Preparing your typescript for submission to the Scottish History Society
1) These notes are intended to guide you in preparing your typescript for submission to the Scottish History Society. Adherence to them should ensure that you will have less work to do following the submission of your draft typescript and that that volume will proceed easily through the publication process and appear as you intend it. Any questions about any of these matters (or anything which is not covered here) please get in touch with the Society’s Publication Secretary (see the ‘contact us’ section of this site for details). Submission of your draft typescript should be made to the Publication Secretary and should be made in hard copy in the first instance.
2) Please consult and adhere to the Society’s Style Sheet. Note, for example, the guidance on use of capitals and on citation of sources. Please feel free to discuss any aspect of this further with the Publication Secretary, particularly if you would like to amend any aspects of it for your volume.
3) You may find it useful to consult recent volumes published by the Society. Please contact the Publication Secretary who will advise you on what are the most useful volumes to look at relative to your text.
4) When annotating your text use footnotes. And use the automatic function of your word-processing programme to insert them. Do not manually type a numeral at the point you wish to reference and type the text of the footnote at the foot of the page.
5) Please present your typescript as plainly as possible and with as little formatting as possible. Please do not try to make it look like the finished book. Remember that both the page size and margins of a book page are different from the A4 you are working on. We appreciate, however, that layout is more important in many editions than in a conventional monograph. If the layout and presentation of your text is important (past examples have included collections of letters and medieval charters), please contact the Publication Secretary at the earliest available opportunity so that the layout of your text can be designed and agreed upon.
6) Only type in capitals where you wish them to appear in the printed volume and where demanded by the manuscript. Similarly with italics. It is envisaged that bold text will rarely be used. It is the Society’s usual convention to put headings in italics and you may wish to adopt this to clearly indicate headings in your text. Do not do so by drawing lines, boxes etc.
7) While the formatting of your typescript should be kept to a minimum, there are occasions when it will be required. This should be done using the automatic functions of your word-processing programme not manually. If, for example, you want to centre text or set it to the right hand margin use the text alignment function, not the spacebar. Do not use the spacebar to indent text. If you need to line up text underneath text use the tab function not the spacebar.
8) If your text contains a significant numbers of tables, please get in touch with the Publication Secretary to discuss the best way to present these. Permission to include illustrations needs to be obtained from the Society. Again, please consult the Publication Secretary about this, who can also advise on acceptable formats etc.