• Design. We can work most easily with a simply formatted manuscript. Do not use fancy word-processing features to "design" your manuscript. Such special formatting has to be stripped out to enable the designer and compositor to do their work, so we prefer that you not include it in the first place. Please use only such formatting as is necessary to distinguish content: underlining for book titles or for emphasis, centering vs. flush left for two levels of subheadings, paragraph indents for extracts (block quotations), and so on. Avoid word-processing "styles" such as "Heading 1" and "Body Text Indent."
• Font. Use a "typewriter" typeface (for example, Courier) at 10, 11, or 12 points. A proportionally spaced font (a font in which an m is wider than an i) makes the length of the manuscript much harder to estimate.
• Extracts (block quotations). To set off block quotations, format the paragraph to indent the left margin; do not use hard returns and tabs.
• Submitting the disk. On the disk's label, please indicate operating system (e.g., Windows, Mac) and word processor and version (e.g., Microsoft Word 97, Corel WordPerfect 8.0). The disk and hard copy should match exactly.

• Check your typescript for the absolute fidelity of all quoted material. Checking quotations at a later stage can cause delays and unnecessary expense.
• Ensure that sources for quotes are properly credited.
• Our house style is to set two or more lines of poetry and ten or more lines of prose as extracts. Shorter quotations generally should be run into the text and enclosed in quotation marks. Contact us if you have reason to favor a different style.
• In poetry extracts, follow the alignment of the original as closely as possible. (If you followed the alignment carefully in an earlier draft that used a proportional font, do not redo the work after changing to Courier. We can use an earlier version of your manuscript for alignment reference.) Provide photocopies of previously published versions for alignment reference.
• We prefer that you avoid long quotations in your notes.

• Pare down literature reviews to the most essential works, and eliminate most or all discursive material from the notes. If applicable, see Revising Dissertations for Book Publication.
• For most books, notes are grouped together at the end. However, notes for collections of essays by various authors should be gathered at the ends of their respective essays and preceded by the subheading "Notes." (See Supplemental Guidelines for Volume Editors.)
• Please do not position notes at the bottom of the manuscript page; use endnotes instead (end-of-chapter notes are fine).
• Please carefully proofread authors' names, titles, page numbers, and dates and places of publication.
• If your bibliography is comprehensive, use short citations (author's surname, shortened title, and page number) in the notes or parenthetical references in the text. If you do not have a bibliography or if your bibliography is in essay form, provide full bibliographic information for the first citation in each chapter and short citations thereafter.
• Notes and bibliography, like all manuscript materials, should be double-spaced. Do not add blank lines between notes or between bibliography entries.
• Please number notes consecutively within each chapter.
• To cut down on the number of notes, we recommend parenthetical notes in the text for poetry line numbers and for numerous references to a single work within a chapter.
• If you inserted notes with your word processor's notes feature, please place a page break at the end of each chapter so that the notes begin on a new page. If you know how to adjust page numbers for different sections of a document, place all pages of notes for the book at the end of the manuscript (before the bibliography) and paginate them accordingly.
• You may use the hanging indent feature of your software to format your bibliography; please do not use hard returns and tabs.

CONTENT, STRUCTURE, AND READABILITY

• Up to date. Be sure the manuscript you submit is as up to date as possible. Adding substantial new material or rewriting during editing and production can be complicated and costly.
• Balanced. A book seems most cohesive if its structure is balanced. Ideally, all chapter titles are of roughly similar length and all subheadings are of roughly similar length; all chapters or none have subtitles; all chapters or none have epigraphs; all chapters or none are divided into sections titled with subheadings; and so on.
• Dynamic. Stuffy phrases, passive voice, and polysyllabic jargon are roadblocks in the path of readership. Read questionable passages aloud; if they sound stilted or obscure, they probably are. The copyeditor will be attuned to such problems but may not know how you, the author, would prefer to resolve them. Taking the time to polish your prose prior to editing can give you greater satisfaction with the final result. Strunk's Elements of Style has lots of good advice, especially the section entitled "Elementary Principles of Composition."
• Concise and direct. Avoid repetition, wordiness, and digressions.

• Material owned by others. Authors are almost always responsible for securing permissions required for the publication of their books; check your contract under the paragraph "manuscript." Please submit a text permissions inventory and art inventory and permissions summary as relevant with your final manuscript. We recommend that you acquaint yourself with the doctrine of fair use and request permission only where the doctrine does not apply. N.B. Permissions to quote copyrighted song lyrics are often difficult and costly to obtain; consult your editor if you feel that some lyrics are essential to your work.
• Your own previously published material. Per section 201 of the current copyright law, copyright in each separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in the collective work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the contribution. In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of any rights under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is presumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and distributing the contribution as part of that particular collective work, any revision of that collective work, and any later collective work in the same series [emphasis added]. If any chapters or sections of the manuscript were previously published in a collective work (for example, a journal or an edited volume), please check your contract(s) to see whether you transferred any additional rights to the publisher. We may ask you to provide the following documentation as appropriate:
  • a photocopy of the journal's statement of copyright policy, if it states that all rights, other than the right of first publication, remain with the author
  • a copy of your original contract indicating that you control all reprint rights
  • if you transferred additional rights to the publisher, a statement from the publisher transferring all rights to you or a statement from the publisher granting permission to reprint the work (we prefer that you request world English-language rights for all editions)
  If you are reusing only a portion of a work published previously, please consult the press before requesting permission.

• Please do not put note markers on display matter (chapter titles, epigraphs, and subheadings) and do not use more than one note per sentence.
• Although we prefer Chicago style for citations, we accept other styles as long as they are reasonable and consistent.
• We allow either U.S. style (July 19, 1865) or European style (19 July 1865) for dates. Please aim for consistency.
• If you use a lot of abbreviations, consider creating a list of abbreviations.