Practical Action Publishing House Style Manual This House Style Guide is intended to assist anyone writing, editing or keying in material which may circulate outside Practical Action Publishing, and we ask that our authors, editors, copyeditors and proofreaders work to these rules. In general we follow 'Oxford style'. This document records those areas where, because of our particular needs, we need either to build on or vary from the 'Oxford style', or where practice varies so much that it is useful to record the preferred options. Contents Features of the text Headings and sub-headings Abstracts Tables, boxes and lists Illustrations Footnotes/endnotes References Index Spelling, grammar and punctuation Abbreviations and acronyms Capitalization Dates Foreign languages Italics Numbers Currencies Punctuation Quotation marks and quotes Spelling Internet and digital terms Further reading Preparing the typescript Acceptable electronic media Permissions Features of the text Headings and sub-headings Keep to two, or at most three, levels of heading below the chapter heading level. Please choose a style for each level of heading and stick to it throughout the text. Make sure that the hierarchy is clear but do not number the heading levels. The only numbered headings should be the chapter headings and, if the book has them, the part headings. Copy editors should indicate the headings in the following way: [CH]CHAPTER 4 Power for pumping [A] Human power [B]Handpumps [C]The rotary-drive handpump. [C] level headings are usually reserved for paragraph headings, in which case they are shown as, e.g. [C] The rotary-drive handpump. This type of handpump is appropriate where …. Abstracts Each chapter of edited collections should begin with a short abstract of 100-150 words, describing the content and main findings of the chapter. Tables, boxes and lists Tables Make sure that the copy lends itself to tabulation. If column or row headings are a problem, then think about putting the information back into the main text as copy or putting it in a box. Tables should be numbered independently of any other illustrations and consecutively within each chapter, e.g. Table 1.1, Table 1.2, Table 2.1, etc. (use ‘0’ for tables in an introduction and ‘A’ for any in an appendix) . Please make table titles short and to the point. Table titles should include the table number, beginning with an upper -case initial and have no terminal punctuation: Table 1.1 This is a table title Please keep the formatting of tables to a minimum, i.e. do not include shading of different columns or rows or unnecessary use of bold and italics. For column and row headings, use an initial upper -case letter; for descriptions of units given under column or row headings, use lower-case letters throughout, e.g. Length of stay (column or row heading); weeks per year (units). For table main body text, use initial caps only; proper nouns as usual have initial capitals. 2 Source should be put at the bottom of the table. The word ‘Source’ will be in italic followed by a colon. Notes to tables should be superscript Arabic numbers. Boxes Boxes can be useful devices, for example, to display a case study that highlights the core message of the text, or to display material that is not essential to the understanding of the main text. In these cases, the relationship to the main text should be made clear, by referring to the box in the text. If overused, text boxes can make a publication difficult to follow . Particular style points: Don’t box quotations. Don’t define tabulated material as a box. Define as a table. Boxes must have a title and be numbered by chapter (e.g. Box 3.1) As a general rule, don’t box numbered or bulleted lists. To avoid boxes being broken over a page, try not to exceed 400 words. Lists As a general rule, lists of a few items should be incorporated into text sentences. Too great a use of bulleted lists makes the document difficult to read; lists are not a suitable medium for presenting the various stages of an argument because the ‘connecting tissue’ between the elements is missing. If you do decide that you want to draw special attention to a list, separate it from the main text and use numbers or bullets for each entry. Specific points of style for lists: Use a numbered list when the contents amount to a progression that needs to occur in a specific order, and a bulleted list when the order is of no significance. Separate items in run-in lists with semi-colons. If you want to label them, use the style ‘: 1) Mercury; 2) Venus; 3) Earth.’ (Don’t use full stops after the numbers in a run-in list.) Use full stops after numbers in displayed lists. When items in a displayed list are complete sentences, begin with an upper -case letter and end with a full stop, e.g.: 1. Full sentence. 2. Full sentence. 3. Full sentence. When items in a displayed list are just words or phrases, begin with a lower -case letter and separate the items with semi-colons. Put a full-stop at the end of the last item in the list, e.g. 3 · word; · phrase; · phrase; · word. Avoid mixing the two styles. Text following a list. This should be indented as for a new paragraph. Headings. Use italics rather than bold for a heading within a list (as in these last two items). Illustrations Authors should produce final artwork that is ready for incorporation into the text. This should either be in a suitable electronic format or high-quality black-and-white artwork which is ready to be transferred straight to film. Photographs should be submitted greyscale at a resolution of 300 dots per inch, at the size you would like them published, or larger. They should be submitted as separate jpeg or tiff files (tiffs are preferred for colour cover photos). Line images should be submitted black and white, no areas of solid grey, and at a resolution of 600 dots per inch at the size you would like them published. They should be two-dimensional and NOT three-dimensional. Drawings in WordArt and similar packages tend to lack resolution once they are converted. It is preferable to have such illustrations redrawn professionally before the typesetting process begins, using a professional drawing package such as Adobe Illustrator. Please do not hesitate to ask a member of the editorial team for advice. If you cannot get your illustration redrawn in Illustrator, WordArt can sometimes be an acceptable second best. Draw each figure at the size that you would like it to appear (normally up to 11cm wide) on the page with the labels in 9pt (font: Arial), lines in 0.75pt and each figure saved as a separate numbered and named file (the filename should include the figure number and caption). Use tints sparingly or not at all. Graphs are best supplied in the spreadsheet package from which they were produced (e.g. Microsoft Excel). Illustrations, whether photographs, line drawings or electronic images, should be supplied separately from the main text. Please number all illustrations (figures and photographs numbered separately) consecutively within each chapter. Do not include the figure caption within the image, but do include it in the file name, after the figure number (e.g. Figure 2.3 The market map of the cardamom value chain in Taplejung, Nepal). Put a marker 4 including the number and caption in the main text to show placement of the figure (e.g. ‘Near here: Figure 2.3 The market map of the cardamom value chain in Taplejung, Nepal) . Do not supply eps files as these cannot subsequently be edited. Please supply illustrations in scales of black and grey (using hatching, dashed lines etc. to differentiate sections). Colour drawings converted to black and white almost always cause problems. Whatever the source of your illustrations, please do not embed the images or scans into a Word document or other word processing file. Footnotes/endnotes Footnotes should be avoided and replaced with endnotes to the main text. Endnotes should be numbered by chapter and identified by superscripted numbers placed after punctuation. All references should be in the text (Harvard system) and not put in full in endnotes. Endnotes should be used for further (minimal) clarification. Note that Waterlines and Enterprise Development and Microfinance do not use endnotes. Positioning: endnotes should be placed at the end of each chapter for edited collections, followed by a reference list. For books where all chapters are written by the same author(s), endnotes go at the end of the book, numbered by chapter, followed by a consolidated reference list. References There is a moral obligation to acknowledge the use of others’ words or ideas. Please use the Harvard system of reference. The Harvard system gives the author’s surname and year of publication (and a page reference if you have given a direct quotation) in parentheses in the text, and a full reference in a list at the end of the book entitled References. All titles listed in the References must be cited in the text and vice versa. Please use the following examples as a style guide when writing out references. In the text (Bloggs, 1999) (Bloggs, 1999a) [use a, b, c etc., by alphabetic order of work, if necessary to distinguish between several titles published by the same author in the same year] (Bloggs, 1999: 22) [use a colon and a character space before page references] (Bloggs, J, 1999) [use the first initial if necessary to distinguish between titles by authors with the same surname] as Bloggs states (1999)… [don’t repeat the author’s name in the reference if it has already 5
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