H-Net Review Guidelines and Style Sheet

Reviews must be in plain-text format, with no special characters or formatting, which often do not translate across different software platforms. The most frequent problems occur when word processor programs insert computerized stylistics that are outside of the basic character set, such as italics, smart quotes, ellipses, and em-dashes. Therefore, please deactivate the AutoCorrect function in MS Word, QuickSymbols and SmartQuotes in WordPerfect, and/or similar functions in other word processing programs when composing and editing reviews.

• Header Guidelines
• First Part
• Second Part
• Third Part
• Review Title
• Text Guidelines
• Style Sheet
• Commonly Used Words and Phrases

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Header Guidelines

Each H-Net Review begins with three mandatory headers. Please ensure that you include all of the required information in the headers of your review. Begin each line flush with the left margin. Use hard returns to separate lines or headers only in these locations: in the first header, after the word REVIEW and after the date published; in the second header after the final ISBN; and in the third header, after the reviewer's affiliation. You will also place a hard return after the review's title, discussed below.

• Within the text of headers there should only be one space after each period or colon.


• See the template below for an example of how your three headers (and the review title) should appear.

H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-List@h-net.msu.edu (August 2006) Clark Kent. _Out of the Phone Booth: My Super Life and Times_. Translated and edited by Jimmy Olson. Superheroes Uncaped Series. Metropolis: Planet Books, 2003. x + 298 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. .00 (cloth), ISBN 987-0-1234-5678-9; .95 (paper), ISBN 987-0-1234-9876-5. Reviewed for H-List by Lois Lane, Department of History, Metropolis University I Knew Him When Readers will like this book a lot because...

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The following information is broken down by individual headers and is mandatory (with any exceptions notated) for all H-Net Reviews. Moreover, the information must be provided in the order indicated:

The First Header contains 2 fields:

• H-NET BOOK REVIEW


• The publishing list name and the date (month and year) of publication on the list. Be sure to replace H-List in the example below with the name of your list, such as H-South.
  
  
  • As such:
    
    H-NET BOOK REVIEW
    Published by H-South@h-net.msu.edu (August 2006)

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The Second Header contains a number of fields, each of which needs to be closed by a period. Please use only one space in between each field, for example between the period that closes the author field and the title-foot that begins the book-title field, as such: Smith. _My Life in ..._

• Author(s)/editor(s) of the book under review (as written, surname last; if there is an editor or editors, then "ed." or "eds." should be used, as in "Clark Kent, ed." ).


• Book Title.


• Additional information, such as a translator, preface or foreword author; series name; or edition number (if other than the first). This field can actually contain several items; however, each should be divided by a period. Thus information for both a translator and a second edition would appear as such: "Second edition. Translated by Lois Lane." Do not abbreviate within the field, for example "Trans. Lois Lane" is incorrect. This field is optional.


• Publication information (city, publisher's name, and publication date).


• Number of pages in the book (list both roman numerals, if any, and arabic numerals). This portion of the header should be spaced and formatted as follows: x + 298 pp.


• List of reference matter and other book features, such as illustrations, bibliography, notes, and/or index (do not include the word "and" in the list).


• Price, format (cloth and/or paper), and ISBN(s). ISBNs should be hyphenated if that information is readily available.
  
  As such:
  
  Clark Kent. _Out of the Phone Booth: My Super Life and Times_. Translated and edited by Jimmy Olson. Superheroes Uncaped Series. Metropolis: Planet Books, 2006. x + 298 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. .00 (cloth), ISBN 987-0-1234-5678-9; .95 (paper), ISBN 987-0-1234-9876-5.
  
  Jane Doe and John Doe, eds. _The Jimmy Olson Memoirs_. Metropolis: Daily Planet Press, 2005. ix + 107 pp. Index. .00 (paper), ISBN 987-0-12345-678-9.

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The Third Header contains 1 field:

• The list name and the reviewer's name, department, and affiliation. "Independent Scholar" may be used when a reviewer has no academic affiliation.
  
  
  • As such:
    
    Reviewed for H-List by Lois Lane, Department of History, Metropolis University

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Review Title

The review title comes directly after the third header. Since your review title will appear very close to the book information, avoid repeating the book title in the title of your review. The review title should be separated from the third header by a double-space using a hard return.

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Text Guidelines:

• H-Net generally follows the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (2003).


• All text should begin flush with the left margin. Please do not indent anything anywhere in the review, including titles, paragraphs, and block quotations.


• Single-space the text, with a double space between paragraphs. Do not use tabs or extra spaces anywhere in the review.


• Within the text of the review, reviewers may consistently use either one or two spaces between each sentence and after colons; however, H-Net recommends one space after all punctuation. Please note that the header fields should be single-spaced, even if the text body uses two spaces.


• Italics and underlining should be represented in ASCII with title-feet, as such: _Title of Book_.


• Page numbers should be supplied in a parenthetic source citation in the text for all quoted passages from the book under review. Please do not abbreviate inclusive page numbers (use "pp. 211-212," not "pp. 211-12"). Note that punctuation generally follows the citation, as in this example, where the period falls after the last parenthesis:
  
  
  • Kent writes, "I knew then that my life would never be the same" (p. 57).


• Please provide an individual's full name (first and last) at the first mention of that individual in the text of the review. Thus, "According to Lois Lane..." rather than "According to Lane..." The exceptions to this rule are pen names, names from pre-modern eras where no first name is given or easily obtainable, and, in a very few instances specific, obvious exceptions--for example, Hitler and Luther on H-German; Shakespeare on H-Albion, Erasmus on most lists. Even for these, H-Net prefers a first and last name for the first mention because reviews are often re-posted on other lists.


• For many works (books, movies, poems, etc.) noted in reviews, naming author and title (and in parentheses date of publication) within the body of the review and not in an endnote is sufficient and preferred. Place the publication/production year in parentheses immediately after the title, with no intervening punctuation, as such: "In _Superman Returns_ (2006), the producer shows..." For longer or unwieldy citations (to journal articles, Web sites, theses, etc.), the reference should be placed in an endnote.


• The default assumption is that publication dates will always be provided for works noted in reviews; however, if the publication date of a particular source is uncertain (if for example it is old enough that its exact provenance is in academic dispute) that fact should be noted when you submit the review to your editor.


• Please treat endnotes as an exception and use them very sparingly, primarily for bibliographical references to sources other than the book under review. Generally, the endnote number should come at the end of a sentence, in brackets, and in the same position in which the superscript number would ordinarily fall--usually after the sentence-ending punctuation, without any intervening space, as such:
  
  
  • Lex Luthor has written extensively of his struggles with Superman.[1]


• At the end of the review, place the word "Notes" (or "Note" if there is only one) at the left margin, in plain text (without quotation marks, a colon, or italicization). As such:

• [Last line of the review.]
  
  
• Notes
  
  [1]. Lex Luthor, _My Struggles with Superman_ (Metropolis: Planet Books, 1999).
  
  [2]. Lois Lane, "My Struggles with Superman," in _Superman: The Man, the Myth_, ed. Lana Lang (Metropolis: Planet Books, 2001), 202-238.
  
  [3]. Perry White, "Why I Hired Clark Kent," _The Journal of Superhero History_ 25 (2000): 572-593.
  
  

Per the Chicago Manual of Style, we no longer use "p." and "pp." in endnote citations.

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H-NET Reviews Style Sheet

Below you will find a brief style sheet. These are some general rules, followed by a longer list of specific examples.

1. For the sake of consistency, H-Net uses American spelling and punctuation styles.


2. Use "U.S." and "U.K." as adjectives, "United States" and "United Kingdom" as nouns


3. In a list of items, a serial comma should appear before "and," as such: "... green, blue, red, purple, and yellow…."


4. In general, spell out whole numbers from one through one hundred, and any of these numbers followed by "hundred," "thousand," "million," and so on: "fifteen thousand soldiers," "three million people." Otherwise, use numerals (as always for dates, as 1492). Use a comma in numbers of four digits or more when they are expressed in numerals: "1,000." But use numerals in "10 percent," and for the sake of consistency, if the use of numerals is required for one number in a group of similar items in close proximity to each other in your text, use numerals for them all: "482 soldiers left home, but only 62 returned."


5. Put a space both before and after a three-dot ellipsis, but no space before a four-dot ellipsis. However, do not put spaces between the dots in either case, because the dots may otherwise become separated on different lines in various e-mail programs or on the Web. For example: "Like self-government rights, polyethnic rights are seen as permanent.... Special representation rights ... are typically intended to be a temporary response."


6. Similarly, use two hyphens to represent an em-dash, and do not put a space before, between, or after them: "word--word."


7. Use lowercase and arabic numerals to refer to numbered parts of a book, even when the book itself uses roman numerals or some other system: "chapter 5," "part 2," and so on.


8. The names of such parts of a book as introductions, prefaces, and forewords are not treated as titles.


9. Use double quotation marks to refer to a word as a word: I like chocolate; the word "chocolate" has nine letters.


10. Possessives of names and singular words ending in an "s" are generally formed in the usual way, by adding an apostrophe and an "s"--so, "Dickens's novels." However, if the name ends in an "eez" sound (e.g., Euripides) or in an unpronounced "s" (e.g., Descartes) you omit the possessive "s"--so, "Descartes'."


11. Names of ethnic and racial groups, and other similarly sensitive issues, should conform to American usage and the best scholarly practices in your field. If you have a question about usage on the list you are reviewing for, please be sure to ask your editor.

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H-NET Reviews Editorial Cheat Sheet of Commonly Used Words and Phrases

This cheat sheet of spelling and capitalization is based on The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (2003), chapters 7-9. (These are examples of spelling and capitalization, not preferred uses.) Please consult your CMS for detailed explanations and numerous other examples. See especially 7.90 (Hyhenation Guide for Compounds, Combining Forms, and Prefixes), 8.65 (Lowercased Words Derived from Proper Nouns), 8.66-8.76 (Names of Organizations), and 8.77-8.93 (Historical and Cultural Terms).

• 50 percent; a 10 percent increase (no hyphen)


• the 1990s (no apostrophe); the nineties


• 1920s-style (both adjective and adverb take hyphen)


• administration; the Carter administration


• African Americans; African American history (* Note that CMS no longer recommends a hyphen in the adjective.)


• antebellum


• the Bible; biblical


• the Capitol (building), but the capital city


• in chapter 3


• the church today; the United Methodist Church (denomination); a Methodist church


• the civil rights movement


• coauthor


• the Communist Party (but Communist parties); the party; Communist(s); Communist countries; communism (as a system of thought, as in "the communism of the early Christians") or Communism (as the name of an international political movement, as in "during the cold war, the United States government sought to prevent the spread of Communism")


• cutting-edge research; on the cutting edge


• the Dalai Lama (traditionally capitalized), but previous dalai lamas


• decision making; a decision-making body


• e-mail


• the East, eastern, an easterner, the East Coast (referring to the eastern U.S.); the East, the Far East, Eastern (referring to the Orient and Asian culture); eastern Europe, but Eastern Europe when referring to the post-WWII division of Europe


• the equal rights amendment (U.S., unratified); ERA


• fall (season)


• federal; the federal government; federal agencies


• Greater London


• a half hour; a half-hour session


• a historical study; an heir (use "a" before a pronounced "h")


• a history course (lowercase academic subjects unless they are part of a department name or an official course name or are themselves proper nouns, such as Latin)


• the Ice Age, but the information age (capitalize prehistoric cultural periods but not analogous terms for modern periods)


• interdisciplinary


• the Internet; the Net


• Interstate 80; I-80; the interstate


• a jack-of-all-trades (such familiar phrases are usually hyphenated), but a flash in the pan


• John A. Doe Jr.; John A. Doe III (no commas)


• L. A. Lane (period and space after initials); LBJ (no period or space when whole name abbreviated)


• a master's degree; M.A.'s and Ph.D.'s


• medieval village


• metalanguage


• the minister; the Reverend Shirley Stoops


• midcentury; the mid-twentieth century


• the Middle Ages


• the middle class; a middle-class neighborhood


• _Miranda v. Arizona_; the _Miranda_ case


• New York City; the city of New York


• the nineteenth century; nineteenth-century history; early nineteenth-century history


• nonviolent


• North Africa, North African countries, in northern Africa


• one-half (noun and adjective)


• online


• the Pacific Ocean; the Pacific and Atlantic oceans


• on pages 1-35


• parents-in-law


• Parliament; parliamentary; the British parliament


• policymaking


• the pope; Pope John Paul II


• postmodernism


• premodern


• President Lincoln; the president


• prewar


• the professor; Kriste Lindenmeyer, professor of history; Professor Lindenmeyer


• the Progressive Era


• Qur'an; Qur'anic (or Koran; Koranic)


• the Republic of Indonesia; the republic


• the Right; members of the right wing; right-winger(s); on the right


• roman numerals; roman type


• the sheikh; Sheikh Ibrahim el-Zak Zaky


• so-called (adjective)


• socioeconomic


• the solar system


• the South, southern, southerner, but Southern/Southerner in American Civil War contexts


• southern Africa (referring to the southern part of the continent), but Southern California (considered a cultural entity)


• ten- and twenty-year intervals (hyphen with word space)


• the third world


• transatlantic; trans-American


• the twenty-first century


• the United States Postal Service; the postal service; the post office


• the University of Chicago; the university; the University of Chicago and Harvard University; Northwestern and Princeton universities; the University of Wisconsin-Madison


• a well-known person; he is well known; a widely known critic (no hyphen after adverb ending in "ly" within compound modifier)


• the World Wide Web; the Web; a Web site; a Web page


• worldwide; Warsaw-wide


• x-ray (noun, verb, or adjective)