Style Guide

Spelling

• British, rather than American, words and spelling should be used 

  • •  E.g. Centre, colour, programme, pavement; not center, color, program, sidewalk

• Use of ‘Oxford Commas’ is permitted if there is some reason why the final sub-clause is to be separated or given emphasis 

  • • E.g. ‘Unusually the artist gained some experience across the Channel, having travelled to Rome, Paris, and London.’

Punctuation

• Apostrophes to indicate the possessive case for singular nouns ending in ‘s’:

  • • E.g. ‘the bass’s stripes’

• Apostrophes to indicate the possessive case for plural nouns ending in ‘s’:

  • • E.g. ‘the puppies’ bed’

• It is conventional to put an ‘s’ at the end of proper nouns ending in ‘s’, apart from Classical names

  • • E.g. Dickens’s novel vs. Vitruvius’ architectural plans

Dates  

• Dates should follow European order without the commonly 

  • • E.g. 26 March 1688

• Dates should be written out in full 

  • • E.g. Eighteenth century, not 18th century

• Dates should be hyphenated if used as adjectives (please use the ‘-’ hyphen)

  • • E.g. ‘in the nineteenth century’ or ‘in nineteenth-century art’, but not ‘in the 19th century’

• Cardinal numbers should be spelt out and should not take the ordinal form (st, th, rd)

  • • E.g. ‘the twentieth of March’ not ‘the 20th of March’ 

• Numbers that identify decades do not take an apostrophe and can be abbreviated in the second instance  

  • • E.g. ‘1970s’ or ‘in the 1970s and ‘80s’, but not ‘1970’s’

• Inclusive dates are given as 1914–1918, not 1914–8 nor 1914–18 (please use the ‘en dash’ ‘–’).

• Italian dates are italicised and capitalised when used as a noun 

  • • E.g. ‘in the Quattrocento’ or ‘in quattrocento art’

Numbers

• Whole numbers from zero to one-hundred should be spelt out in full, numerals should be used for numbers over one-hundred 

  • • E.g. ‘Three new galleries will provide display space for over 205 paintings and drawings’

• Exceptions include page numbers, dates and round numbers over a hundred 

  • • E.g. ‘More than a thousand copies are known to exist’, rather than ‘More than 1000 copies are known to exist’ 

• Commas should be used to separate thousands, hundred-thousands, millions, et cetera 

  • • E.g. 40,123 not 40123 or 40.123

• Roman numerals should be converted to Arabic, unless citing original pagination. Names of monarchs and rulers should be given in Roman numerals.

  • • E.g. Henry VIII

• Page numbers should be given in full (please use the en dash ‘–’) 

  • • E.g. 1–2; 53–54; 203–204; 225–254

 Quotations

• Use double quotation marks (“”) for speech and quotations from articles and books and single quotation marks (‘’) for a quotation within speech.

• Block quotations (three lines of text or more) should be indented with no quotation marks 

• Indicate a break in the text with an ellipsis (…) with a single space on either side. Do not use ellipses at the beginning or the end of a quotation

• Punctuation should be placed inside quotation marks  

• Lines of poetry are separated by slashes (/) or double slashes (//) for stanzas  

Quotations from Foreign Languages

• All quotations should be translated into English in the body of the text. Where necessary the original text can be provided in the endnotes, unless a short non-English phrase is necessary in the text. In this case, it should be cited in the original and immediately followed by a translation in brackets 

  • • ‘coram papa (in the presence of the pope)’. Thereafter it can be used in the original 

• Passages of exceptional length should appear in an Appendix 

• Citations from non-Roman alphabets should be transliterated 

• Direct quotations of early texts should try to preserve the spelling, punctuation or abbreviations of the original with any alterations explained 

Italics

• Italics, rather than underlying or bold-type, are used for emphasis. Any such emphasis in a quotation should be indicated as such in the endnote

  • • E.g. See Smith, 1936, at n.36 above, p.22, my emphasis 

• Any foreign words that appear in the text, but are not directly quoted, should appear in italics

• Foreign place names, locations or proper nouns are not italicised

Subheadings  

• Please use subheadings to break your article up into readable and sequential sections 

• Subheadings should be as short as possible

• Subheadings should appear as capitalised titles, without numbers 

  • • THE MONA LISA  

 Locations

• Where more than one location has the same name, this should be clarified

• In citing American cities or place names, use the standard postal style for identifying the state. In the event that none is given, the town will be assumed to be European 

  • • Cambridge alone will indicate the town in England; Cambridge, MA, for the US city

• Standard English names for foreign cities should be used  

  • • Florence, not Firenze 

 Acknowledgements

• Acknowledgements should be kept to a minimum and precede the endnotes

Miscellaneous

• i.e., e.g., and etc. should be avoided in the text

• When separating a word or sub-clause with a dash, the em-dash (—) should be used on either side of the word or sub-clause 

  • • E.g. The president’s nephews—sons of his late brother—are deceased. 

• Colons and semi-colons should be used sparingly

• Truncations are followed by a full stop, but abbreviations are not, unless the abbreviation is the plural of a truncation 

• ‘Mr’ is not followed by a full stop, but abbreviations are (e.g. ‘Prof.’ rather than Professor) ‘ed.’ is followed by a full stop, as is its plural ‘eds.’)

• ‘Saint’ should be spelt out rather than ‘St’ 

• Acronyms and initialisms should be spelt out in the first instance, with the acronym in brackets. Thereafter they can be abbreviated

  • • E.g. ‘The United Nations (UN) introduced …’ 

    • Scholars’ names should always be cited in full in the text when they are first mentioned, thereafter just the surname will suffice

In Text Citation

• In the body of the text: title (Fig. 1, date) unless the date is given in the sentence

• Please give titles as they appear in their institution rather than their common name

  • • E.g. Officers and Men of the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Wilhelm van Ruytenburgh, known as Night Watch

Illustrations’ captions

• Should follow the following format: Artist’s name (last name, first name), Title, Date, Medium, dimensions (in metric). City, Collection. If copyright considerations apply, these appear at the end of the caption. 

  • • E.g. Office of John Soane, Goose-Pie House, Whitehall, c.1815, pencil, ink, and watercolour, 19cm x 38cm.  London, Sir John Soane’s Museum. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Sir John Soane’s Museum

• • • All references should appear as end-notes rather than footnotes, with no separate bibliography

    • References should be kept to a minimum and should not introduce additional information

    • The University of York’s History of Art Department and, subsequently, its postgraduate journal uses the Chicago referencing style. A practical guide on how to use the Chicago referencing style can be found here.