  Mr John Smith, Weston-super-Mare, 1976.

COPYRIGHT

The table below provides a guide to what can be reproduced. If you have any questions please contact the appropriate county editor.

Duration of copyright in literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works (Tim Padfield, Copyright for Archivists)

WHAT IS A ‘NOTE’?

In order to encourage shorter contributions for SDNQ the following guidance has been produced. A ‘note’ is normally the shortest type of submission accepted by SDNQ. They are short, informative pieces, usually no more than 500 words long. They are aimed to bring obscure material to a wider audience, such as records in private collections, or found in an unusual or newly listed collection in a public archive. Often such pieces are narrative and not long enough to develop an argument but are nevertheless of wider interest to other researchers.

(Approved 18 February 2021)