Editorial Stylesheet

Please follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, full footnote style (no parenthetical author-date citations). Here are some clarifications specific to our volume.
 

• Avoid “Idem” when possible. Instead, repeat the author’s last name. When used, “Idem”, is abbreviated as “id.” followed by comma.
   

• Dates in “American” style: January 1, 2011. Not: 1 January 2011.
   

• For abbreviations for footnotes: “ed.” both for “editor” and edited by; “trans.” for both “translator” and “translated by.”
   

• Spell out century names: “sixteenth century” and not “16th century.”
  Hyphenated when used adjectivally.
   

• For “Em dash” or “En dash,” leave no spaces before or after:

  1. Example “Em dash”: A half dozen years later, he returned to the Netherlands to continue his ministry; he settled in Veere—a municipality on Walcheren Island in the province of Zeeland, and became known as the “Reformer of Zeeland.”

  2. Example “En dash” (for numerical ranges): (c. 1525–1569)
      

When using phrases in languages other than English, use parentheses and italicize the phrase: (phrases in other languages). In this case an English translation is provided in the main text, while the original is offered in parentheses. Moreover, because the original phrase is a quotation, it still needs quotation marks. Titles of original works may be provided in the original language within the text of the chapter.

• “Phrase that is a quotation from text” (“phrase in original language”);

• Phrase that is not a quotation from text (phrase in original language);

• Title and translation, when there are commonly accepted translations: Brevísima (Short Account);

• Title and translation, when there are no commonly accepted translations, provide the title in the original language.
  
  General Example:
  Nevertheless, because the basis for the 1632 imprint of the Historia verdadera was the copy that Bernal Díaz had sent to Spain decades earlier, his initial claims were brought forward, printed, and even highlighted in the posthumous edition of 1632: “The Bishop of Chiapas’s Error Regarding This Event” (“Error en este suceso del Obispo de Chiapa”) appears as a carefully placed announcement of the topic in the margin.
   

• When inserting comments into a quote, put these added comments in brackets: “[comments here].”
   

Example: 
Bernal Díaz then offers his summary of the Brevísima relación: 
Let’s move on and say that these were the “great acts of cruelty” about which the bishop of Chiapa, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, writes and never tires of repeating, because he claims that without any cause, but only for our pastime, and because it appealed to us, we carried out that punishment. And he even says so purposely [that is, de arte] in his book—he who never saw it nor knows about it, but will make others believe that it happened as he states, when, in fact, it was just the opposite.
 

• Q. I have noticed that many newly published books have no indentation for the first paragraph of chapters or sections of chapters. Is this now the accepted form or is this something some publishing companies use in their style forms?
  A. It doesn’t seem to be new (in my 1965 Fowler’s Modern English Usage, for instance, all the first paragraphs begin flush left), and yes, it’s an accepted format. Often the indentation of opening paragraphs is decided by the book’s designer.” Source: Chicago Manual of Style.

 

• Concerning spelling of Hernán Cortés, use the following form: “Hernán Cortés.” Do not use any of the following: “marqués del Valle de Oaxaca,” “Hernando Cortés,” “Fernando Cortés,” or “Cortéz.”

 

• Regarding names of historical figures, for the first usage in a chapter use the full name in standard English use—if there is one, if not in the original language. Also, at first usage add birth and death dates. E.g. Juan Gínez de Sepúlveda (1490–1573)

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• Regarding spelling of Las Casas’s name employ the following method:

  • If the first word of a sentence: “Las Casas”

  • In mid-sentence, surname only: “Las Casas”

  • For possessive: “Las Casas’s”

  • Full name, in any context: “Bartolomé de las Casas”

  • Bibliographic entry: “Casas, Bartolomé de las”

  • Footnote entry, authorial reference only (to be consistent with the bibliography entry): “Casas, A Short Account, 42.”
     

• Capitalizations, the preference is for minimal capitalization:

  • Religious terms: generally do not capitalize religious or theological terms such as “ritual,” or “sacrament.” However, capitalize terms that refer to a specific rite or sacrament (e.g. “Sacrament [or ‘Rite’] of Penance,” or “Sacrament [or “Rite”] of Baptism”), but not general terms such as “baptism” or “penance”, etc;

  • Theological noun phrases: rarely capitalized. Exceptions are noun phrases for which there is a longstanding tradition of using them with capitals, for example: “Old Law” and “New Law.” 

  • Legal codes: normally capitalized, for example “Laws of Burgos,” “Siete Partidas,” etc. 

  • Generic noun phrases: to refer to groups of people, such as “indigenous peoples,” “indigenes,” “amerindians,” “native americans,” “first nations,”  do not capitalize

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• Citation Style for Chapters
  (Adapted from Helge A. Staxrud, “Style Sheet for Manuscripts, JEMC,” Journal of Early Modern Christianity (2015).
   

• Citations and References

  • For references please use the Chicago footnote system. Note numbers in the text should be superscript (small raised) numbers without parentheses, and should directly follow the word in question or a punctuation/quotation mark if applicable, with no blank space. Use arabic numerals.

  • Give the full first name of authors and editors, publisher, year, book series and so on the first time a book/article is referred to. For later instances, use a shortened version (see below).

  • Give the inclusive page numbers of articles in journals or edited works, followed by the specific pages in question in parentheses. Always use the n-dash (“from … up to and including…”) between page numbers, years and so on.

Examples:

• Article in a journal: Volker Leppin, “Der Verlust des Menschen Luther: Zu Ebelings Lutherdeutung,” Journal of Early Modern Christianity 1 (2014): 29–50 (45–46).

  • Note: Colon by journals, otherwise comma (see below).

  • The issue number of the journal is to be omitted unless the pagination starts over again in every issue.

  • If your article is written in German, put this the other way around: „Titel“, Zeitschrift French: « Titre », Journal

• A book in a series: Brian Rosner, Paul and the Law: Keeping the commandments of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013).

  • note colon for subtitle

• Part of an edited book: Robert Kane, “Libertarianism,” in Four Views on Free Will, ed. John Martin et al. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 5–43.

  • “ed.” should be read as “edited (by)”. In German, use: “hg. von”.

  • Up to three editors are to be named, from 4 upwards, please use “et al.”

• A particular volume of a multivolume work: Helmut Thielicke, Theologische Ethik, vol. 1, Dogmatische, philosophische und kontroverstheologische Grundlegung (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1951), 120– 25.

  • Note: Not 120–125--> but 120–25.

  • The following examples are correct:15–17, 100–107, 101–7.

• In further references to the same work, use a short form (here always using the comma before the page number, also in citations to journal articles): Leppin, “Verlust,” 78. Please avoid shortened citations (“op. cit.”, “ibid.” etc.).

• For further information, see the Chicago Manual of Style (15th, 16th, or 17th edition), esp. 14.118, 14.122.​

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Citing Las Casas’s works

Prefer citations from Obras Completas.

• On first citation: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Obras completas, ed. Paulino Castañeda Delgado et al. (Madrid: Alianza, 1988–1998) [hereafter O.C.].

When the work divided into books (the Historia) and/or chapters (Apologia, etc.) include the original book and chapter numbers, so as to facilitate lookup in various editions.

• e.g.  Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, ed. Miguel Ángel Medina, Jesús Ángel Barreda, and Isacio Pérez Fernández, O.C. vols. 3–5 [hereafter Historia], 5: 1761–62 (bk. 3, ch. 4)​.

Citing a particular volume of a multivolume work when using list of abbreviations:

• O.C. 5: 2045

• O.C. 11/2: 372.

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Typeface, emphasis, and punctuation

• Italics should be used for:

  • foreign-language expressions

  • titles of books, published documents, newspapers, and periodicals.

• Italics may be used sparingly to:

  • draw attention to significant terms at first mention only;

  • emphasize a word or phrase in a quotation, if so indicated “[emphasis mine]”.

• Please do not use any other kind of emphasis; boldface type, underlining or capital letters used for emphasis are undesirable.

• (Do not use (double round brackets))-> ([brackets within parentheses] should be square brackets).

• Full stops should be placed “within quotation marks.”

• Parenthetical dashes are longer than hyphens. If you cannot print dashes, use triple hyphens. Parenthetical dashes are normally made using Ctrl + minus (PC); opt + shift + dash (Mac).

 

Abbreviations

• Use only the simplest and most common abbreviations (i.e., etc., e.g., et al.).

• No general abbreviations are to be used in the main body of the text (“century,” “for example,” etc. are to be written out in full). Equally, all first names are to be written out in full.

• Do not use periods after acronyms (AAR, not A.A.R.).

• Periodicals, series and lexicons should be abbreviated according to SBL Handbook of Style and IATG (Siegfried Schwertner, Internationales Abkürzungsverzeichnis für Theologie und Grenzgebiete, Berlin/New York 2 1992).

• Single references to biblical books are to be abbreviated according to the SBL Handbook of Style, e.g., Jer 20:7.

• Verse numbers within a chapter are separated by a comma without a space (e.g., Mark 12:13–17, 38–40).

• Passages from various chapters and various books are separated with a semicolon with a space (e.g., Num 12:1–15; 20:1–13; Mark 11:27–33; 12:1–12) with the exception of parallel passages (e.g., Matt 6:9–13 par. Luke 11:2–4), as are several chapters without verse numbers (e.g. Jer 5–6; 9).

• In the case of numbered books (e.g., 1Sam or 2Sam) there is no space between the number and the name of the book.

• Regarding numbers “1” through “100” https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch09/ch09_toc.html

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Latest update: April 15, 2025