PLANNING YOUR ARTICLE
This brief has been written to
ensure the overall coherence of the encyclopedia. It is meant to guide your thinking and will apply to all
articles. If you feel it is necessary to amend the organizational style, please
discuss the article with the teaching assistant to ensure that the development
will be acceptable.
1.
READERSHIP. The book is designed for upper-level high
school and college students as well as for the general public. Consider that
the audience has limited exposure to the new media field. You should write for
this audience, explaining all specialized terminology used. Do not assume knowledge of individuals or
concepts. Explain concepts in
straightforward terms, and if you refer to a person, be sure to identify them
(i.e., with some sort of descriptive phrase—“seventeenth-century poet” or “Web
guru”).
2.
STRUCTURE
OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA. This is a straightforward A-Z encyclopedia, but will
also be organized in categories and eventually have lots of cross
linkages. Articles will either be 500
words and have one author, or 1000 words and have two authors.
3.
STYLE. The website’s goal is to allow students or
the layperson to understand new media technologies, issues, and concepts.
Authors should write in a manner that is explanatory, and editorializing is
inappropriate. As previously stated, please do not use jargon without
explaining it.
4.
ILLUSTRATIONS
AND PHOTOS. You may provide illustrations and photos if they are directly related to
the article you are writing and they are not copyrighted works.
5.
USAGE. The book
seeks to use nonsexist language, although writers should not torture a sentence
to achieve it. Please follow these
general rules:
a). Please give an individual’s
full name (including initials) on first usage.
Thereafter refer to both men and women by their last name.
b). Avoid
sex-specific terminology—mankind—and the use of “man” or “men” as the generic
for human being.
c). Avoid male pronouns to
describe people in general. Use “They”
in place of he or she when possible and appropriate.
6.
USE OF
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED MATERIAL. Avoid quotations from
copyrighted works wherever possible. If you do need to use quotations of more
than a few words, provide a citation according to the APA style guide.
Please follow the outline below
unless discussed with your editor. Also, look closely at the enclosed sample/s
as a guideline.
Each article will include:
First paragraph: Explain clearly what the topic is and why it is
important.
Body of the article: Explain the concept in more
detail. Think of the kinds of information
you would expect to find if you looked this concept up in an encyclopedia. The
information needed here will vary with the type of article assigned.
The piece should include as much
historical background as is possible.
That's not to say that the Bluetooth entry has to cover the founding of
Norway, but some amount of context is needed for every entry.
Final paragraph: Every article
must end with an assessment-type concluding paragraph—discuss the ultimate
importance of the topic, for example, or evaluate possible future scenarios or
issues.
Please refer to the enclosed sample articles to get a sense of tone,
structure, and necessary content.
At the end of you article text,
you will need to include a “For Further Reading” section that points users to
more material on the subject, either in books, journals or online sources. This
section needs to include the most important and readily available books and
articles on the topic. Each book,
article, or website must be formatted according to the APA style guide. If you are writing a 1,000 word article,
provide 4 references. If you are
writing a 500-word article, provide 2 references.
Please list several topics that a
reader of this entry might also be interested in. After you turn in your article,
we will check for exact cross-referencing with our headword list.
SUBMISSION CHECK LIST
All articles should be formatted
with 1” margins all around, in Times Roman 12, line spacing at 1 ½.
Please don’t format any text in
all caps, small caps or other special ways unless required by the technology.
No automatic hyphenation.
Word count at end of article
STYLE SHEET
The entries will follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. unless otherwise stated below (numbers, for
example).
Bibliography
Use Chicago
style. Style for most common citations
is given below.
Smith, John. Web Designers I Have Loved Before. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press,
1986.
Johnson, Samuel, and Philip Marlow. The
Novel is As Art. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1977.
Smith, John, Robert North, and Sally Flin. “How to Meet a Deadline.” Publishers
Weekly 20 (1966).
Lipcon, Jesse. “Open VMS: 20 Years of Renewal—OpenVMS
Installed Base Growth.” 10 October 1998.
http://www.openvms.digital.com/openvms/20th/vms20/sld036.htm
Doe, John.
“Philosophers of Note.” In Philosophers:
An Overview. Edited by Harry
Smith. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1992.
Paine, Thomas.
“Common Sense.” Prologue 21
(Spring 1978): 25-36.
Adams, Eve. In the Beginning. Rev. ed.
New York: Warner, 1768.
Harper, Peter S. “Should We Test Children for ‘Adult’
Genetic Diseases?” The Lancet, 19 May
1990, 1205.
Holtzman, Neil A. “Predictive Genetic Testing: From Basic
Research to Clinical Practice.” Science,
24 October 1997, 608.
Dates
Centuries:
Spell out in lowercase letters references to particular centuries. Spell out the word “century.”
Circa:
Use c. followed by the date. (c.
1992)
Date range: Text style for date range is
1887–98. Use four digit date for second date in range only if the century
changes: (1877–1904).
Months: Months should be spelled out,
whether alone or in text. In chronologies, notes, tabular matter, etc., they
may be abbreviated using the 3 letter abbreviations: Apr. 12, 1997. (Note: June and July should be spelled out.)
Em-dashes
and En-dashes
Use em-dashes sparingly.
Foreign
words
Italicize if unfamiliar to reader. Do not use Greek, Hebrew,
Arabic or Cyrillic material.
Names
Jr.: Style is comma between last name
and junior (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
Transliteration: Use the most common
transliteration for Arabic, Chinese, etc. names.
Numbers
1-9 are spelled out as are all numbers at the beginning of
sentences. Other numbers are in numeral
format.
All measurement units should be in metric followed by US
equivalent in parenthesis.