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Welcome to the H-AMSTDY Style Guide. Reviews for H-AMSTDY are, in general, like reviews for any paper journal. The main exception is that we have a virtually unlimited amount of space. While the general guideline on length is 750-1000 words, you should feel free to write as much as you think is relevant to both your subject and your audience. Remember that H-AMSTDY reaches a very wide audience-some are university professors, others are graduate students; many do research exclusively, others are full-time teachers; some are specialists in cultural history, others study Americana. So, as you write your review you should keep in mind that unlike the audience of a paper journal, H-AMSTDY's audience tends to be more broad and have a greater diversity of interests. Don't be afraid to bring in background information or historiography to help round out your review.
So, the good news with that is that you have a great deal more freedom in your review. Don't be afraid to use it!
Please follow the guidelines below as closely as possible. It will help us to publish a timely and scholarly review. If you have questions please contact the H-AMSTDY Review Editor in your areas of specialization.
H-AMSTDY Book Review Editors:
Scott Gac (scott.gac@yale.edu): Music, Reform Movements, Colonial Period through Civil War
Barbara Wachal (BWachal@stlcc.edu): Slavery and Abolitionism, Popular Culture, Colonial Period through Civil War
Elizabeth Stockton (estockto@email.unc.edu): Literature, Law, Architecture, 19th Century. Gender Studies
Kelly Baker (kjb6056@fsu.edu): Religion, Material Culture, Gender/LGBT Studies, 20th and 21st Century
David Leonard (djlwsu@adelphia.net): Sports, Ethnic Studies, Urban Studies, 20th and 21st Century
Guidelines:
- Reviews must be in ASCII format-that is, plain vanilla a-b-c's with no accents or italics (on most computers, save your file as a *.txt file). Once you've finished the review, you can simply mail it to the Review Editor by doing a cut-and-paste into an e-mail. Or, you can send it as an attachment saved in "text-only" format in MSWord.
- All reviews should carry the reviewer's name, institutional affiliation and e-mail address at the top. As you format the header of your review, please consult the following template example:
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-AMSTDY@h-net.msu.edu (Month, Year)
John Smith. _Title of Book_. Trans. Jerome Healy [If there is a series, put it here]. New York: Basic Books, 1998. x + 330 pp. Tables, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $20.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-01-567890-8; $9.95 (paper), ISBN 01-567890-8.
Reviewed for H-South by Jane Doe (doej@somewhere.edu)
Department of Some Subject, Somewhere University
Jane Doe's Book Review Title
Readers will like this book a lot because it has neat pictures ...
[After the text comes the following copyright statement:]
Copyright (c) 2000 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact H-Net@h-net.msu.edu.
Some stylistic specifics:
- Avoid applying alliterations, especially excessive extents.
- Reviewers should proofread their text carefully.
- All reviews should be titled.
- Paragraphs should not be indented and should be set off by an empty line of text.
- All reviews should be single-spaced.
- Two spaces should appear after colons and periods. The text should be 60 to 75 columns wide, and should start at the flush left margin.
- Use U.S. as an adjective; United States as a noun.
- Spell out names of centuries; and hyphenate when they are adjectives: "eighteenth-century literature."
- & and % can cause problems on the Web; use "and" and "percent" unless in a quotation.
- Spell out most numbers under 1000--numbers that can be spelled out in less than three words; BUT use Arabic numerals in "10 percent."
- Use "..." for ellipses, and "...." if a sentence ends in the omitted part; "word--word" for dashes (no spaces).
- Do not use tabs or doc-specific formatting. Nearly anything you do to optimize the look of the review in your own e-mail program will be lost in ASCII, and sometimes it will cause garbled text or added characters.
- Italics can be represented in ASCII like this: _Title of Book_.
- Please do not add hyphens in words to make the lines look nice on your screen. When e-mail or html re-justifies the text, extra spaces will appear, since the word will often no longer be at the end of a line.
- In listing the publisher and place of publication, there are three rules:
- If the state is named in the name of the publisher, it's not included in the place. So Lexington: University Press of Kentucky and Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
- We use "literary" abbreviations for states, rather than postal codes; so Conn., not CT, Del., not DE.
- Generally, if a publisher has US and overseas offices, we try to list one of each, since folks all over the world access the pages. So Cambridge University Press is New York and Cambridge, England, etc.
- All graphics-tables, figures, photos, etc.-are usually lumped by the cataloguers as "illustrations." Notes or bibliography, or both, are usually listed as "bibliographical references" without elaboration.
- Any standard citation form may be used. However, reviewers should use endnotes rather than footnotes. Footnotes do not translate well in e-mail or the web.
o For citations of Internet sources, you may wish to reference Mel Page's useful General Citation Guidelines, found on the H-Net web pages by searching there.
- Page numbers should be supplied for all quoted passages. Please use the following standard:
- "... does not really answer the question" (pp. 235-36); or "... if he had thought of it," (p. xv). Note that the punctuation goes after the citation.
- ...in a recently published article.[2] is how to designate a note. Then, for the note itself: [2]. James Smith, "Article," etc.
- H-Net is flexible concerning the length of reviews, but 750-1,250 words is a good guideline. Along those lines, you should not feel constrained one way or another. Feel free to take as much space as you need. If you wish to begin by reviewing the available literature to lead into your review and to help provide context, you should feel free to do so.
Finally, if you have any questions, please contact the H-AMSTDY Review Editor in your area of specialization (see the editor listing above).
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