The Association for History and Computing
an organisation dedicated to the use of computers in historical research

HISTORY AND COMPUTING: SHORT CONVENTIONS

Articles should be in the region of 4,000–6,000 words inclusive of endnotes and should be in English. (Articles in French, German and Spanish will also be considered.)

Contributors should, in the first instance send three double-spaced copies of the typescript to the editor or a single copy directly by email ensuring that all illustrative material is included. When the article is accepted, a revised machine-readable version should be sent to the editor.

A statement of the article’s length should be submitted with the initial draft, along with an autobiographical note (no longer than 50 words) including institutional affiliation. A short abstract (up to 200 words) should also be provided.

In the first instance hard copies of all illustrative material (tables, figures etc.) should be submitted on separate sheets attached to the text, ensuring that each is directly referred to within the body of the text appropriately. e.g., ‘see Figure 1’ or ‘as shown in Table 4’. The maximum size for figures is around 110mm x 170mm after reduction. Some computer-generated graphs will be re-drawn, so an indication of software used to generate such images will be appreciated along with the appropriate data points in a text format.

Endnotes only will be accepted. Citations should follow the ‘humanities’ style of the Chicago manual of style with a number of exceptions. The most important of these are that publishers’ names should be omitted, commas should be inserted after volume numbers relating to periodicals and page references should follow a comma rather than a colon. All titles of articles should be in lower case apart from proper nouns and the first words of sentences. All journal titles should be in upper case. Full details can be found in the longer conventions attached. The basic styles are: R. Floud, An introduction to quantitative methods for historians, 2nd ed. (London, 1979), 74; M. Thaller, ‘The daily life of the middle ages. Editions of sources and data processing’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 10 (1987), 6–29. Cited here at 22.; T. Maisel and A. Müller, ‘Interpreting social information: design and management of source-oriented databases on the history of the university’, in P. Denley, ed., Computing techniques and the history of universities (St. Katharinen, 1996), 35–46. Subsequent citations should be in a shortened form. The use of latinisms, like, op. cit., and ibid. are unacceptable.

The copyright of contributions will reside with the Association for History and Computing and the publisher, on the understanding that a) authors may re-use their own material, with acknowledgement and the publisher’s consent, b) the Association and the publisher will not consent to the reprinting of an article by a third party without having first obtained the author’s consent. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that the articles submitted are not themselves in breach of copyright. The publisher will supply the author or the first named author with three copies of the journal in which their article appears.

HISTORY AND COMPUTING: FULL CONVENTIONS

Contributors to the publications series of the Association for History and Computing will appreciate that the publications committee and the editors wish to maintain a high standard of presentation and give the printer every aid in producing a well produced journal. If contributors follow these conventions in their manuscripts it will help in getting their work into print quickly and with as few errors as possible.

It need hardly be said that in preparing a manuscript for publication greater attention must be paid to grammar, spelling and punctuation than in normal correspondence. Spellings should be consistent and conform to the allowable variations in the Oxford english dictionary. On matters of literary style Fowler’s Dictionary of modern english usage and its successor Burchfield’s The new Fowler’s modern english usage are good guides for anyone who feels the need to study the subject further. The Chicago manual of style gives further detail than these conventions but, it should be noted, does not always conform to the conventions laid down below. Needless to say all tables, calculations etc. should be carefully checked.

• Three double-spaced copies of the typescript or an electronic version, via email, to the editor, preferably created in a recent version of Microsoft Word^®. All illustrations should be indicative of the final version material but need not be of the highest quality in the first instance.

• A statement of the submission’s length, including a note of any tables, figures or other illustrative material.

• A short autobiographical note (no longer than 50 words), including institutional affiliation, either current or former, if appropriate.

• An abstract summarising the main points of the article (no longer than 200 words).

• Full address for correspondence.

Once accepted a machine-readable copy of the revised article should be supplied via e-mail, or on a DOS formatted 3½-inch disc in either Word, WordPerfect or Rich Text Format. Please consult the editor if you would prefer to submit in a different format.

II Preparation of the typescripts

• Manuscripts should be word-processed, double-spaced, and printed on one side of the paper with at least a one inch margin on all sides.

• Pages should be numbered consecutively.

• Endnotes should be provided rather than footnotes and should be typed double-spaced following the main body of the text. References to endnotes should be numbered consecutively through the text of the article. References should be placed at ends of sentences, unless inappropriate, but always following punctuation.

III Conventions

1. Spelling

• Use British spelling and follow the style of The Oxford modern english dictionary. Use -ize forms where appropriate.

2. Foreign languages

• Foreign words and phrases in an English sentence should be italicised in the typescript, unless they are proper names, quotations or foreign words which have passed into regular English usage. Please ensure that all accents are correctly marked on the typescript.

3. Quotations

• Use single inverted commas for quotations, with double inverted commas only for quotations within quotations.

• The closing inverted comma precedes all punctuation except an exclamation mark, question mark, dash or parenthesis belonging to the quotation, or a full point at the end of a grammatically complete sentence starting with a capital letter.

• Quotations longer than about 75 words should be broken off from the text and indented from the left hand margin, without inverted commas.

• Extensive quotations from non-English sources should be translated into English in the text and, if necessary, the original should be given in an endnote.

4. Numbers

• Use words for numbers up to ten, thereafter Arabic numerals. Note the following exceptions:

• Figures are always used for percentages and decimals (fractions are to be avoided).

• Words are always used for numbers at the beginning of sentences.

• Numbers and words should not be mixed, e.g., use ‘9 men and 12 women’. (However, avoid placing two Arabic numerals next to each other, e.g., rephrase ‘In 1891 the population was 395, 153 of which were male’, to ‘... 395, of which 153 were male’.)

• Use comma separators in all numbers (including those in tables) over 1,000. (Do not use a space as a separator.)

• Use ‘per cent’ not ‘percent’ (nor ‘%’) in the main text (‘%’ is acceptable in tables).

• Spans of numbers should be elided to the smallest unit (except for numbers from 10–19), e.g., 23–5, 296–8, 211–15, 208–12. However, dates should always be in full, e.g. 1492–1497. Decimal numbers should never be elided, e.g., 5.3–5.5 not 5.3–5.

5. Money

• Abbreviations which follow (or precede) numbers to denote currency should follow the rules which apply to all abbreviations. The numbers that make up part of a currency statement follow the rules relating to dates, e.g., ‘£15 12s. 6d.’ and ‘£75–100’.

6. Dates

• These should be given in the form of ‘4 December 1933’; ‘4 December’; ‘December 1933’.

• Approximate dates should be given as ‘c.1490’. [Note the use of italics.]

7. Capital letters

Within the text these should be used for:

• proper names or for titles accompanying them, ‘Bishop of Oxford’, ‘Bishop Wilberforce’, ‘King William IV’, however use lower case when a general sense is indicated, ‘All the kings of England’, ‘the bishop was in charge’. Note that if a specific person was indicated in the last example, the correct style would be: ‘the Bishop was in charge’.

• recognised geographical names, e.g., ‘Norfolk Broads’, ‘Northern Ireland’, ‘River Thames’, ‘High Street’, however, use lower case in generalised descriptions, e.g., ‘north-west England’.

• institutions and movements, e.g., ‘Census Office’, ‘Church of England’, ‘Keynsham Poor Law Union’, however, use lower case in general senses, ‘the 1961 census’, ‘the churches of England’

• parties, denominations and organisations and their members, e.g., ‘Baptist’, ‘Methodist’, ‘Presbyterian’, ‘Conservative’, ‘Socialist’, however, use lower case in general senses, ‘non-conformity’, ‘conservative’.

• names of ships, and trade and proprietary names

• in adjectives if the connection with the proper name is necessary, e.g., ‘Platonic’, ‘Henrician’, ‘Laudian’, but ‘Arabic’, ‘roman’ (numbers).

8. Parentheses and brackets

• Round brackets, i.e. ‘(’ and ‘)’, are used for parenthesis. Square brackets, i.e., ‘[’ and ‘]’, are used for editorial insertions and comments.

9. Hyphens

Hyphens should only be used when they serve a purpose, i.e. in words which are recognised to be hyphenated, words which avoid clumsy sequences because of them (co-operation), in adjectival clauses and to avoid ambiguity., e.g., ‘late-nineteenth-century Leicester’, but ‘Leicester in the late-nineteenth century’ and ‘three year-old children’ and ‘three-year-old children’.

10. Contractions

• These are best avoided unless well known to readers.

• The plural of initial contractions is formed by adding ’s, e.g., k.o’s. The apostrophe, however, is omitted after capital contractions and dates, e.g., CEBs, 1820s. For contractions consisting of capital letters the omission of full stops is preferred. A full stop after a contraction indicates that letters have been omitted after the stop, e.g., ‘vol.’ Where the contraction includes the final letter of the word a full stop should not be used, e.g., ‘vols’, ‘Dr’, ‘Mr’, ‘St’, including the cases of MS and MSS. Note that in the case of a parish consisting of two saint’s names the contraction SS should not be used, e.g., ‘St Philip and St Jacob’.

11. Apostrophes

• It is normal to drop the apostrophe from names: ‘All Souls College’, ‘St James Park’, except where the body concerned uses one, thus, confusingly, the underground station, ‘St James’s Park’, the park, ‘St James Park’. The omission of the apostrophe leads to all names being treated as plurals, e.g., ‘All Souls’ graduates’. Where a name or other noun is used adjectivally it is not usual to use an apostrophe, e.g., the ‘British Records Association’, ‘the hundred years war’.

12. Figures and tables

• Figures and tables should be submitted on separate pages and grouped together in a section following the endnotes.

• Maps, graphs and other illustrations are collectively termed ‘figures’ and all figures should be numbered consecutively.

• Authors should indicate clearly in the margin of the text the approximate position of each table or figure if the figure or table is not explicitly mentioned within the text.

• Authors should avoid making tables and other displays of data so dense and/or complex that they will not be readily intelligible on the printed page, and should avoid unnecessary decimal places.

Figures

• At submission stage rough drafts of any maps, graphs or other figures should accompany the article. Before the article is accepted for publication the author will be responsible for amending figures as suggested by the editors (if necessary) and presenting them in final, camera-ready form (i.e. suitable for direct reproduction). Please note that photocopies are generally not acceptable.

• The maximum dimension for a figure is 110mm x 170mm after reduction.

• Lettering should be sized so that no lower-case letters are less than about 1mm after reproduction. Avoid gross disparities on a drawing.

• Captions should be typed on a separate sheet from the figures.

• The editors expect authors to clear copyright (where necessary) for any figures prior to publication.

Tables

• Tables should be numbered consecutively and referred to in the text as such: ‘(see Table 1)’, not ‘(see table below)’. Note the use of upper case when referring to figures or tables.

• The table number and title should be typed above the body of the table.

• Type a single continuous line above and below the body of the table, but avoid vertical rules.

• Notes, indicated by raised lower-case letters, and source(s) should be typed below the bottom rule.

• If percentages are cited give, ‘%’ as a column heading and do not repeat it within the body of the table., e.g.

Table 2 Weekly distribution of baptism: St Saviour’s, Southwark, 1579–1634

Note: The percentage columns may not sum exactly to 100 due to rounding.

Source: St Saviour’s baptism register, Greater London Record Office, P92/SA/3001–4.

13. Endnotes

• Endnotes should be typed double-spaced at the end of the typescript.

• The use of Latinisms, e.g., op. cit., ibid., should be avoided.

• Acknowledgements should precede the first endnote but should not be part of the numbered sequence.

• Avoid the use of cross-references in endnotes, unless absolutely necessary.

14. Bibliographical references in footnotes

Multiple references should be separated by a semi-colon.

Books

The first citation should give:

Author’s or editor’s initials and surname (as given on the title page), full title (capitals should be only for the proper nouns and the first letters of the title or after a full stop) (see examples) in italics, edition (if second or later), place and date of publication in parenthesis and page number(s) if appropriate.

R. Floud, An introduction to quantitative methods for historians (London, 1973).

R. Floud, An introduction to quantitative methods for historians, 2nd ed. (London, 1979).

K. H. Jarausch and K. A. Hardy, Quantitative methods for historians: a guide to research, data and statistics (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991).

Note that the ampersand ‘&’ is not used as ‘and’ in lists of authors.

Subsequent citations should give the author’s or editor’s surname, short title and page number.

Floud, Introduction to quantitative methods, 102.

Jarausch and Hardy, Quantitative methods for historians, 140–69.

Articles in journals

The first citation should give:

Author’s initials and surname, article title (in single inverted commas, with no capitals except for proper nouns and the first word of a title or subsequent sentence), full journal title (in italics), volume number (in Arabic), part number (optional), date of publication (in parenthesis) and full page numbers. If a citation is needed it should follow the reference as in the example below.

M. Thaller, ‘The daily life of the middle ages. Editions of sources and data processing’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 10 (1987), 6–29. Cited here at 22.

Subsequent citation:

Thaller, ‘Daily life of the middle ages’, 22.

Articles in books

The first citation should give:

Author’s initials and surname, article title (in single inverted commas, capitals as for articles in journals), editor’s initials and surname, full title of volume (capitals as for books) in italics, place and date of publication in parenthesis and full page numbers. If a citation is needed it should follow the reference as in the example below.

T. Maisel and A. Müller, ‘Interpreting social information: design and management of source-oriented databases on the history of the university’, in P. Denley, ed., Computing techniques and the history of universities (St. Katharinen, 1996), 35–46. Cited here at 37.

Introductions and appendices should follow the same form. For example:

L. I. Borodkin and W. Levermann, ‘Introduction’, in L. I. Borodkin and W. Levermann, eds, History and computing in eastern Europe (St. Katherinen, 1993), 1–5.

Subsequent citations:

Maisel and Müller, ‘Interpreting social information’, 37.

Borodkin and Levermann, ‘Introduction’, 3.

Articles reproduced in volumes might also be cited by their original publication. For example:

R. C. Sutch, ‘Douglas North and the new economic history’, in The Cliometric Society, Two pioneers of cliometrics. Robert W. Fogel and Douglass C. North (Oxford, Ohio, 1994), 59–106. Originally published in R. L. Ransom, R. Sutch and G. M. Walton, eds, Explorations in the new economic history: essays in honor of Douglass C. North (New York, 1982).

Theses

The first citation should give:

Author’s initials and surname, title (in single inverted commas), degree university and date (in parenthesis).

D. Levine, ‘The demographic implications of rural industrialisation: a family reconstitution study of Leicestershire villages, 1600–1851’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1974).

Subsequent citations:

Levine, ‘Demographic implications’, 99.

Note that the name of the university should be that which was used by the university at the date of the granting of the degree.

Other publications

Some publications are more readily identifiable by their series and thus more information may be helpful.

D. V. Glass, ed., London inhabitants within the walls, 1695, London Record Society, 2 (London, 1966).

W. M. Bramwell, Pubs and localised communities in mid-Victorian Birmingham, Department of Geography and Earth Science, Queen Mary and Westfield College, Occasional Paper 22 (London, 1984).

More confusingly, some volumes are technically part of more than one series. It is recommended to include information on both if possible.

M. A. Havinden, ed., Household and farm inventories in Oxfordshire, 1550–1590, Oxfordshire Record Society 44 (=Historical Manuscripts Commission, JP 10) (London, 1965).

Published conference proceedings

E. A. Wrigley, ‘Some problems of family reconstitution using English parish register material’, Proceedings of the 3rd international economic history conference, Munich, 1965. Section VII, demography and economy (Paris, 1972), 199–221.

Unpublished conference papers

These should only be cited as a last resort, i.e., if the paper has not been published elsewhere. However if the paper is subsequently published in a different language, both references may be useful.

P. Doorn, ‘Me and my database: towards the end of history and computing’, unpublished paper presented at IX International Association for History and Computing, University of Nijmegen, 30 August–2 September 1994.

General

Where the place or date of publication is not known the abbreviations, n.p. (no place) and n.d. (no date) are acceptable.

Memoir and letters of Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, ed. by A. D. H. Acland (London, 1902).

Electronic publications

Citations referring to electronic publications should generally follow the same format as books, with the addition of the particular medium in which the source was found. In general the format is:

Author, title in italics [type of resource] [date of resource creation or version cited] [where available]. [date of examination, i.e., last recorded date of access].

WWW

Getty Information Institute, The art and architecture thesaurus browser [World Wide Web search interface]. [1997] <URL: http://www.gii. getty.edu/aat_browser/> [18 Sept 1998].

ftp

The King James Bible: electronic edition [online]. [13 Feb 1994] <ftp://ota.ox.ac.uk/pub/ota/public/english/Bible/KJBible.sgm>. [18 Sept 1998].

e-mail

J. Smith <johnsmith@arts.polyu.ac.uk>, ‘Clay pots rediscovered in the museum’, [e-mail to Peter Rogers <pr056@arch.uscol.edu>]. 5 February

1998.

listserv

Peter Knupfer <hnet4@cyberhost.co.za>, ‘Q: academic culture and data sharing’ [discussion], H-NET Discussion List for Association for History and Computing <h-ahc@h-net.msu.edu>. [3 Aug 1998], [online]: <http://www.h-net.msu.edu/logs/ showlog.cgi?ent=0& file=h-ahc.log9808a/1&list=h-ahc>. [18 September 1998].

CD-ROM

R. J. Kain, A socio-economic survey of land use and the agricultural economy. The 1836 national tithe files database [CD-ROM] (Marlborough, 1995).

Archival sources

The first citation of material from any material repository should give the name of the repository in full, with the location included.

If there are subsequent citations of material from the same repository, an abbreviated reference can be used:

Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO) DL30/63/790.

Bibliotheque National, Paris (hereafter BN) MS lat. 5650.

Citation of archival material should follow the conventions of the repository in question, but use the following MS, MSS (pl.), fo., fos, r. (recto) and v. (verso).

Electronic sources archived within data archives should be cited in the style of the archive. For example:

M. Anderson, B. Collins and C. Stott, National sample from the 1851 census of Great Britain [computer file] Colchester, England, The Data Archive [distributor], 1979. SN 1316.

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