This page specifies how to format special types of text in an essay to be published by THL or JIATS, such as footnotes, numbers, dates, quotation marks, and so forth. Click on the desired section of the manual to jump directly to it:

Notes in essays may be either footnotes or endnotes. Number the notes using Arabic numerals and not other conventions (Roman numerals, letters, etc.). All bibliographic citations must be located in the notes and not in the body of the essay.

Example, body of essay: Jane Smith has discussed this point in detail.1

The content of note 1 then reads:

1 Jane Smith, Salt Mining in Northern Tibet (New York: Wanderlust Publishers, 1994), 47-54.

DO NOT use the convention of inserting in the body of the essay the author’s last name, year of work, and page number, such as

  Jane Smith has discussed this point in detail (Smith 1994: 47).

In different contexts, numbers are either spelled out or are given in numerical form.

General rule: spell out all whole numbers from one through one hundred (for example, “fifty-three”), round numbers (for example, “The population is forty-seven thousand”), and any number that is the first word in a sentence (“Eighty-five people left the village”). Please note the use of hyphens.

When referring to page number spans, follow these conventions:

1-99 use all digits 3-10, 71-72, 96-117

100 or multiples of 100 use all digits 100-104, 1100-1113

101 through 109, 201 through 209, etc. use changed part only 101-8, 1103-4

110 through 199, 210 through 299, etc. use two or more digits 321-28, 1087-89, 423-44

Apply the general rule for spelling out numbers or using numerals: spell out all whole numbers from one through one hundred (for example, “The Eleventh mun sel bla ma” not “The 11th mun sel bla ma”; “the fifty-third person”), round numbers (for example, “The forty-seven thousandth example”), and any number that is the first word in a sentence (“Sixth from the end, he passed all who were ahead of him”).

Simple fractions should be spelled out. Example:

This represents two-thirds of the population. Note: do not use numerals such as ⅔ or 2/3 for fractions.

Percents

Percents are always rendered with numbers. Also, the word “percent” is always spelled out; never use the percent sign (%). Example:

  This represents 97 percent of the population. 

Year spans follows the same format as page number spans unless either the century changes or the sequence is BCE, in which case all the digits change.

If you need to indicate the era, use BCE and CE (regular capital letters with no periods or spaces between them; see the “Dates” section below).

Examples: 1524-25, 1914-18

In expressing specific dates, use cardinal numbers rather than ordinals. Example:

He traveled back to Beijing on March 5, 1856 not He traveled back to Tibet on March 5th, 1856.

For approximate dates, use “ca.” (the abbreviation for “circa”). Example:

(ca. 1450)

For uncertain dates, use the following formats:

• (1865-1926?)
• (900? CE)

If you need to indicate the era, use BCE and CE (regular capital letters with no periods or spaces between them). Examples:

• 621 BCE
• 650 CE
• 1524-1632 CE
• 327-321 BCE (note: for BCE year ranges, the higher number is first)
• during the sixth century BCE

Individual centuries should be spelled out in lowercase. For example:

• the twenty-first century
• the eighth and ninth centuries
• the eighteen hundreds (the nineteenth century).
• a ninth-century text was found (note: in this example, the hyphen is used because “ninth-century” is an adjective)

Decades should be written as “1960s” or “the sixties” (note: do not use an apostrophe before the ‘s’ – do not use the format “1960’s”).

No text in the essay should be in italics. The only exception is English-language text that the author wants to italicize for emphasis. This means no text titles, non-English words, and so forth should be italicized in the body of the essay.

This section concerns punctuation standards in essays being submitted to THL or JIATS.

For quotes, use “double quotation marks,” not ‘single quotation marks.’ Use single quotation marks only for quotes within quotes.

Note: for quotations of three lines or more, format the quote as a block indented quote (see the example immediately below).

Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks; colons and semi-colons go outside quotation marks. Examples

He said to her, “Take that book away.” He said to her, “Then I shouted, ‘I will not play the fool.’”

Use double quotation marks for a quote within an indented quote. Example:

quote-within-indented-citation.jpg

Use “smart” single and double quotation marks (that is, curly quotation marks – ‘ ’ and “ ” ) rather than straight single or double quotation marks (“ ” and ' ' ).

Set Microsoft Word to automatically use smart quotes rather than straight quotes:

• Pull down the Tools menu at the top of the Word document
• Click on AutoCorrect Options
• In the “Replace As You Type” section, click on the “Autoformat As You Type” tab
• Click in the box to the left of the text that reads: “straight quotes” with “smart quotes”
• Click “OK”

Use serial commas for a list of items separated by commas, and to avoid ambiguity always use a comma before the last member of the list. Example:

Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice all left. (note the comma after “Ted”).

Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks; semicolons and colons go outside quotation marks.

i.e. and e.g.: wherever possible, use the actual English words “that is,” and “for example,” respectively, rather than these abbreviations. A comma always follows “e.g.” and “i.e.” immediately after the period (a comma also immediately follows “that is” and “for example”).

• The use of coercion in such cases – e.g., threatening expulsion from the order –
• The use of coercion in such cases – for example, threatening expulsion from the order –

For dashes, use “en” dashes – that is, longer, extended dashes like these – rather than a single dash (-) or two single dashes (–); include a space both before and after the en dash. See the four examples immediately above.

Note: this does not apply to hyphens. Thus, “This was strictly a fourteenth-century policy” uses a single dash because it is a hyphen. You can use the search-and-replace function in Word to replace all double dashes with a single en dash. You can also manually insert an en dash:

• Click at the point in the essay that you want to insert the en dash
• Pull down the Insert menu and click on Symbol
• Click on the “Special Characters” tab
• Double-click on “en dash”
• Make sure that there is a space both before and after the en dash that has been inserted into the essay

You can also set Microsoft Word to automatically insert an en dash whenever you type two single dashes:

• Pull down the Tools menu at the top of the Word document
• Click on AutoCorrect Options
• In the “Replace As You Type” section, click on the “Autoformat As You Type” tab
• Click in the box to the left of the text that reads: “Hyphens (–) with dash (–)”
• Click “OK”

Insert a space between initials in a name. Example:

  J. P. Smith