General

The typescript must be double-spaced. You are advised to use 12 pt Times New Roman for your main text.

Coversheet

Please supply as a separate document a coversheet containing information about you as author. The copy of the article text sent for review will not include this coversheet, but the information will be included in the published article. The sheet should include:

Article title
Your and any co-author’s names
Note on the author(s): supply a brief author bio statement (up to 75 words) giving your current position and research interests. Include your ORCID ID (if you have one), and any contact details.

Article structure

Article title
Abstract and keywords
Article text (including footnotes)
References

Abstract and keywords

Please provide a concise abstract for your article of around 120 words (and no more than 150 words).

The abstract should provide a clear overview of the subject and where possible, the personal pronoun should not be used, but an impersonal voice adopted: ‘This article discusses...’.

Please also suggest 5-10 keywords which can be used for describing the content of the article.

Please note that:

keywords should be kept short: to one word where possible (although two- or three-word specialist terms are acceptable where necessary)
keywords should not be too generalised
each keyword should appear in the abstract.

Sub-headings

Do insert sub-headings into the text, worded to aid the reader’s navigation through the article. Sub-headings should not be put into capital letters. Please avoid the use of more than three levels of heading. (For clarity in the typescript, a level 1 sub-heading should be bold centred, a level 2 sub-heading should be bold aligned left, a level 3 sub-heading should be italic aligned left.) Level 1 sub-headings may be numbered (‘1. …’, ‘2. …’, ‘3. …’), if you need to cross-refer to sections of the article text (‘as discussed above in section 2’).

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used for additional comments; they should not be used simply for bibliographical references (see below ‘Bibliographical References’).

Footnotes will be numbered consecutively through each article. Note that footnote indicators in the text appear after any punctuation:

The evidence is derived mainly from UK examples,²⁴ but there are many international instances too.²⁵

Acknowledgements

Expressions of gratitude and any formal recognition of research funding should appear in a single Acknowledgements note at the end of the text, before any list of References. The note should not be incorporated into the sequence of footnotes.

Specific points of style

Quotation marks

Single quotation marks ‘ ’ should be used for quotes, with double quotation marks “ ” being reserved for quotes within quotes.

Displayed quotations

Quotations longer than about five lines when typeset (roughly, more than 60 words) should be indented and are not enclosed in quotation marks.

Quotes and punctuation

Punctuation should be inside the quotation mark only if there was punctuation at that point in the material quoted, otherwise it should be outside.

Points of omission

... should be typed as three points with a space either side of the three. If the matter before the omission points ends a complete sentence, it will have its own close-up full point, which is quite independent of the points of omission.

Lists

Arabic numbers in parentheses should be used for lists: (1) (2) …

Spelling

The Journal uses British spelling.

Please note that the house style for the Journal is to use the endings -ise/-isation in cases where an alternative in -ize/-ization exists: civilise, civilisation.

Italics

Use italics for published book titles (except books of the Bible), journals, plays, and works of art. Foreign words and short phrases that have not been naturalised are in italic. Names of foreign institutions are in roman.

Italics in abbreviations

Most of the common Latin abbreviations are kept in roman type (cf., e.g., i.e., vice versa and viz.), but c., et al., et seq. are italic.

Emphatic italics

Use italics rather than bold for emphasis, but be sparing in the use of it.

Abbreviations

Avoid unnecessary abbreviations. If you are using any that may be unfamiliar to a non-specialist reader, please explain them at their first occurrence.

Italics should only be used in abbreviations where the expanded version is in italic: OED (Oxford English Dictionary); but LSJ (A Greek–English Lexicon by Liddell, Scott and Jones).

Do not put full points in abbreviations consisting entirely of capitals, e.g. ‘BBC’ not ‘B.B.C.’, or in abbreviations consisting of a mixture of capital and lower-case letters that are used as titles or post-nominals, e.g. St (Saint), Revd, Dr, Mr, Mrs, FMedSci, BSc, MPhil, PhD. Abbreviations of units of measurement should not be given a full point: ‘cm’ not ‘cm.’.

Note that there is no apostrophe in plural forms like MPs, QCs, etc.

Page-references

In page-references, elide as many figures as possible, but retain the penultimate digit for the sequence 10–19 in any hundred: 4–8, 9–15, 17–18, 19–33, 24–8, 45–56, 99–111, 112–18, 132–8, 145–56, etc.

Numbers

It is usual to spell out numbers up to nine in continuous text, and to use figures for 10 and above. If the context is overtly statistical, or units of measurement are being given, use figures: 5 mm, 3 per cent, a 6-year-old child. Where the context is not statistical, it may sometimes be appropriate to spell out larger numbers: ‘she felt a hundred times better’. Avoid beginning a sentence with figures.

Percentages

Normally ‘per cent’ should be spelled out in the text: use % in tables.

Dates

Use the form ‘16 August 1979’, without commas. If the day of the week is given, then a comma should be inserted after it: ‘Sunday, 25 October 1953’.

When referring to decades, it should be in the form 1960s, the ’60s, or (where appropriate in the context) the Sixties.

When referring to centuries, it should be in the form 5th century BC, 20th century, 17th-century literature.

BC and AD are the Journal’s normal usage, but you may use BCE and CE if you prefer.

Elision of dates

Keep all the figures when the extent covers more than one century: 1820–1910. Do not elide dates BC. Otherwise elide dates according to the rules above for page-references: 23–5 December, 1826–8, 1914–18, etc.

References

The Journal uses the author-and-date system for references. The full bibliographical details are given in a list of ‘References’ at the end of the paper; references in the text are by author and date. Wherever known, please add the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) at the end of each entry.

Examples of entries in list of ‘References’

Journal article

Turner, R.N. (2020), ‘Crossing the divide: promoting confidence in contact in a diverse world’, Journal of the British Academy, 8: 51–74. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/008.051

Leonard, E., Ananias, J. & Sharley, V. (2022), ‘It takes a village to raise a child: everyday experiences of living with extended family in Namibia’, Journal of the British Academy, 10(s2): 239–61. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/010s2.239

Book

Van Hyning, V. (2019), Convent Autobiography: Early Modern English Nuns in Exile (British Academy Monograph; Oxford, Oxford University Press). https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197266571.001.0001

Macola, G. (ed.) (2018), The Colonial Occupation of Katanga: The Personal Correspondence of Clément Brasseur, 1893–1897 (Fontes Historiae Africanae, ns 15; Oxford, Oxford University Press). https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197266496.001.000

Chapter in book

Moss, A. (1995), ‘“Des coches”: une rhétorique transportable?’, in O’Brien, J., Quainton, M. & Supple, J. (eds), Montaigne et la rhétorique (Studies on Montaigne, 22; Paris, Classiques Garnier), 77–87.

Tyler, E.M. & Younge, G. (2020), ‘Moving people, moving forms: narrating migration in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles’, in Ormrod, W.M., Story, J. & Tyler, E.M. (eds), Migrants in Medieval England, c. 500-c. 1500 (Proceedings of the British Academy, 229; Oxford,Oxford University Press), 144–74. https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197266724.003.0006

Media, reports and online sources

Archard, D. (2020), ‘How should we think about childhood and children? A provocation paper’, Medium. https://medium.com/reframing-childhood-past-and-present/how-should-we-think-about-childhood-and-children-66c5624092f

Guardian Nigeria (9 January 2022), ‘Nigeria in crisis as debt stock hits N26t in 7years’. https://guardian.ng/news/nigeria-in-crisis-as-debt-stock-hits-n25t-in-7years/

WHO (World Health Organization) (2019), Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/non-pharmaceutical-public-health-measuresfor-mitigating-the- risk-and-impact-of-epidemic-and-pandemic-influenza

Notes. (1) For journalism, news reports, pieces by staff writers, etc., the name of the newspaper, media outlet or online source may be given as the ‘author’; so too, for policy reports not credited to specific authors, the issuing organisation may be given as the author. (2) A date accessed, e.g. ‘(accessed 19 April 2022)’, should be added after a URL only for an online source that is subject to change or updating.

Sample sequence of entries in ‘References’ list

Adams, L. (2003), … [entries are in alphabetical sequence by author name]

Brown, J. (1998), …

Brown, J. (2004a), … [subsequent works by same author appear in date sequence]

Brown, J. (2004b), … [distinguish multiple works in same year by ‘a’, ‘b’, etc.]

Brown, J. (forthcoming), …

Brown, J. & Jones, R. (2002), … [works by the same author & one other author follow in alphabetical sequence]

Brown, J. & Smith, A. (2000), …

Brown, J., Jones, R., Adams, L. & Smith, A. (1999), … [a work with three or more authors follows dual-author works even if it is out of sequence alphabetically or chronologically]

Brown, J., Adams, L. & Jones, R. (2001a), …

Brown, J., Smith, A., & Jones, R. (2001b), …

Brown, P. (1980), …

Curtis, M. & Atkinson, J. (1999), …

References in the text and notes

The short form author-and-date references should be inserted within the text; they may also be inserted within footnotes as part of additional comments. Do not put the full bibliographical details of references in the footnotes. Sample in-text / in-note reference:

This view is strongly held by Curtis & Atkinson (1999: 15–17) and Adams (2003), but has been challenged regularly by others (in particular Brown J. 1998: 93, 96; 2004a: 72–3).1 (It is interesting to note that the World Health Organization (WHO 2019) has also taken a different view.)

¹ The evidence supporting the alternative arguments is drawn from a broad range of international examples: see Brown J. & Smith (2000), Brown J. et al. (2001b), and most recently Brown J. (forthcoming).

Figures

All illustrations, whether line diagrams, maps or half-tones (photographs), should normally be described as Figures. ‘Figure’ should never be abbreviated to ‘Fig.’ in the text or the caption.

Do not embed illustrations within the Word text file; supply each illustration as a separate file.

Digital image file types, and resolution

Photographic illustrations should be supplied as tiffs or jpegs; the optimum resolution needed at the image’s final size is 300 dpi. Line diagrams should be supplied as tiffs; the optimum resolution needed at the image’s final size is 600 dpi.

Labelling of diagrams

There should be a minimum of labelling on the illustration itself: explanations should generally be included in the caption. Where needed, labelling should preferably be set in a sans-serif typeface (such as Arial), and it should be set in a typesize large enough so that when the image is reproduced at the desired final size the labelling ends up at about 8 point or 9 point.

Positioning

Each Figure will normally be inserted as close as possible to its first mention in the text, unless you indicate a different location in the typescript.

Captions

You will be asked to provide a List of Illustrations document which includes a caption for each image and alternative text for accessibility reasons. Where appropriate, the caption should acknowledge the source of the illustration.

If you find it impossible or very inconvenient to reproduce a particular image in the article (e.g. you cannot easily secure a usable copy or permission to reproduce) but you know that an appropriate version of it is already openly accessible on the web, then you may instead provide in your article a link (URL) that will enable readers to locate that image.

Tables

Positioning

When they are typeset, tables will be incorporated within the text. However, all tables should be submitted at the end of the text, each on a new page. The correct method to refer to the table in the text is, therefore, ‘as shown in Table 1’ without breaking off where you think the table may fall.

The following example illustrates the correct layout of a table:

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