Manuscript Preparation

Your manuscript can be prepared on a PC or Macintosh. It can be submitted by email, by ftp to our ftp site (call us for directions), on a 3.5 inch floppy diskette, or on a CD. We can handle manuscripts prepared on most any word processor, but if you are using software other than MS Word or WordPerfect, call us for confirmation prior to submission.

 You do not need to submit camera ready copy. In fact we will remove most formatting from the files that you submit. However, if you have particular formatting requirements, it is useful for those to appear in the word processing file. You may also want to submit a hard copy. In the event that you use a foreign language font, you must submit a hard copy and also the font file that is utilized.

 The minimum necessary formatting includes the complete text, any words (exclusive of headings) to be italicized, superscripts, and subscripts. There must be a paragraph mark at the end of each paragraph.

 Bold face is utilized in books only in headings.

 Underlining is never used in books. Underlined items will be transformed into nonunderlined italics.

 Avoid the use of all capitals for emphasis. Italic typeface is the proper type style for emphasis.

 Do not insert manual line breaks. Use paragraph marks instead.

Photos, Graphics, and Illustrations

Please submit text separately from photos, graphics, and illustrations. Do not embed the latter in your word processing file. You can indicate where each goes by placing a note in double brackets, e.g., [[insert photo 15]]. Be sure that each photo, graphic, or illustration is appropriately numbered so that we can put it in the proper location. Photos, graphics, and illustrations can be submitted as separate files or as hard copy. We can produce computer graphics from rough designs drawn by hand. However, if you want artist’s illustrations, you must make special arrangements or provide them yourself.

TYPING INSTRUCTIONS

It is not necessary for you to follow the guidelines below. However, doing as many of these as you desire can speed the processing of your manuscript.

Fonts and Line Spacing

It does not matter what font you use, what size font you use, or what line spacing (single, double, etc.) you select.

Page Layout

It does not matter what page size or margins you select.

Paragraphs

Place a paragraph mark at the end of each paragraph. Do not use tab to indent first line of a paragraph. Do not place an empty line (extra paragraph mark) between paragraphs. Block quotations should be indicated by indenting the entire paragraph or by placing note inside double brackets at start of paragraph, e.g., [[block quote]]. Avoid leaving a space in front of the paragraph mark.

Dashes

Em dash separates parenthetical remarks in a sentence. En dash separates numbers in sequence (e.g., 1950–1952, but not in social security number, telephone number, etc.) Em dash, en dash, and hyphen are never preceded or followed by a space.

Ellipses

Ellipses are typed as period-space-period-space-period. Please do not use the ellipse character. No punctuation goes before or after an ellipse except that a question mark may precede one. A space goes before and after the ellipse except that no space is typed after an opening quotation mark or before a closing quotation mark. Similarly, an ellipse that opens a line is not preceded by a space and there is no space between an ellipse and a footnote marker. There is also no space between an ellipse and parenthesis. We do not use a fourth period even when the ellipse follows the end of a sentence. Ellipse is never used with commas, colons, etc.

Quotations

Quotations of three lines or more should be set off as indented blocks with no quotation marks at beginning and end. Acceptable changes to a quotation without indicating it are: 1) the first letter may be capitalized or made small case, 2) the closing punctuation may be omitted. It is not necessary to begin a quotation with an ellipse.

Chapters and Sections

It is helpful, but not necessary, if your entire manuscript is in one file, with the front matter and each chapter being separated by section breaks. If individual chapters are in individual files, be sure to include a table of contents.

References

You may use either endnotes or footnotes. If you have no preference, we recommend using endnotes placed at the back of the book with numbering starting anew with each chapter.

Headings

It is helpful to type all headings in headline style, also called title case on most word processing software (see Chicago Manual of Style paragraph 8-167). If there is more than one heading level, it is useful to indicate this for each heading using the word processing software style name or by inserting a note in double brackets e.g.,

[[Heading A]]The Civil War
     [[Heading B]]The Final Year
          [[Heading C]]Sherman in Atlanta
     [[Heading B]]The Aftermath of the War

Tables

You can submit tables in the table format of your word processing software or as plain text with each row of the table separated by a paragraph mark and each cell in the row separated by a tab. If you do this, put a note in double brackets at the start of the table with the number of rows and columns, e.g., [[table, 8 rows, 3 columns]].

Bullets and Numbered Paragraphs

One of the kindest things you can do for us is to not let your word processing software automatically number paragraphs. It is most helpful if you type each paragraph number individually. You can use the word processing software bullet formatting or just indicate a bullet with an asterisk or other character.