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                     

Abbreviations and Acronyms   
Capitalization   
Dates      
Foreign Languages       
Italics                   
Numbers    
Currencies                 
Punctuation                                                                                                             
Quotation Marks and Quotes            
Spelling        
Footnotes/Endnotes       
Internet and Digital Terms              
Tables, Boxes and Lists           
References                       
Images                                                                                                                    
Further Reading

Abbreviations and Acronyms

• Standard abbreviations that will be familiar to your audience can be used throughout, e.g. BBC, UK, USA.
• Less familiar abbreviations, and those specific to the subject area of the book, should be written out in full on their first mention only with the abbreviation in brackets (no full points between letters), e.g. Department for International Development (DFID), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• No full point after metric units of measurement, and put a space between number and unit: 20 km, 2 g. Exceptions: degree sign, 14°C, and per cent sign, 20%.
• In text, units of measurement are abbreviated when used with a numeral, 5 kg, but spelled out otherwise: the kilogram is a handy unit of measurement. (See Numbers below.)
• Plurals of abbreviated units are the same as the singular: 60 kg, 1 kg.
• For a full list of units of measurement, see the International System of Units on wikipedia or the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, p. 433.
• No full point after contracted abbreviations (where the contraction ends with the last letter of the word): Mr, Dr, St, Ltd.
• Full points after (but no space between) initials in a name, then a space between the initials and the surname: Dr E.F. Schumacher.
• Time of day: a.m., p.m.
• Historical period: AD, BC.
• ed. (for edited by in References); eds (editors); edn (edition); e.g.; et al.; etc.; i.e.; no. (for number); vol. (for volume) (note that none of these is italicized).
• Figure is spelled out and capitalized; ‘in Figure 5, where. . .’.
• Telephone is abbreviated to Tel. (not Phone), and numbers should follow the international system: +44 (0)1926 634501 for Practical Action Publishing.

Capitalization

Refer to Reference books listed in the Introduction for specific instances. Broad rules are as follows.

• As a general rule, use an initial cap for the first word only (including in chapter headings; subheadings; table, figure and box headings; and captions and labels).
• Use an upper case initial capital for all proper nouns.
• Capitalize throughout acronyms and sets of initials, e.g. USAID, SKAT, except for those that have become words, such as Oxfam.
• Capitalization should be reserved for proper names. Distinguish between ‘the state’s government’ and ‘the State of Bangladesh’. Titles and ranks are capitalized when they accompany a personal name; for example, ‘Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed…’, ‘the prime minister of Retrovania, Lukas Mogdovich, said…’, ‘in the UK the prime minister is the head of government’.
• Other examples include: Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, etc.; periods and wars, e.g. Dark Ages, Second World War; trade names like Concorde, Vaseline.
• Compass points, such as North, South, and their adjectives (southern etc.) are capitalized if they are part of the title of an area or political division, e.g. Western Australia, South-east Asia, but southern Scotland; the North–South divide, but northern NGO.

Dates

Use the following examples as a guide when writing out dates;

• on 4 August 1902 (day month year – no commas)
• from 4 August to 10 December 1902
• from August to December 1902
• from 1902 to 1966
• 1902–66
• 1879–1902
• 5th century, 18th-century painting
• 5th century BC
• 1900s, 1960s, 2000s, 2040s (no apostrophes)
• 1976–7, 123–4, but 113–14

Foreign Languages

Follow New Hart’s Rules. Briefly:

• Use italic type for any words or phrases given in a foreign language (that have not been subsumed into English), with a translation, in parentheses and in roman, if necessary (don’t use quotation marks for this translation): e.g. doppelgänger (double).
• When you quote in foreign languages, use roman type inside single quotation marks: ‘Au fait’, ‘beau T-shirt’.
• Use accents in more unfamiliar words that would be confusing without: résumé.

Italics

Italicize foreign words or phrases consistently (i.e. not just at the first mention). See New Hart’s Rules for assistance in deciding which words are ‘foreign’, but beware of italicizing a word that will be used many times in a book or article. Follow Butcher’s Copy-editing for a full list of items requiring italic and those requiring roman in quotes, pp. 139–40.

Also italicize:

• titles of published books;

• titles of periodicals (but article titles are roman and in single quotes);
• long poems, plays, films, radio and TV programmes;
• genera; species (but family should not be italicised): Gossypium herbaceum is short-fibre cotton, while G. barbadense has relatively long fibres; the genus Anopheles belongs to the mosquito family or Culicidae.

Numbers

• Spell out the following numbers:
• one to nine inclusive e.g. three people, unless with a unit e.g. 3 mg;
• all numbers that appear at the beginning of sentences (although try to reword the sentences so that the number can come in the middle).
• Use numerals for the following:
• numbers from 10 upwards: 17 people, 100 years
• numbers that express a decimal fraction (always use a zero before a decimal point): 0.5, 10.6, 287.9
• with million and billion: 2 million, 2.3 million, 14 million (unless consistently different usage). But note NOT when denoting currency (see Abbreviations above)
• numbers below 10 when the figure is part of a comparison with a number above nine or is just located close by in the text: ‘Children spend between 6 and 16 hours reading every week’
• numbers that express percentages (use ‘%’ in tables, boxes, lists and labels, and ‘per cent’ in body text): 2 per cent (text), 2% (table, box, list or label)
• Use a comma between thousands: 4,319; 25,000
• Metric units are preferred, but be consistent (metric or imperial) within the manuscript. If there are mixed measurements, include a conversion table.
• Tables: always use abbreviations, and also in the heading if possible
• Fractions: write out fractions in text (including captions): two-thirds, three-eighths. Use numerals in tables, boxes, lists, labels.
• Use (for example) ‘a third’ rather than ‘one-third’ if there are no surrounding numbers in the text and it would flow better to use this style.
• Number ranges: the dash used is the en dash (available from the insert symbol menu in Microsoft Word): 1923–44; 519–26.

Currencies

• For a list of currencies, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_currencies.
• Always use numerals to express sums of money.
• Specify the type of dollar or pound on first usage.
• There should be no space between the symbol and number.
• The symbol should precede the number.
• Insert early in book or at a relevant point the US dollar equivalent (and exchange rate date) for non-dollar currencies.

Use the following examples as a guide when expressing sums of money:

• 10p
• £10, £9,999, £2 m, £3.4 m, $7.3 bn
• £19.00, £19.56

Punctuation

Hyphens

• see The Concise Oxford English Dictionary for the use of hyphens in compound words.
• when a hyphenated term has an initial cap, revert to lower case for the letters after the hyphen: South-east
• use hyphens when compound adjectival forms come before the noun: little-known detail, well-read individual, much-needed reform, two-day seminar, 20th-century book, late-19th-century performance, early-18th-century edition (Note, these constructions should not be hyphenated if they come after the noun if there would be no confusion about sense: ‘a detail that is little known’; ‘he is well read’; ‘that manuscript is 19th century’; ‘the painting is late 19th century’; but ‘Can you do that long-distance?’)
• always use hyphens in attributive adjectival and predicative forms with ‘self’ and ‘half’ e.g. self-taught child; he was entirely self-taught; mid-week seminar; half-complete assignment; it is only half-complete.
• use hyphens in some compound noun forms (see Appendix ?).
• don’t use hyphens with adverbial forms e.g. partly written essay, broadly stated policy

En (and em) dashes

• Use en dashes in constructions that include two separate but equal components: teacher–student dynamic, the North–South relationship.
• Use en dashes in place of the word ‘to’: London–Glasgow train.
• Use en dashes in elisions of numbers, dates and times: 2–13 August 1998, 3.00–5.30 p.m. See also number ranges above.
• Use en dashes to separate parenthetical comments from the rest of a sentence (put a character space on either side of the dash) e.g. ‘Blah – parenthetical comment – blah’.
• Don’t use em dashes at all

Accents

For letters requiring accents, use the appropriate special character in Word or WordPerfect; make a note of any character you need that is not available and where it should appear.

Possessives

• for singular possessives ending with an -s that has an ‘s’ sound, use -s’s, e.g. Jefferson Davis’s home;
• for singular possessives ending with an -s that has an ‘eez’ sound, use -s’, e.g. Euripides’ plays, Ramses’ tomb.

Quotation Marks and Quotes

• use single quotation marks and punctuate according to the UK English convention, i.e. put the punctuation outside the closing quotes unless it is an integral part of the copy being quoted

Kate said ‘Now’, and then she went on to…
The last words of Martina were ‘Thank you, incidentally, for everything’.
Clare asked, ‘Why?’
Toby yelled, ‘No!’
Denise said, ‘Of course.’

• Display (separate from the main text) all quotations that run to more than five typed lines.
• Indent displayed quotes by one tab stop from the left margin (it doesn’t matter what the tab measure is).
• Don’t use quotation marks with displayed quotations (if there is a quote within the displayed type, use single quotation marks).
• Use quotation marks for any quoted material that runs in to the main text.
• use double quotation marks for quotes within quotes
• if you want to insert text of your own within a quotation (perhaps a change of tense to sit better with your surrounding text) use square brackets e.g. As Blah has noted ‘blah [went] blah blah’.
• credit the sources of displayed or run-in quotations, according to the Harvard system (see page 17)
• If you want to omit some of a quote, use an ellipsis of three points (use the Word or WordPerfect symbol) to show where text has been removed (you don’t need to do this at the beginning or end of quotes). Close up the ellipsis either side of the copy.

Spelling

We use Oxford –ize spelling for words where acceptable in UK English, e.g. organization, specialize, modernize. Please consult the Concise Oxford English Dictionary or their on-line function 'ask oxford' if you are unsure how a word should be spelt.

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 endnotes. Endnotes should be used for further (minimal) clarification.
• Note that Waterlines uses endnotes for bibliographic references while Small Enterprise Development does not use endnotes.

Internet and Digital Terms

Use the following as a style guide when writing internet or digital expressions:

• the internet, the World Wide Web, the Web, Web page, homepage, byte, CD-ROM, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), webserver, website, CD, DVD
• email, e-business, e-marketing, e-customers
• online, offline
• remember that URLs do not have terminal full stops

When proof-reading, avoid breaking URLs over lines, but if you have to, make sure the breaks occur at logical places, e.g. the address ‘www.practicalactionpublishing.org.uk’ might be broken after ‘practicalactionpublishing.’, ‘org.’, or ‘uk’. Watch out for typesetters adding a hyphen at the line break that is not part of the address. Delete it.

• Please leave ‘http’ or ‘www’. Don’t standardize to one or the other. There are some addresses that will not work if you substitute one for the other.
• To avoid confusion with punctuation, try to avoid putting URLs at the end of sentences, but if you have to, please use a terminal full stop.

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.
• Number tables, figures, boxes consecutively within chapters, making separate lists, using the chapter number first (use ‘0’ for tables in an introduction and ‘A’ for any in an appendix): Table 1.1

Specific points of style for tables

• 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
• 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.
• 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

• Box copy that is complementary to, and yet in some way separate from, that of the main text.
• Don’t box quotations.
• As a general rule, don’t box numbered or bulleted lists.
• Don’t define tabulated material as a box. Define as a table.

Lists

• As a general rule, run in lists of few items that read well in the sentence. 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.
• Use a numbered list when the contents amount a progression that needs to occur, in a specific order.
• Use a bulleted list when the order of its contents is of no significance.
• Don’t generate numbered or bulleted lists that would contain fewer than three items.
• Text following a list should be full out unless it’s a new paragraph.

Specific points of style for lists

• 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.)
• 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.

• Use full stops after numbers in displayed lists.
• 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.
· word;
· phrase;
· phrase;
· word.

• If the list contains a combination of the above two types of entry, use the rules for full sentences.

References

There is a moral obligation to acknowledge the use of others’ words or ideas. Please use the Harvard system of reference. (Practical Action Publishing titles do not, as a rule, make use of footnotes.) The Harvard system gives the author’s surname and year of publication (and possibly a page reference) 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 been mentioned in the sentence]
(Bloggs, 1979, 1999) [use commas to separate titles by the same author]
(Bloggs and Smith, 1999) [write out up to two author names for a title]
(Bloggs et al., 1999) [use ‘et al.’ to avoid writing out any more than two author names]
(Bloggs, 1998; Smith, 1999) [use a semi-colon to separate titles by different authors]

Note that in the Harvard author–date system references to items in newspapers are made in the running text and are not usually listed individually in the References section.

In an article entitled ‘Where do we go from here?’ published in The Times (London), 14 February 2001, Joe Bloggs reported that…’

An editorial in the Independent (London), 5 December 2000, suggested that…

In the References section

Order all titles alphabetically by authors’ surnames. Several titles by the same author should be listed chronologically by publication date. Several titles published by the same author in the same year should be ordered alphabetically by title and be given the labels a, b, c etc. to distinguish them from one another in the in-text references (begin the labelling with the first title). The basic formula is as follows: author, date, title, publication details. Please follow the examples for punctuation and typeface (ital or roman):

Bloggs, J.A. (1996) Book Title, Practical Action Publishing, Rugby
Bloggs, J.A. (1998) Book Title: Subtitle Upper and Lowercase Throughout Except for Small Words, ITDG Publishing, Rugby.

Bloggs, J. (2001a) Book Title, 3rd edn, IT Publications, London. [first of more than one title for this author in this year]
Bloggs, J.A. and Smith, P. (2000) Book Title, ITDG Publishing, Rugby.

Bloggs, J.A., Smith, P., Jones, D. and Martin, L. (1999) Book Title, ITDG Publishing, Rugby.

ITDG Publishing (2002) Engineering in Emergencies, 2nd edn [CD-ROM] ITDG Publishing, Rugby.

Holland, M. (2004) Guide to citing Internet sources [online]. Poole, Bournemouth University. Available from: http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/citing_references/
citing_internet_sources.html [Accessed 4 November 2004].

Articles in periodicals / chapters in books

• Articles and chapters take initial and essential (i.e. proper nouns) caps only.
• Periodicals are in italics and take upper and lowercase throughout.
• The issue number is not usually necessary.

Bloggs, J.A. (1987) ‘Article title’, Journal Title 54: 22–6.

Bloggs, J.A. (2001) ‘Chapter title’, in P. Smith (ed.), Book Title, pp. 11–19, ITDG Publishing, Rugby.

Much information is put up on the internet by organisations without citing a specific author. In such cases, ascribe authorship to the smallest identifiable organisational unit (this is similar to the standard method for citing works produced by a corporate body).

User Glossary Working Group (1986) Internet user' glossary [online], Internet Engineering Task Force, Reston, VA. Available from: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1983.txt [accessed 26 May 2004].

URL addresses have no terminal stop (see also comments above)

Bloggs, J.A. (1998) ‘About today’s date’, Centre for Mathematical Education [Online] http://acorn.educ.nottingham.ac.uk/cgi-bin/daynum [accessed 5 March 2006].

General points of style for References sections

• Use the following abbreviations as necessary: edn (edition), ed. and eds (edited by), tr. (translator), comp. (compiler), ad. (adaptor), vol. (volume), rev. (revised), p. or pp. (page or pages).
• ibid. should only be used in the text when referring to a repeat of citation directly above.
• If an organization is listed more than once in the Bibliography, write out its full name on the first mention, giving initials in parentheses, then use the initials thereafter:

Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1995) Book title, Publisher, Place of publication

DfEE (1997) Book title, Publisher, Place of publication

DfEE (1999) Book title, Publisher, Place of publication

Images

• Photographs should be submitted greyscale at a resolution of 300 dots per inch, at the size you would like it published, or larger.
• 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 it published or larger. They should be two-dimensional and NOT three-dimensional.
• No images will be published in colour unless by previous agreement with the publisher. Please do not submit them in colour for the typesetter to amend; the cost of this work will be charged back to you.