Author
Guide
(February 2008)
West Virginia History (WVH) is committed to publishing the best scholarship on the
history and culture of the state and its contiguous region. This brief guide
and abbreviated style manual is intended for use by contributors to WVH.
Submit your manuscript by e-mail to wvhistory@mail.wvu.edu It should be in a Word file, either an
attachment, or pasted into a document.
To facilitate our policy of anonymous manuscript review, please go to
“Properties” in the document and strip out any identifying information. Do
include the title of the submission on the first page. The author’s name and
address (both postal and e-mail) should appear in a separate Word document,
along with a 250-word abstract.
Within the Word file, all lines should be twelve-point, double-spaced, and
unjustified, including quotations and notes. Articles should not exceed 10,000
words in length, including endnotes. Please submit your notes as endnotes, not
as footnotes. Document submissions should be half or less the length of
articles. Quotations longer than eight
lines should be set off from the text by indenting both margins five spaces,
and should be double-spaced.
If your manuscript is currently in a justified format, please unjustify it
before saving and printing your final copy. Before your essay can be typeset to
fit WVH’s format, it must have ragged right margins. Do
not make changes to your electronic file that do not appear on your hard copy.
We encourage you to use illustrations and can accept either glossy photographs
or 300 dpi TIF files. Supply each illustration with a caption, accompanied by a
source line and such acknowledgments as are required. You are responsible for
obtaining the necessary permissions in writing before publishing the
illustrations, and providing the journal
with copies for its files.
SAMPLE CITATION STYLES
West Virginia History follows the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th
ed. (with a few exceptions, noted throughout this guide), and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. The journal does
not include bibliographies or reference lists; therefore, all first citations
should be full citations. To indicate a title, italicize rather than underline.
Full citations: name of the
author(s) or editor(s) in normal order; the complete title of the work in
italics; the number of volumes (if more than one); and, within parentheses, the
place and date of publication. Finally, include the page numbers you are
citing.
Short citations: (use this format
for subsequent, nonconsecutive citations): author’s last name(s), short title
in italics, and page numbers you are citing. Use ibid. in a note immediately
following if the reference is identical.
EXAMPLES OF FULL AND
SHORT CITATION STYLES
(FOR MORE EXAMPLES,
CONSULT THE
1. Books:
Authored Books
Examples:
Jerry Bruce Thomas, An
Appalachian New Deal:
Thomas, Appalachian
New Deal, 222.
James Morton Callahan, History
of
Callahan, History of
Edited Volumes
Examples:
Okey L. Patteson, State
Papers and Public Addresses, Compiled and edited by Rosalind Carroll Funk
(Charleston, WV: Rose City Press, 1953), 44.
Patteson, State
Papers and Public Addresses, 44.
Elizabeth Cometti and Festus P. Summers, eds., The
Thirty-Fifth State: A Documentary History of
Cometti and Summers, The
Thirty-Fifth State, 112-37.
2. Reprints or second editions (include the original
date of publication):
Examples:
Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, Border Settlers: Northwestern Virginia (1915; repr., Parsons:
McClain Printing Co., 2000), 22.
Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown,
3. Journal Articles
and Book Chapters:
For journal articles, include the
author's name(s), article title, journal name, volume, date within parentheses,
and page reference. Months should be cited as follows: Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr.,
May, June, July, Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec. For book chapters see the
example below.
Examples:
Richard H. Bradford, “Religion and Politics: Alfred E.
Smith and the Election of 1928 in
Deborah R. Weiner, “From Shtetl to Coalfield: The Migration
of East European Jews to Southern West Virginia,” in Transnational
Weiner, “From Shtetl to Coalfield,” 73-75.
4. Theses and
Dissertations:
Treat dissertations like books,
except place the title within quotation marks and include the type of thesis
and the institution where it was submitted within the parentheses containing
publication data.
Example:
Michael E. Workman, “Political Culture and the Coal Economy
in the Upper Monongahela Region, 1776-1933” (PhD diss., West Virginia
University, 1995), 146-54.
5. Newspapers:
WVH prefers to cite only the name of the paper, and
the date of publication. Include the name of the city (italicized), if not
already part of the title, and the state if needed (abbreviated but not
italicized in parentheses).
Examples:
Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer,
Jan. 20, 1820.
6. Manuscripts
For manuscript collections, the
intent is, as with books and articles, to give the author, date, and place of the
item cited. This requires the name of the collection containing the item and
the location of the collection. The location of the repository is given only in
the first citation unless required for the sake of clarity.
Examples:
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, June 23, 1795, Box 7,
Series 1,
Jefferson to
7. Interviews:
Examples:
John E. Amos, interview by William
L. Young, Aug. 6, l965, Oral History Project, JFK Library,
Amos, interview.
Address correspondence
regarding editorial matters to:
Ken Fones-Wolf, Editor
Department of History
E-mail: wvhistory@mail.wvu.edu
(304) 293-2421, x5240
The home page for West Virginia History is currently under
construction.