Jewellery History Today Notes for Contributors
We put together this Style Guide to help you avoid spending hours agonising over the correct way to do anything. We are very grateful that you are writing an article for us at all, and certainly don’t want to make your task any harder. This is intended only as a guide – please don’t feel you have to change anything in the way you usually write – but if you are in any doubt, we hope this will make your decision easier. There are further examples of what to do in the
MHRA-Style-Guide.
Please stick to the word count you have been given.
Spelling
British spelling should be used throughout. When in doubt, use the ‘New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors’.
Use diacritical marks for foreign words, unless the UK spelling is common, eg ‘Art Deco’ rather than ‘Art Déco’.
Put foreign words in italics, unless already common in English.
Write numbers from 1-10 as text (one to ten), and numbers 11+ as numerals. Use commas in numbers greater than 1000, eg 10,000 (but not for years, of course). Ordinal numbers follow the same rule, e.g. second century, 12th century.
Use the abbreviation for percentages, e.g. 50%, not ‘fifty per cent’
Use Roman numerals for reigns, eg Henry VIII, not Henry 8th.
Possessive apostrophes. Use ‘s for all nouns except plurals, where the possessive is s’. For example, ‘St James’s day’ but ‘the Jones’ gifts’
Sale-rooms. Use possessive apostrophe, eg ‘Christie’s’, except for Bonhams.
Dates
Day, month, year. Eg: 26 May 1909.
Centuries. Use abbreviation, eg 16th
Time. Use full 4-digit form, eg 11.00
Quotations
Use single quotes ‘ ’ for basic quotations within text. If the extract is long it should be indented, without quotation marks.
Use double quotes “ ” for quotations within quotations.
Use italics, without quotes, for titles of books, journals and exhibitions.
Layout
For picture captions, use ‘Fig. n.’ (upper case F for fig, stop, space, number, stop). For references within the text, use ‘(fig. n)’ (lower case f, no final stop, in brackets).
Footnotes
Jewellery History Today is a magazine, not a learned journal. Don’t use footnotes at all, if they can be accommodated in the text in any way.
Biography
Please include a short biography of around 2-3 lines.