Maryland Historical Magazine Style Sheet

For general formatting and annotation style, the Maryland Historical Magazine adheres to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition and later, with endnotes. For spelling, please use standard American English, with the American Heritage Dictionary as reference. In addition, authors should consult previous issues of the Magazine for formatting examples.

The guidelines for the most common style questions are as follows:

Submissions should be e-mailed to mkado@mdhistory.org. Proposed articles should be submitted in Word format and double-spaced throughout, including endnotes. The author’s name and other identifying information should only be contained on the first/title page. Please remove all identifying metadata from the document.

Use endnotes, not footnotes. Use Arabic, not Roman, numerals for endnotes. The Maryland Historical Magazine uses omnibus notes: one note per paragraph, with the endnote mark placed at the end of the paragraph. If citing multiple sources, references to relevant content in the text may be included to avoid ambiguity. Please do not use hyperlinks in endnotes. When including web links, please omit “http” and “www,” for instance: mdhistory.org/publications/maryland-historical-magazine.

Use single, not double, spaces after punctuation. Use regular spacing for names, and close spacing for other instances, e.g. W. E. B. Du Bois, but D.D. Mallory & Co.

Do not use periods in abbreviations such as PhD, Washington, DC, and US film studies.

Use the serial (Oxford) comma.

Use smart quotes and apostrophes, for instance “smart quotes in one’s submission,” not “straight quotes in one’s submission.”

Please note the difference between hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes. Use en dashes to indicate time intervals, e.g. 1828–1830, not 1828-1830. Use em dashes for breaks in the text, e.g. His own words—the consistent use of masculine pronouns in his writing—reveal a fundamental assumption of a male-dominated world.

Closing quotation marks are placed after commas and periods, and before colons, semi-colons, and question marks, unless they are part of the quotation.

Avoid contractions: let us instead of let’s, would not instead of wouldn’t, etc.

For dates, time, and geographical locations, use the format John was born on February 9, 1987, in Frankfort, Kentucky, and from 7:30 am to 9 pm.

Italicize quotes or citations from languages other than English; for headline capitalization, please follow the rules of the language in question.

Image captions may consist of longer narrative descriptions of featured items, but should contain as much identifying object information as is available. Unless specified otherwise by the permission-granting institution or individual, please use the following format: item name/title, creator/artist name, date. Institution, division within institution, collection name, collection number, object ID. Here are some examples:

Henry Louis Mencken, photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine, July 28, 1955. Maryland Center for History and Culture, H. Furlong Baldwin Library, Baltimore City Life Museum Collection, A Aubrey Bodine Collection, B737-5-d (note that the photograph title is not italicized because it is descriptive, not given by the author)

Hampton Mansion, Robert Carey Long Jr., 1838. Private Collection. Image courtesy of Hampton National Historic Site, National Park Service

The Death of Lafayette, Carrière, lithograph by Dopter, n.d. Lafayette College, Skillman Library, Special Collections & College Archives, Marquis de Lafayette Prints Collection, XXII.61

Details from Perry Hall, Home of Harry Dorsey Gough, anonymous, oil on canvas, 1795. Gift of Henry Francis du Pont, Courtesy of Winterthur Museum, 1957.0670 A

Eliza Eichelberger Ridgely, Anna Claypoole Peale, 1823. Private collection. Image courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library

First citations of printed sources must be complete. For later citations of books and journals, use sensible author-title short references. Here are some examples:

First mention:

Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 527.

Subsequent mentions:

Rodgers, Mencken, 528.

First mention:

James W. Foster (ed.), “Lafayette’s Letters to Eliza Ridgely of Hampton,” Maryland Historical Magazine 52, no. 3 (September 1957): 233–44.

Subsequent mentions:

Foster, “Lafayette’s Letters,” 240.

In endnotes, when citing from documents (letters, papers, manuscripts, etc.) in special collections, unless specified otherwise by the relevant repository, please use the following formats with as much identifying information as is available: author name, document title, page quoted, collection name, collection number, box, folder, division(s) within repository, repository name, repository location. Citations of archival materials may be abbreviated after the first, full reference to the collection. Here are some examples:

First mention:

Rosalind Lohrfinck to Margaret “Marge” Lappin, June 9, 1934, H. L. Mencken Collection (YCAL MSS 794), Box 17, Folder: Lappin, Margaret, Misc. letters to her, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT (hereinafter Mencken Collection).

Subsequent mentions:

Invoice to Mencken from “Miss Redding,” January 17, 1922, Mencken Collection, Box 16, Folder: H. L. Mencken Letters to Margaret Redding Lappin, 1922–1926.

Hoyt Collection of Ridgely Papers, 1716–1970, Series VI: Nicholas Greenberry Ridgely Papers (1814–1882), MS 2891, Box 3, Folders 62–63, H. Furlong Baldwin Library, Maryland Center for History and Culture, Baltimore, MD.

Unknown newspaper clipping, Arthur H. and Mary Marden Dean Lafayette Collection, #4611, Box 7, Folder 12, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY (hereinafter Cornell Lafayette Collection).

Questions regarding submission formatting and style may be addressed to the Editor, Dr. Martina Kado, at mkado@mdhistory.org.

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