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JEMIE Style Guide for Authors

1. Spelling and Language
2. Abbreviations
3. Capitalisation
4. Numbers and Measurements
5. Quotations
6. Foreign Languages
7. Tables
8. Documentation

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1. Spelling and Language

Generally, use British English spelling, based on the Oxford English Dictionary. For 'ise', 'isation' etc, the 's'-spelling is the preferred one. If the 'z'-spelling is used, please ensure consistency of usage. Some words, however, are always spelt with 's', e.g. advertise, analyse, paralyse, and supervise.

In formal writing contractions in negations should be avoided: will not (not: won't), should not (not: shouldn't).

Some words have alternative spellings (e.g. judgement vs. judgment). Again consistency of usage should be the rule of thumb.

Use emphasis like quotation marks, italics or underlining sparingly. It is usually possible to make your point without special emphasis. Bold should not be used for emphasis.

Hyphenation

As hyphenation often signifies the intermediate stage of a word's development, it is a tricky area and parallel spellings of many words exist, e.g. co-ordination and coordination are both acceptable. Some basic rules exist, though:

Compound adjectives are generally hyphenated: ten-year plan, eighteenth-century invention, decision-making process and a little-known fact. However, compounds formed from a -ly adverbs are not hyphenated: a highly appreciative audience.
In titles and headings, the second word of a hyphenated phrase is generally lower case e.g. Long-term Perspectives. However, when it carries equal weigh, it should be in capitals e.g. Non-Christian Communities, Twentieth-Century Developments.
Words with prefixes are the most contentious area: we prefer coordination, cooperation, monoethnic, etc.

The Oxford English Concise Dictionary or Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers are good references for hyphenation, where alternative spellings are admissible. Again, consistency is of the utmost importance.

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2. Abbreviations

It is best to avoid unnecessary abbreviations.

Explain unfamiliar abbreviations in the first instance in parenthesis and provide a short list at the beginning of your text, if it contains a large number of abbreviations.

Do not use full stops after contractions, e.g. Dr, Mrs, Ltd, St

Note especially:

ed. eds

vol. vols

ch. chs

Exception:

no. nos.

Do not use full stops in acronyms, like NATO or UNESCO (which are read like a word) or other sets of initials like US, UK, EU

Avoid the apostrophe in the plural of abbreviations: NGOs (not NGO's)

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3. Capitalisation

Titles and ranks

President Clinton, the president; King John, the king; also, the foreign secretary, the Secretary of State; the Minister of the Interior, the minister of a church.

In hyphenated titles both parts are capitalised e.g. Vice-President Gore

Institutions, movements, denominations and political parties

The church, the state in a general sense but the Church of England, Washington State.

Protestant, Catholic etc, but Liberal/liberal, Democrat/democrat, capitalised when denoting a party, lower case when used in a general sense.

Also, the Left of the party, left-wing politics; the British Empire, the politics of empire

Geographical names

North, South, etc. and Northern, Southern etc, are capitalised if they are part of a name of a country, area or political division: South West Africa, Eastern Europe and Northern Ireland. But: the north of Sweden, southern Germany, where the usage is general. Cf. also: Western European Union, the West but western democracies.

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4. Numbers and Measurements

Numbers

In general, numbers under 100 in continuous text are spelled out, unless there is a large amount of numerical information. Hyphenate twenty-one etc.

Avoid starting a sentence with a figure.

Use figures not words in measurements: 5kg, 15 mm, but 50 per cent.

Use commas (not spaces or full stops) in numbers with four or more digits: 1,000; 5,000,000

Use minimum numbers for number spans, e.g. 35-8, 143-57, 120-3 but 24-16.

For numbers within a paragraph it is less ambiguous to use opening and closing parenthesis: This should contain (1) the author's initial or first name, followed by (2) the author's surname, and (3) the title of the article.

Keep the original in quotations and do not change words for figures or vice versa.

Dates

Use the format 14 December 1986, on 14 December, on the 8th in continuous text. In footnotes, months can be abbreviated but avoid numbers as 2.7.1999 means the second of July in Europe and the seventh of February in the United States. When starting a sentence with a date it is set off by a comma e.g. In 1998, the OSCE mission to...

Centuries should be spelled out: the thirteenth century; and hyphenated when used as an adjective: thirteenth-century literature

For decades use the 1960s (not 1960's or '60) or the Sixties.

For periods say 'from 1989 to 1999' or '1989-99' not 'from 1989-99', likewise, say between 1995 and 2000 (not between 1995-2000).

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5. Quotations

A quotation that is part of a sentence, and is reasonably short, is set in double quotation marks. Citations of more than about sixty words should be indented five spaces from the left margin and not placed in quotation marks; they are usually set off by a colon.

Use single quotes for a quote within a quote and for words or expressions with special emphasis, e.g. 'ethnic cleansing'.

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6. Foreign Languages

Make sure to use all diacritical signs if available in your word processing programme, like accents, umlauts, tildes and cedillas. Mark diacritical signs that you cannot type clearly on the printout.

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7. Tables

Make sure that the table fits the page - sometimes reversing the axes is possible, so that the headings at the side become the ones at the top. Landscape tables are best avoided.

Place table numbers and titles above the table and sources and notes directly below. If the table is taken from another publication, it is crucial to obtain permission for its reproduction.

Check that totals add up and figures align. Decimal points should be preceded by a zero.

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8. Documentation

General

Our preferred system for referencing is the Author-Date system, sometimes also called the Harvard system, outlined below.

Please check any reference details carefully and make sure they are complete. If a work appears in a note and in a bibliography/list of references, make sure all the details are the same.

Author-Date System

This system is in some ways the most economical as it does not use notes for references but gives the author's name and year of publication in the text; only use a note if reference to a group of works makes the insertion very lengthy. With this system, it is essential that all works referred to are listed in the bibliography/reference section with full bibliographical details.

Style of citation in text:

The author's surname, year of publication and, if needed, a page reference are given in parenthesis with the page reference separated by a colon:

"Violence and nationalism belong together" (Schoch 1995: 189).

If the author's name occurs naturally in the sentence, it does not have to be repeated in the parenthesis.

Whereas Laitin states that "[n]othing inherent in nationalism leads to violence; ..." (1995: 41).

If the author has published two or more books in the same year, this is indicated by adding a letter to the year: 1995a, 1995b and so on.

Where there are two or three authors, all surnames should be given before the date. For more than three authors use the surname of the first author et. al. should be used, but give all names in the bibliography.

If different authors with the same surname are referred to, a distinguishing initial must be used, e.g. A.P. Taylor and F. Taylor.

If a work has been produced by an organisation (e.g. Minority Rights Group) and the author's name is not given, use the name of the organisation instead, even if it appears in the title.

Use "forthcoming" for works that have not yet been published.

Bibliography

A bibliography/list of references lists all the works cited or referred to in the text.

Bibliographical entries should be organised alphabetically by the author's surname. If no author name is given, the name of the editor or the publishing organisation is used instead.

Separate title and subtitle with a colon.

Titles of articles in journals, chapters in books etc, should be set between double quotation marks. The name of the journal or the title of the book should be typed in italics.

Newspaper articles should be placed in the notes. Where available, begin with the author's name. Correspondence or information obtained from interviews is not normally included in a bibliography but should also be mentioned in the notes.

Use the original language of the text. Titles in languages that do not use the Latin alphabet must be transcribed.

Bibliographical entries following the Author-Date format:

Sharp, G. (1973). The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston: Porter Sargent.

Ramsbotham, O. and Woodhouse, T. (1996). Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict. Cambridge: Polity.

Wiley, Bell I. (ed.) (1980). Slaves no more: Letters from Liberia, 1833-1869. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.

Dallin, A. et al. (eds) (1963). Diversity in International Communism: A Documentary Record, 1961-63. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ariès, P. (1962) Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life, Robert Baldock (trans.). New York: Knopf.

Alcock, A. E. (1994). "South Tyrol". In: Minority Rights in Europe, Miall, H. (ed.), 46-55. London: Pinter/Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Articles

Kuznet, S. (1995). "Economic growth and income inequality". American Economic Review 49 (1): 22-24, March.

Organisations as author

Minority Rights Group (ed) (1997). World Directory of Minorities. London: Minority Rights Groups International.

Unpublished works

Eberwine, D. (1986). The Bulgarian Presence in Nicaragua. Paper presented at the conference on Eastern Europe's Involvement in Central America, Washington, D.C., 11-13 March.

Internet citations

To cite files available for viewing/downloading via the World Wide Web, give the author's name (if known), the full title of the work in quotation marks, the title of the complete work if applicable in italics, the document date if known and if different from the date accessed, the full http address and the date of visit.

² Burka, Lauren P. "A Hypertext History of Multi-User Dimensions." The MUDdex. 1993. http://www.apocalypse.org/pub/u/lpb/muddex/essay/ (5 Dec. 1994).

Email, Listserv, and Newsgroup Citations

Give the author's name or alias (if known), the subject line from the posting in quotation marks, the date of the message if different from the date accessed, and the address of the listserv or news list, along with the date of access in parentheses. For personal email listings, omit the email address.

³ Bruckman, Amy S. "MOOSE Crossing Proposal." mediamoo@media.mit.edu (20 December 1994).

⁴ Seabrook, Richard H. C. "Community and Progress." cybermind@jefferson.village. virginia.edu (22 January 1994).

⁵Thomson, Barry. "Virtual Reality." Personal email (25 January 1995). Full http address, and the date of visit.

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