British spelling (as given in the Oxford English Dictionary and its derivatives) should be used. See further The New Oxford Spelling Dictionary, ed. Maurice Waite (2005), which also includes advice on word division. Use -ize spellings, as specified in OED and The New Oxford Spelling Dictionary.

Be as consistent as possible. It helps to keep a list of words you have decided to capitalize regularly (e.g. ‘Bible’, ‘Scripture’, the Commandments; the distinction between ‘the Church’ as institution and ‘the church’ as building). Do not capitalize pronouns referring to the Deity.

In English book titles (and usually article titles), capitalize the first letters of ‘main words’ — normally nouns and adjectives. For most foreign languages, no capitalization after the first word except where the language requires it; in German all nouns are capitalized; in French, if the title begins with the definite article, capitalize all words up to and including the noun which goes with the article.

Full stop: none after headings, in all-capital abbreviations (EETS, PMLA), or after titles (Dr, Mr, St, SS).

Quotation marks: single, reserving double for quotations within quotations. If the quotation forms a complete sentence, its closing full stop goes inside the closing quotation mark; otherwise outside.

Parentheses within italic: parentheses and square brackets within italic passages are set upright, not italic. Do not inadvertently italicize punctuation immediately following an italic word.

Spell out numbers below 100 in ordinary prose (figures are acceptable where concision matters, as in tables or footnotes, and are used for exact measurements, currency, and ages). Spell out numbers beginning a sentence.

Ranges: use the fewest figures consistent with clarity — ‘76–7’, ‘235–6’, ‘100–2’ — except for the group 10–19 in each hundred: ‘116–19’, not ‘116–9’; ‘210–11’, not ‘210–1’.

Dates: the form ‘14 September 1466’, without commas. Spell out ‘fifteenth century’ (‘fifteenth-century’ adjectivally), except in footnotes and manuscript descriptions: use ‘s. xv’ in manuscript descriptions and ‘15th c.’ in footnotes.

In the printed volume folio references sit in the outer margins. Rectos and versos are indicated by superscripts (‘f. 1^r’, ‘f. 1^v’); superscript ‘a’ and ‘b’ indicate the columns on a page (‘f. 1^ra’, ‘f. 1^rb’, ‘f. 1^va’, ‘f. 1^vb’). Use ‘f.’ and ‘ff.’, not ‘fol.’ or ‘fo.’. In the typescript, place folio references within the text in double square brackets — ‘[[f. 1^r]]’ — and they will be moved to the margin. If the change of folio occurs anywhere except at the beginning of a section, place | in the file after the closing bracket, omitting the space if it falls mid-word.

Abbreviate according to current Oxford house style: Matt. 23: 13, Lam. 4: 4, Deut. 4: 2, Rev. 12: 16 — arabic chapter, colon, space, arabic verse, with a full point after the abbreviated book. The extra-short abbreviations (Mt., Mk., Lk., Jn.) are reserved for tabular material or marginal references.

Includes optional frontispiece, editor’s preface, contents list, list of plates and/or figures if relevant, and abbreviations. See the notes on photographs for plates and permissions.

In addition to a general statement on the scope of the edition and the significance of the text, its date, and some account of the author (if known), the Introduction normally includes descriptions of the manuscripts, a discussion of their textual history, the language of the text, sources, and an account of the editorial method employed. All such discussion should bear primarily on the elucidation of the text being edited; lengthy general or tangential arguments are better prosecuted in other publications. ‘Signpost’ the component parts with subheadings.

Pay particular attention to the concluding account of editorial method — one of the most important parts of the whole edition, to which readers and reviewers pay close attention. Readers should not be left to deduce an editor’s practice from the text, but given a clear, full, and detailed statement.

Notes to the Introduction

Key the notes as automatic footnotes. References are given in full on first citation, and as a short title thereafter, in the same style as the Bibliography:

OUP no longer uses p. or pp., except with roman numerals or in other cases of ambiguity. Volume numbers are lower-case roman. A comma is placed after the journal title, except when it is abbreviated:

To direct the reader to specific pages, note them at the end of the reference, in the form ‘27–51 at 38–52’:

Short titles are used in subsequent references:

Avoid ‘op. cit.’ and ‘loc. cit.’ — surname plus short title is more helpful.

If references are particularly lengthy and extensive, the author–date (‘Harvard’) system may be easier — the decision must be cleared with the Editorial Secretary. If it is used: only the year in parentheses when the name occurs naturally in the sentence; no comma between name and date — (Turville-Petre 1977); italic lower-case letters after the date for same-year works (a, b). Whichever system is chosen, practice must be consistent, not a hybrid.

Abbreviations and abbreviated titles of frequently cited works appear in a separate list as the last matter in the prelims; it should not include works easily cited by author’s surname and short title. The Bibliography should be select, giving references to works cited in the edition, with a brief headnote explaining the principles of selection and organization. It is often simplest to divide into primary and secondary sources — but remember that authors of secondary works may also be editors of primary ones; add cross-references where they resolve ambiguity. Arrange multiple works by one author alphabetically; single-author works precede co-authored ones. Cite an author’s name in the form given on the title-page of the work.

i. Unpublished theses

ii. Printed books and essays in collections

Name each author or editor surname first, followed by spaced initials (‘A. B.’, not ‘A.B.’) or first name(s). An extended dash replaces the repeated name for subsequent works by the same writer:

Editions are listed as far as possible alphabetically by author’s name (if known) or title, followed by ‘ed.’ and the editor’s name:

References to EETS editions take the following form. Indicate the Original Series only when it runs concurrently with the Extra Series — not, therefore, from number 160 onwards. The abbreviations OS, ES, SS are set in small capitals:

iii. Articles in periodicals

Article titles in roman within single quotation marks; journal titles in italic; journal volume numbers in arabic (whatever the journal’s own style); abbreviations ‘vol(s).’ and ‘p(p).’ omitted; page extents with the fewest figures needed — 11–13, 30–1, 42–3, 132–6. Abbreviated journal titles must all appear in the List of Abbreviations.

• The lines of prose texts will be numbered by the typesetter. For poetry, number every five lines with a hard number. Titles are not included in the line reckoning.
• Supply modern punctuation and capitalization, whether editing from manuscripts or from early printed books. A case for retaining original pointing needs Council’s agreement at proposal stage.
• Expand abbreviations silently; discuss doubtful cases in the account of editorial method.
• Retain manuscript use of u and v, i and j. Interpret ambiguous letters (y/þ, or z/ȝ in some manuscripts) according to their phonetic intentions, discussing exceptional cases in the account of editorial method.
• Incorporate emendations in the text, not the apparatus. Enclose altered or added letters or words in square brackets, showing rejected manuscript readings in the apparatus:

• The manuscript sigil follows the variant reading. If editing from a single manuscript, ‘MS’ is usually unnecessary after rejected readings:

• Indicate omission of words or letters from the base text in the apparatus alone:

• Marginal and interlinear additions are indicated by forward and reverse primes, achieved electronically by superscript and /. The same convention serves for such alterations in the variants. Treatment of scribal and later corrections is for the editor to determine from the evidence, with a clear account in the editorial method.
• Illegible words and letters (commonly from damage) are enclosed in angle brackets: 〈 〉, the nature of the damage briefly indicated in the apparatus.

Apparatus

Reserve citation of variants for substantive variation, and discuss your principles of selection in the account of editorial method; merely orthographical variants are normally excluded. With a large number of manuscripts it may be necessary to exclude some, or to let one manuscript represent a group of closely related copies — such simplification must be set out in the original proposal and agreed by Council, which will likely ask for some complete collations of parts of the text.

Insert the apparatus as footnotes, NB with the cue at the beginning of the word; the typesetter will insert the line number. Quote material as: lemma; square bracket (single space); variant (single space) sigil(s). A second variant to the same lemma follows after a comma. All comment in variants is italicized, and kept to a minimum:

Where a longer and a shorter variant overlap, deal with the longer first if it begins before the shorter. This example, slightly simplified, is from The Siege of Jerusalem (os 320 (2003)); the base manuscript is L:

Omission of material in a long lemma is indicated by ellipses. Manuscripts agreeing with the lemma are assumed to agree if not cited as varying. Cite variants in a consistent order, on principles explained in the edition.

Keep explanatory notes as concise as possible: their purpose is to elucidate particular points, not to digress. Extensive source quotations may sit more economically in appendices, and should be quoted at length only if not easily available in a modern printed edition. Bear in mind a scholarly audience, including graduate students, with general knowledge of the period — wider than a doctoral dissertation’s readership, but academic. Current EETS policy is not to translate quotations from Latin and French. The notes should not reduplicate the glossary, though they may interpret a difficult idiom or unusual syntax.

References to the edited text take the form of a line reference in bold type — often sufficient on its own:

To pinpoint the exact words annotated, quote them in italic, with ellipses if lengthy (inverted commas indicating that the editor is offering a gloss):

If an edition includes several texts, an initial letter for each text may preface the line reference, in notes, cross-references, and glossary alike:

The scope of the glossary differs with the text; as a general rule, aim at a graduate readership familiar with Chaucer and other well-known Middle English authors. Include obsolete words and those whose senses are not easily recognizable in modern English — the earlier the text, the fuller the glossary. In the initial stages it may help to include doubtful cases: pruning later is easier than hunting for omissions at the last minute.

Include a headnote explaining your solutions to the text’s particular problems — for example, the finer points of alphabetical organization, such as treatment of u and v, i, j, and y, or sh and sch — ending with a list of abbreviations used. Glossaries generated from an electronic concordance may aid the editor privately but should not be offered for publication in that form. Etymologies should not be included. Make the most frequent spellings the headword (avoid supplying forms which do not occur in the text), with cross-references for variant spellings alphabetized at a distance from the entry (for example, ‘konnyng see connyng n.’). For most words a small number of references suffices, preferably early in the text, noticing any use out of the ordinary.

Grammatical categories

Following the citation of the headword (in bold type), its grammatical category is identified (in italic). The following standard abbreviations may be used:

The abbreviation is followed by a full point: v., n., prep., etc. Numerals in italic designate grammatical number:

Alphabetical organization

It is usually simplest to treat y representing a vowel as a variant of i and place it accordingly. If i is used as a consonant it may take the place of modern ‘j’. If y is used as a semi-vowel, it should be listed as modern ‘y’. If u and v are used as a vowel, they should be placed under ‘u’; if they are used consonantally, they should be placed under ‘v’. If ȝ is used frequently, it should be listed separately after ‘g’; if only occasionally, as an alternative to ‘y’, it should be listed under ‘y’ with a cross-reference after ‘g’, or a mention in the headnote. If þ is used frequently, it should have a separate place after ‘t’; if occasional, it may be treated as an alternative to ‘th’. In addition, when preparing a glossary of Old English, k is included under c, æ after a. The prefix ge- is ignored in the ordering. When variation of spelling (as between -nes/-ness/-nys, or -gende/-giende/-iende/-igende) is too great for full coverage to be attempted, comment to this effect should appear in the headnote. Names of people and places usually go in a separate Index of Proper Names if numerous.

Arrangement within entries

Place the explanation of senses close to the instance it glosses:

With a wide range of forms (most likely with common verbs), collect the senses after the infinitive forms, bringing other inflections together at the end:

The recommended order of reference for verbs is:

• infinitive (inf.)
• present (pr.), 1, 2, 3, singular (sg.), plural (pl.; note there is rarely any need to distinguish persons in the plural).
• subjunctive (subj.), sg., pl.
• imperative (imp.) sg., pl.
• present participle (pr. p.)
• past (pa.) sg. (person marked only when necessary), pl., subj., sg., pl.
• past participle (pa. p.)
• It is often convenient to use the term ‘participial adjective’ (ppl. adj.); ‘verbal noun’ (vbl. n.) is preferred to ‘gerund’.

Headwords and inflectional forms should be in bold type. Grammatical description, and also phrases employing the headword, should be in italic. Any necessary comment, over and above the definitions, should be included in roman in parentheses:

(Note that, in this instance, the first numeral, ‘4’, designates the number of the prose text in a collection — of saints’ lives in this case.) An asterisk is convenient to distinguish emended forms:

Reference will normally be to line numbers of a complete text in verse, but to page and line numbers in prose; line numbers are separated from page numbers by an oblique stroke, as 1/20. Repetition of the headword within an entry should be avoided by the use of the swung dash (~).

Old English glossaries — some general remarks

The conventions above apply to Old English as much as Middle English, but OE texts raise questions about how much extra detail to include, and practice in our editions has varied. Consult comparable editions and raise the question with Council at proposal stage. As the study of Old English becomes less extensive in undergraduate syllabuses, editors may be generous with information — without impeding the reader; the philological specialist may be referred to the Toronto concordance.

Include grammatical gender as well as number. Because of their frequency in OE glossaries, it is economical to use the extra-short abbreviations m., f., n. for masc., fem., neut.; s. and p. for sg. and pl.; n., a., g., d., i for nom., acc., gen., dat., inst. Include classes of strong and weak verbs (roman numerals for strong, arabic for weak); strong and weak nouns need not be marked. Do not include length marks over vowels. Cross-references might reasonably be confined to spelling variants alphabetized at a distance from the main entry — it may not be helpful to report every instance of common variant spellings (such as the doubling of consonants, or variation between medial i/ig/ige/ge) — and grammatical forms illustrated only where they might give difficulty or hold phonological or morphological interest, though cross-references to forms of strong verbs can assist the reader. If the text translates Latin, references to the translated word may help: