THL Toolbox > Essays > Formatting: Notes, Numbers, Dates, Punctuation, and so forth

Formatting: Notes, Numbers, Dates, Punctuation, and so forth

Contributor(s): José Cabezón, Michael Cox, David Germano, Nathaniel Grove, Alison Melnick, Steven Weinberger.

Overview

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:

• Footnotes/Endnotes * Numbers * Year/Dates * Ordinals, Fractions, Percents * Passages in Tibetan * Quotation Marks * Smart Quotes * Text in Italics for Emphasis * Commas and Other Punctuation

I. Footnotes and Endnotes

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).

The only exception to this is references in book reviews.

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II. Numbers

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.

Page Numbers

When referring to page number spans, follow these conventions:

Ordinal Numbers

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”).

Fractions

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.

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III. Time

Periodization and Dates

For time periods create, an entry in the Glossary Table and in the Type column, enter “time range” Examples: * This occurred in Tibet during the Imperial Period

• During the first transmission of Buddhism (snga dar).
  • Note: if dates are given for a person’s life or for other items with entries in the Glossary Table, the date goes in the Date column and is deleted from the essay itself..

Year Spans

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

Dates

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

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

Approximate and Uncertain Dates

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

• (ca. 1450)

For uncertain dates, use the following formats:

• (1865-1926?)
• (900? CE)

Eras

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

Centuries

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

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”).

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IV. Passages in Tibetan

All Tibetan, including longer passages as well as all individual words, names, and so forth, must be in THL Extended Wylie. Use a forward slash (/) for a shad. Additionally, after each shad, enter an underscore (_); this will be displayed online as a space. Remember that, in Wylie transliteration, every space is a tsheg. For this reason, always remember to enter a space between a nga and a shad. Also, do not enter any extra spaces within Wylie, because every space will be a tsheg when this is displayed as Tibetan. So a Tibetan passage of which the original reads

should look like this in the footnote/endnote of the essay:

de thob pa la gling gsum gyi skyes pa bud med dang /_dang por mi’i rten la
lam spyangs pa’i ’dod lha kha cig gi rten la mthong lam gsar du skye’i/

Note: for strings of Tibetan text, remember to follow THL Extended Wylie conventions for Tibetan punctuation.

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V. Italics

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. Note: be sure to follow the guidelines for text titles, non-English words, and so forth in THL Glossary & non-English Words Guidelines.

VI. Punctuation

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

Quotation Marks

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:

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Smart Quotes

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:

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

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Commas and Other Punctuation

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”).
  • Monastics – i.e., fully ordained monks and nuns, as well as novices –
  • Monastics – that is, fully ordained monks and nuns, as well as novices –
  • 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:

1. Click at the point in the essay that you want to insert the en dash
2. Pull down the Insert menu and click on Symbol
3. Click on the “Special Characters” tab
4. Double-click on “en dash”
5. 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:

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

Initials in a Name

• Insert a space between initials in a name. Example:
• J. P. Smith

For punctuation within bibliographical citations, see Bibliographic Citations.

Provided for unrestricted use by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library