Style sheet

Please make sure that your review conforms to the standard style of the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books as described in this document. For basic instructions about content, submission and layout see Guidelines for Reviewers. Section A of this document gives details of the header format. Section B gives guidance about style. Some further issues are dealt with in Section C, which is organised alphabetically, as a source of reference. Whatever practice you adopt please follow it consistently.

A. The Header Format

The Review should start with the author/editor name(s), title, bibliographical details, and ISBN of the book reviewed, each on separate lines. Below these, give your name as you wish this to appear. All formatted exactly as follows:

Name of author(s) (or editor(s) followed by “(ed.)” or “(eds)”) as given on the title page

Title (and subtitle, if any, preceded by a colon) as on title page, in italics

Where appropriate, names of translator(s) or editor(s), preceded by “Translated by” and/or “Edited by”, comma; name of publisher, comma; place of publication, as given inside book, comma; year of publication, full stop. Space; number of numbered pages, followed by “pp.”, comma; price (in sterling if possible and/or US dollars or local currency) of paperback, if any, followed by “pb.” (otherwise of hardback, followed by “hb”)

“ISBN” followed by ISBN-13 (numerals only, no spaces or hyphens)

“Reviewed by:” Your name (as you wish it to appear)

Examples:

István Mészáros
The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time: Socialism in the Twenty-first Century
Monthly Review Press, New York, 2008. 480pp., $29.95 pb.
ISBN 9781583671696

Andrew Chitty, and Martin Mcivor (eds.)
Karl Marx and Contemporary Philosophy
Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009. 288pp., £50 hb.
ISBN 9780230222373

Reviewed by: Your Name

B. Style Guidelines

Avoid footnotes

  1. Do not use any footnotes or endnotes.

Section headings

  1. Avoid section headings if possible. However, if you need to divide the review into headed sections, put section headings in boldface, and capitalise the first word of the heading only (apart from proper names etc.), as in the section headings in this style sheet.
  2. Avoid giving the very first section a heading (such as ‘Introduction’).
  3. Avoid subsections.
  4. Do not number sections.

References

  1. Page references from the book under review should be given by themselves in parentheses in the text (e.g. Habermas argues that the lifeworld is in danger of ‘colonisation by the system’ (146, 230)).
  2. Avoid references to other works if possible. If you must include them use the Harvard (author-date) system. Here references are incorporated into the main text and a list of References is included at the end, under the heading References.
  3. Examples of Reference entries for the Harvard system:

  For a book:

  • Outhwaite, William 1987. New Philosophies of Social Science (London: Macmillan).
  • Hall, Stuart and Jacques, Martin (eds.) 1989. The Politics of Thatcherism: From Authoritarianism to Liberalism, 2nd edition (London: Lawrence and Wishart).
  • Hegel, G.W.F. 1942. Philosophy of Right, ed. and trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Note: give the details of the edition you actually used. You don’t need to include the date of original publication.

  For an article:

  • White, Simon 1998. ‘Interpreting the “Third Way”: Not One Road, but Many’, Renewal, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 21-38.
  • Pocock, J.G.A. 1993b. ‘A Discourse on Sovereignty’, in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nigel Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Note: use either the full first name of the author or the initials as you wish, but be consistent.

Examples of references in the main text in the Harvard system:

  (Hall and Jacques 1989)

  (White 1998, 164–5; Marx 1986b, 234)

Note: there is no comma between the author’s name and date, and a semi-colon separates two references.

References: abbreviations

  1. Use ‘(ibid.)’ to indicate that the reference is identical to the previous one or identical except for the page number, in which case write, ‘(ibid., p. 46)’, but only use it if the two references are consecutive and if the preceding reference consists of a single reference, as otherwise it can lead to ambiguity.
  2. Other abbreviations that can be used in references: ‘p.’ (page), ‘pp.’ (pages), ‘f’ (and the following page), ‘ff’ (and the following pages), ‘ed.’ (editor or edition), ‘eds.’ (editors), ‘ch.’ (chapter), ‘sec.’ (section), ‘vol.’ (volume), ‘vols.’ (volumes), ‘no.’ (number), ‘trans.’ (translator). Leave a single space between ‘p.’, ‘pp.’, ‘vol.’, ‘sec.’, ‘no.’, ‘ch.’ and the following number, but not between ‘f.’ and ‘ff.’ and the preceding number.
  3. Do not use ‘op. cit.’, ‘loc. cit.’ or ‘idem’.

References: page numbers

  1. Always put page numbers at the very end of the publication details in bibliographical entry, as in the above examples. In a reference the page numbers refer to the specific passage from the book or article cited in the text. In a bibliographical entry page numbers for an article (which are optional) refer to the whole article.

C. FURTHER GUIDELINES

Abbreviations

  1. Some acceptable abbreviations:

‘%’ (per cent)

‘cf.’ (compare). This does not mean ‘see’ or ‘see also’. Capitalise if at the beginning of a sentence or footnote.

‘etc.’ (etcetera) Use with care, it is often a sign of vagueness.

‘i.e.’ (that is) and ‘e.g.’ (for example). Either include or don’t include a comma after these as you prefer, but be consistent. Do not use them at the beginning of a sentence.

‘m’ (million). No full stop.

‘[sic]’ (to signal a mistake of fact, spelling or grammar in a quote).

  1. If an abbreviation that finishes with a full stop comes at the end of a sentence, do not put two full stops.
  2. Include a full stop after a person’s initials and leave a space between them and the surname (e.g. J.M. Keynes).

Apostrophes and possessives

  1. If a name ending in ‘s’ ends with the sound –iz, -eez or -erz then add an apostrophe only to make the possessive (e.g. Moses’, Bridges’, Socrates’, Peters’). If the name has only one or two syllables then add an apostrophe and an ‘s’ (e.g. Rawls’s, Thomas’s ). If the name has three or more syllables then use whichever method you prefer (e.g. Habermas’s or Habermas’, Castoriadis’s or Castoriadis’, Williams’s or Williams’), but be consistent. A good rule is to include the ‘s’ if you would pronounce it.
  2. Do not use apostrophes to indicate plurals (the 60s not the 60’s, the Joneses not the Jones’s).

Capitals

  1. Capitalise adjectives formed from names (e.g. Kantian, Kafkaesque).
  2. Capitalise geographical regions if they have a definite political or cultural identity (e.g. the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the West, Western Australia, the East End, East Anglia, but south London, western England).
  3. Capitalise titles when they accompany a name (e.g. President Chirac). If they do not then capitalise or not as you prefer (e.g. ‘the president of the United States’ or ‘the President of the United States’).
  4. Capitalise the names of political parties and churches (e.g. Labour Party, the Protestant Church). With less well-defined movements capitalise or not as you prefer, but be consistent (e.g. ‘the Left’ or ‘the left’, ‘New Social Movements’ or ‘new social movements’).
  5. Do not capitalise prefixes like de, von, van in foreign names, unless they come at the beginning of the sentence or bibliographical entry (e.g. It was de Sade’s third novel. Von Stein introduced socialist ideas into Germany.)
  6. Capitalise days and months but not centuries (e.g. Tuesdays, February, the eighteenth century, the 18th century)

• For capitalisation of book and article titles see above.

Foreign words and phrases

  1. Italicise foreign words and phrases if they are likely to be unknown to readers. (e.g. Vorstellung, décalage). If they are familiar then italicise or not as you prefer, but be consistent (e.g. ‘per se’ or ‘per se’, ‘vice versa’ or ‘vice versa’, ‘vis-à-vis’ or ‘vis-à-vis’, ‘a priori’ or ‘a priori’, ‘qua’ or ‘qua’).
  2. Keep the initial capital of a German words if it is italicised (e.g. the method of Verstehen).
  3. Generally keep the accents and diacritical marks in French, German and Italian words (e.g. protégé, Entäusserung), except for accents on capitals which can be kept or dropped as you prefer (e.g. ‘Emile Durkheim’ or ‘Émile Durkheim’). For other languages keep or drop accents and diacritical marks as you prefer.

• For capitalisation of titles of foreign books and articles see above.

• For quoting passages in a foreign language see below.

Hyphens

  1. Use a hyphen to join several words making up a compound adjective if there is any chance of misunderstanding. (e.g. other-worldly beliefs, a long-standing tradition, black-and-white cats, the best-known example). If there is no chance of misunderstanding then use a hyphen or keep the words separate as you prefer (e.g. ‘middle-class ideals’ or ‘middle class ideals’, ‘mid-twentieth-century thought’ or ‘mid twentieth century thought’).
  2. Use a hyphen within a word if your sense is that the word would be hard to read without it (e.g. non-nuclear, pre-existentialist) or if is made up of a prefix plus a capitalised word (e.g. post-Enlightenment). In other cases use it if you prefer (e.g. e-mail or email, cooperate or co-operate, postmodern or post-modern).

Italics

  1. Use italics to emphasise a phrase, a word, or part of a word. Do not use bold for this.
  2. Use italics for the names of books (except the Bible, the Koran, and the books of the bible which should be in roman and capitalised), plays, films, television programmes, paintings, statues, and poems long enough to be books in themselves (e.g. Discipline and Punish, Romeo and Juliet, Panorama, Michelangelo’s David, Paradise Lost).

• For italicisation of foreign words see above.

Numbers

  1. Always use a numeral rather than a word for a percentage, a date, or a chapter number (e.g. 6% or 6 per cent, but not six per cent; 6 January or 6th January or 6th of January, but not sixth of January; chapter 3 not chapter three).
  2. In other cases write the numbers between one and nine in words, those between 10 and 20 in words or numerals as you prefer, and those from 21 upwards in numerals (e.g. three, six, ten or 10, twelve or 12, twenty or 20, 27, 38). The same applies for ordinals (e.g. third, sixth, tenth or 10th, twelfth or 12th, twentieth or 20th, 27th, 38th).
  3. Write four-digit numerals without a comma, but larger ones with one (e.g. 3000; 62,500; 450,000).
  4. In ranges of page numbers either write the second page number in full or elide it, as you prefer (e.g. 423–427 or 423–27 or 423–7), but do not over-elide where the first page number ends in 0 or in 11 to 19 (e.g. 130–135 or 130–35 but not 130–5; 213–216 or 213–16 but not 213–6).

Quotes and quote marks

  1. Use single quote marks in all circumstances except for a quote within a quote. For that use double quote marks.
  2. All direct quotes of others’ sentences, or even striking phrases, must be shown as such to avoid plagiarism. For short quotes, incorporate the quote into your own text in quote marks. For quotes longer than, say, a sentence, set the quote off as a separate paragraph, indented from the left margin, without quote marks.
  3. The quote should follow the wording of the original exactly, and reproduce its spelling, punctuation, and style of type (i.e. roman, italics or bold).
  4. Capitalise the first word of a quote if the quote is (or begins with) a complete sentence, but not if the quote is shorter than that.
  5. If you insert words of your own into a quote, for example to make the grammar fit your text, or to clarify a meaning, enclose your words in square brackets. To emphasise part of a quote, italicise it and add ‘(emphasis added)’ or ‘(my emphasis)’ at the end of the quote, or after the reference.
  6. Use three dots to indicate that part of a quote (called an ‘ellipsis’) has been left out (e.g. ‘Whoever has a clear conscience ... does not fear being judged by others’). If the ellipsis includes a full stop at its beginning, middle or end, then use four dots instead of three.
  7. If you want to quote a passage in a foreign language then provide a translation of it as well.

Spelling

  1. Use British rather than American spelling.
  2. If a word has two common spellings use the one that you prefer, but be consistent (e.g. acknowledgement or acknowledgment, focussed or focused, judgement or judgment, inquiry or enquiry, medieval or mediaeval, encyclopedia or encyclopaedia).
  3. Most words ending -ise or -isation can instead be spelled as -ize or -ization as you prefer, as long as you are consistent (e.g. globalise or globalize, organisation or organization). However note that the following must end in -ise: advertise, advise, comprise, compromise, excise, improvise, televise.

Typesetter’s notes

  1. Capitalise both parts of hyphenated words in titles of the articles both at the start of the article, in headers, and in contents page.
  2. Put a space before the three and after the three or four dots indicating an ellipsis.
  3. Leave one space, not two, after a full stop.

(Adapted from the `Style sheet (Jan 2003)’ of Social and Political Thought with thanks. Based on Judith Butcher, Copy Editing: The Cambridge Handbook, 3rd ed. 1991, and on R.W. Burchfield, The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 3rd ed. 1996.

Revised: 9 November 2009

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