• Submit as a Word document (.docx)
• Double-spaced, 12-point font (e.g., Times New Roman)
• Sentence-style capitalization for headings
• No boxed text
• Use Oxford (serial) commas
• Use spaced en dashes (UK English) or unspaced em dashes (US English) consistently

• Avoid notes where possible; reword into main text
• If essential, use book endnotes (not footnotes or chapter endnotes)
• Number notes consecutively across the book using Arabic numerals

General

You can use whatever form of English you usually use (e.g. UK English, US English, Canadian English, Australian English, etc.) as long as you use that form consistently throughout the whole book (except in quotations, which should be the same as the original). Please also note down the form of English you have used in your manuscript submission form.

Specific

• Use “among”, not “amongst” (also “while” and “amid” rather than “whilst” and “amidst”).
• Don’t use accents on anglicised foreign words like elite, naive, role, etc.

• Avoid gendered writing, so don’t refer to a country or a ship as “she”.
• Avoid using “he/she” – instead use singular “they” or rework the sentence.
• Use “that” for defining clauses and “, which” for non-defining clauses (e.g. “I was in the lecture hall that’s next to the canteen” and “I was in lecture hall B17, which is next to the canteen”).
• Use “a” not “an” in front of words beginning with “h” (e.g. “a historical event”).
• Use “less” when describing an uncountable noun (e.g. “less water”) and “fewer” when describing a countable noun (e.g. “fewer cakes”).

• Please use the Oxford (or serial) comma throughout the book for clarity (except in a quotation which should follow the original). “They like pies, cakes, and cookies.” 
• Note that commas can be used before conjunctions (words like “and”, “but”, “if”, “because”) when the clause following the conjunction can be read as a complete sentence on its own (e.g. “I walked to the shops, because I needed to buy some new notebooks” is correct because the underlined text is a complete sentence, but “I walked to the shops, and decided to buy myself cake” is incorrect because the underlined doesn’t make sense on its own, so the comma should be removed). As noted above, please use commas after conjunctions preceding the last item in a list (Oxford or serial comma).
• Be careful when using parenthetical commas when describing someone or something. Often people will write a sentence like this: “The BAFTA Best Supporting Actor-nominated star, Ken Watanabe, moved to Tokyo in 1978.” This sentence is incorrect because it doesn’t make sense if you remove the text within the parenthetical commas (see underlined). It also assumes that he is the only person ever nominated for the BAFTA Best Supporting Actor award. However, the following sentence “My only son, James Smith, is very good at public speaking” is fine because the sentence makes sense once the text within the parenthetical commas is removed (see underlined).
• Use double quote marks and then single quote marks within double for both quotation and scare quotes.
  • The report stated that “this comes at a pivotal moment and has been classified ‘top secret’ until further notice”.

• Any punctuation that is not part of the exact quotation should be placed outside of the quotation marks. Here are a variety of correct examples:
  • President Kennedy once exclaimed “Ich bin ein Berliner!” (The exclamation mark is within the quotation marks because of the way he said the sentence.)
  • Smith believes that “books can change lives”, but Jones disagrees. (The comma is outside the quotation marks because it is a comma we have added – it wasn’t included in the original quote.)
  • “Stories are important,” writes Brown, “because they educate and entertain.” (The first comma is within the quotation marks because it was included in Brown’s original quote. If Brown had not included a comma after “important” the comma would have appeared after the closing quotation mark.)

• If you are using brackets, please note that punctuation should not fall immediately before an opening bracket, and the sentence should make sense if the bracketed content is removed.
  • We love books (including fiction, non-fiction, and educational) and hope to recommend more this year.

• If you would like to add brackets after a complete sentence, you need to treat the content within the brackets as a complete sentence.
  • The report examined the importance of making sure the workplace is an inclusive environment. (We are writing our own report on the related subject of diversity in publishing.)

• If you are using UK English spelling, please use spaced en dashes to set off a parenthetical phrase – as here – but if you are using US English, please use unspaced em dashes—as here—which are longer. (See the numbers and dates section below for how to use dashes in number or date ranges.)
• If listing initials in someone’s name, ensure you punctuate with full stops and spaces:
  • Ms S. H. Smith.

• In titles and headings, please just capitalise the first word, any proper nouns, and trade names. “A report notes that Amazon’s business practices are worrying more voters”.
• Subjects (mathematics, history, sociology) should be in lower case unless you are referring to a whole department or a professor of a subject (e.g. “The Department of History”, “Professor of Disability Studies”). The professor is correct but you would then capitalise before a name: Professor Jones. Similarly, the university is correct but you would have Harvard University or the University of Birmingham.
• Here are some specific capitalisation preferences surrounding the governance of countries that you may encounter. If you have a question about the correct capitalisation of a specific word, phrase, or name that does not appear below, please contact your commissioning editor.
  • government, parliament, Commons, House, Lords, the Left, left wing., the foreign secretary, the queen, Queen Elizabeth II.
  • Congress (or the United States Congress), the Senate, the federal government, House of Representatives, the United States Constitution, the president, President Biden.
  • the Government of Canada (Gouvernement du Canada), ministers of the Crown (the Cabinet), the federal civil service, the Canadian Constitution, the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada.
  • Australian Government (or Commonwealth Government), the Parliament of Australia, the federal Parliament, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Constitution of Australia.
  • New Zealand Government (Te Kāwantanga o Aotearoa), the House of Representatives, the Cabinet Manual, the Executive Council, the Cabinet.
• Religious places and names: church, the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox Judaism, Muslim.
• Events: First World War (not World War I), Second World War (not World War II), Big Bang.
• Directions and places: easterly, eastwards, northwest, western Europe, the North of England, the Midlands, South Africa, southern Africa, the West.

• You can use “1.”, “2.”, “3.” if the list is a sequence of events. For multi-level lists, you can also use “(a)”, “(b)”, “(c)” followed by “(i)”, “(ii)”, “(iii)”.
• Bullet points can be used for lists in which the items are not referred to again.
• If a list of either style (numbers or bullets) is introduced by a colon, the first letter of each list point should be capitalised and each list point should end with a semicolon, apart from the penultimate one, which should end with “; and” and the last one, which should end with a full stop.

Here are the points on this:

• Point 1 text;
• Point 2 text;
• Point 3 text;
• Penultimate point text; and
• Last point text.

Start of next sentence post-list.

• If a list of either style follows on from a complete sentence that ends in a full stop, each point should start with a capital letter and end with a full stop.
• If a list is introduced by a colon and is only one or two words per point, start the point with a lower case letter and end with no punctuation, apart from the last point, which should end will a full stop unless the sentence continues after the points.

Here are the points on this:

• cheese
• cake
• milk
• bread.

Start of next sentence post-list.

Or

When I go shopping I like to buy:

• cheese 
• cake
• milk
• bread,

but I would like to try some new things.

• Spell out “for example”, “that is”, and “and so on” in the text but use the abbreviations “e.g.”, “i.e.”, and “etc.” within parentheses.
• Spell out all uncommon abbreviations at their first occurrence and provide the abbreviation in brackets. Thereafter, just use the abbreviation (e.g. “I attended the last Independent Publisher’s Guild (IPG) conference recently. The IPG is known for …”).
• Punctuate truncations (Prof., vol.) but not contractions (Dr, Mr, St, vols). Truncations are where a word has been cut off part way through and contractions are where the first and last letters of the word are given. The point/period used at the end of truncations essentially replace the missing end of the word. 
• Do not include points/periods in sets of initials/acronyms, except for initials in personal names (e.g. use “UK” and “US” (instead of “U.K.” and “U.S.”) and “Ms S. H. Smith” (instead of “Ms S H Smith”)).

• Contractions are acceptable in moderation (e.g. “don’t”, “can’t”, “I’ll”).
• Don’t modify contractions used in sources you are quoting.

• Italicise text in foreign languages except for proper nouns and words that are now commonly used in English (e.g. ad hoc, bona fide, cafe, naive, avant-garde, status quo, vice versa). Italicise: a priori, a posteriori, et al., reduction ad absurdum, cogito, Dasein, qua.
• Include translations of foreign words or phrases (including book or article titles) in ordinary brackets in the text and extracts, and in square brackets [ ] in bibliographic references and after displayed extracts. 
• Translations of titles are capitalised sentence style (the first letter of the first word is capitalised and any proper nouns).
• Where place names are given, use the English version where appropriate or provide the English alternative in brackets following the original place name.

• Book titles, journal names, operas, collections of poetry and long poems, paintings and plays should all be italicised in the text and the references.
• Exceptions: religious texts (The Bible, the Koran, etc.), song titles.
• Please use bold for emphasis rather than italics, but this should be done only where absolutely necessary.

• Hyphenate compound structures when the hyphen is essential for meaning. There is a difference in meaning between a “deep green sea” and a “deep-green sea”.
• When a compound modifier includes an adverb ending in “-ly”, do not hyphenate it (e.g. “the delicately scented rose” not “the delicately-scented rose”).
• Use a dictionary for prefixes such as anti-, extra-, inter-, over-. Some can be run on, but some require a hyphen. The main thing to consider here is that they should be consistently presented throughout your book.

• Write out numbers to ten and thereafter use the digits (e.g. “three people”, “11 people”). However, avoid mixing in the same sentence – use digits in this case.
• If you are listing page numbers always use the digits.
• Use commas in large numbers (“1,000”).
• Do not elide any number or date ranges (e.g. use “1927–1988” rather than “1927–88”), including in the references and the index.
• Please use an en dash between the numbers/dates rather than a hyphen. If you are using Word, you can find en (and em) dashes in Insert > Symbol > More Symbols > Special Characters.
• When providing a number/date range, if you introduce it with “from”, you should not use an en dash but rather write “This happened from 1967 to 1969” (similarly, “between 1967 and 1969”). If you are introducing it as “in”, you can use an en dash: “This happened in 1067–1969.”
• If you are following UK English spelling, please list dates as “27 May 2021”. If you are following US English spelling, please list dates as “May 27, 2021”.
• 1980s (not 1980’s, ‘80s, eighties, or nineteen eighties) and twentieth century (not 20th century).
• Avoid using superscript when writing numbers (e.g. use “100th” not “100^th”). 

• Write out per cent rather than using the symbol (e.g. “12 per cent”) except in tables.
• If you are providing a number with units, write the number as digits and provide the standard abbreviation or symbol for the unit of measurement (“6 lbs” rather than “six lbs” or “six pounds”) with a space between the digit and the unit.
• Avoid mixing imperial and metric measurements – please just use one system throughout the whole book.