Harvard Library Bulletin Style Sheet

Harvard Library Bulletin’s Author Guidelines detail the basic format for manuscript submissions. Authors of accepted manuscripts will be asked to revise their article to conform to our more specific style guidelines, including reformatting citations to conform to the most current Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed., 2024). 

Other style guidance is as follows: 

Spelling 

HLB follows Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed., 2020) and the online Merriam-Webster dictionary at merriam-webster.com, opting for the main or first entry when there are alternatives. 

Quotations and punctuation 

Quotations of more than five lines of prose or a stanza of poetry should be presented as block text, indented 0.5” on the left side using Word’s formatting feature and double-spaced. For inline poetry quotations, line breaks should be represented by a forward slash (/) and stanza breaks by two forward slashes (//). Omissions should be indicated by ellipses with spaces between each period and a space on either side, e.g. “omissions . . . side.” 

Inline quotations should be enclosed by double quotation marks (“”). Single quotation marks (‘’) should be reserved for quotations within quotations. Punctuation such as periods and commas should be placed inside quotations, regardless of the punctuation of the original source. Likewise, capitalization at the beginning of a quotation may be added silently, without placing the capitalized letter in brackets ([]). 

In the case of early modern print, all italicization, capitalization, and font variation should be preserved, as well as the original spelling. The abbreviation [sic.] should be used sparingly, and only for errors in the original source that may confuse the reader. 

Dates and numbers 

Authors should include dates alongside the first mention of historical figures and their works, either parenthetically or as part of the prose. Regnal years, birth years, and death years  should be used when appropriate and indicated by "r.," "b.," and "d." (not italicized). Both date and number ranges should be represented with an en dash (–) rather than a hyphen (-). Indicate approximate dates by using "around" rather than "circa, "ca.,” or “c.” Specific dates should be formatted as month-day-year (September 8, 1836), without superscripts (8th). With the exception of page numbers, figure numbers, and dates, the numbers one through ten should be spelled out in full, as should numbers at the beginning of sentences (Eighteen years ago). 

Inclusive language 

HLB requests that authors use inclusive, affirmative language when describing people. 

  •  Terms should, to the fullest extent possible, reflect the norms of the communities they reference. 
  •  Mention of a person’s race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical ability, or other characteristic should be relevant and important to the author’s discussion. 
  •  Whenever possible, authors should strive to use gender- and sex-neutral terms for people and professions (e.g., “humanity” instead of “mankind”). 
  •  Similarly, authors should avoid characterizing professions as male or female. 
  •  Authors should avoid the construction “he/she”; instead, we endorse the third-person plural (“they/them”).