Style Manual
From Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia
Contents |
General Style Guidelines
- Always keep in mind your audience. When editing new and existing articles, always be mindful of how they will be searching for and using this information, and try to anticipate what their informational needs might be.
- Make sure articles have a neutral "voice." They should be straightforward recountings of provable facts, with no subjective commentary on the topic.
- The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia should be considered a formal medium, so be sure your writing style is appropriate but also accessible to a general audience.
- Do not use abbreviations to refer to proper nouns, such as "TJ" for Thomas Jefferson, MJR for Martha Jefferson Randolph, JM for James Madison, etc.
Naming Articles
It is important to be thoughtful and logical when choosing a name for a new article. Keep in mind the following factors:
- The title of the article will be part of the URL and will be mined by search engine spiders, so think about how potential users might be searching for this topic on the Internet.
- Use punctuation marks in the article title whenever necessary (e.g. apostrophes, commas, parentheses, hyphens, etc). These will be interpreted as a set of characters by the browser, but it is more important to have the title appear grammatically correct at the head of the article. The only special character which cannot be used in the article title is a slash (/), which is interpreted by the browser as a subdirectory.
- Keep in mind users who might be browsing for this topic, and the words they might be looking for.
- All significant words in an article title should be capitalized.
Article Layout
- The Article Template may be used as a guide in formulating your article. The article template provides examples of syntax for any possible element you might want to include, but any elements not needed can simply be deleted.
Dealing with Specific Types of Sources
Many articles are based on pre-compiled reports or lists that tend to have a very specific formatting style. This is how they should be dealt with.
- When dealing with a pre-compiled list of documentary references to a topic (frequently found in our Information Files), append the list to a pre-existing article on the topic, if one exists. If an article does not already exist on the topic, create a generally named article on the topic. For example, if you have a list of documentary references to strawberries, but there is no article already existing on Jefferson and strawberries, create an article called "Strawberries" and populate it with your list of documentary references.
- Lists of documentary references should be put under their own subheading, called "Primary Source References."
- If you create a quotation page or a page listing documentary references, be sure to make the date or identifier for each item bold for easier scanning. For an example, see Agriculture
Organizing End Matter
There are three possible sections under which the end matter of an article may be organized. Any or all of them may be used in a given article. Mark each item under each heading (even if there is only one item) with a bullet (accomplished by typing an asterisk (*) before each item. Whichever elements you use, please include them in the following order:
- Footnotes: Used as any standard footnote.
- See Also: Use this category to link to other Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia articles of possible interest; relevant items for sale in the Museum Shop may also be referenced here. Place after Footnotes but before Further Sources.
- Further Sources: Use this section to list sources that have not been specifically mentioned in the text of the article, but that may be of interest to readers.
- Links to reading material for sale at the Museum Shop may also be placed under this heading as well as images.
- If appropriate, include a link to a canned search for the article's topic under this heading. See below (under Linking) for instructions on how to do this.
Citations and Credits
- When including citations in your article, please adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style.
- Whenever possible, refer to the Princeton Papers of Thomas Jefferson as opposed to other editions of Jefferson's writings. If the document in question has not yet been published by Princeton, refer to the following sources, in order of preference:
- The original document, if it is accessible online (e.g. through the Library of Congress' American Memory)
- Ford
- Any other single-volume compilation that appears on the Short Title List, such as the Family Letters or Peterson's Writings.
- Lipscomb-Bergh
Foundation Reports and Publications
- If the article stems from an existing report, newsletter article, etc., insert a footnote the first time the subject of the article is mentioned to indicate the basis for the article. Use the following phrase: This article is based on.... (Example: This article is based on Gaye Wilson, Monticello Research Report, September 2003.) For a newsletter article, please use the following wording: This article is based on Gaye Wilson, Monticello Newsletter, 13 (Spring 1998).
- If a research report has author initials, put those initials into the article as original author.
Primary Documents
- Use the following format when citing dates within the body of an article or within citations: month, day, year (e.g. April 13, 1743).
- Follow Chicago's suggested format when citing personal letters in both published and unpublished collections.
- Published collections: Jefferson to James Madison, Monticello, April 13, 1781, in PTJ, 7:125.
- Unpublished collections: Jefferson to James Madison, Monticello, April 13, 1781. Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
- In addition, when citing primary documents, link to the original repository (and to the specific document) whenever possible. This is appended to the letter citation discussed above, e.g. Jefferson to James Madison, Monticello, April 13, 1781, in PTJ, 7:125. Polygraph copy available online from the Library of Congress. Or, for unpublished papers: Jefferson to James Madison, Monticello, April 13, 1781. Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Polygraph copy available online.
Other Published or Secondary Sources
- Sources that are frequently cited may be referred to using a shorthand designation (e.g. Dumas Malone, Memorandum Books). These works are listed in our Short Title List. When citing a work included in the Short Title List, please link the shorthand reference to the Short Title List. If the same item in the Short Title List is referred to multiple times in an article, it need only be linked once to the Short Title List, on the first occurrence.
- If you are citing a source not listed on the Short Title List, link to its Thomas Jefferson Portal entry (if it has one). See below for instructions on how to do this. If the item is not in the Thomas Jefferson Portal, link to the relevant WorldCat record, if possible.
- When citing a website: include the author or responsible party. Title. URL. (Example: Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. Getting Word. http://www.monticello.org/gettingword/index.html.) Make sure that the full URL displays in the citation. To do this, simply type the URL twice, separated by a space, between single brackets. (Example: http://www.monticello.org/gettingword/index.html)
Linking
Linking to Other Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia Articles
- Link to the Thomas Jefferson main article at the first (and only the first) instance that the name Jefferson appears in your article.
- Link to other articles within the text of your article wherever there is an opportunity. (Remember, if you link to an article in the text of your article, there is no need to list it again under See Also.)
- To link other articles back to yours, run a keyword search for the topic of your article after you have completed it. Go through the results list and add a link (wherever appropriate) back to your article.
- Remember that it is only necessary to link to another given article once, on the first occurrence. For example, if Martha Jefferson Randolph is mentioned multiple times in an article, it is only necessary to link to the Martha Jefferson Randolph article the first time she is mentioned.
Linking into the Thomas Jefferson Portal
- Whenever you mention a book or resource that the Jefferson Library owns, link the title to its corresponding record in our online catalog. To do this:
- Paste in http://tjportal.monticello.org/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID= between your square brackets, before the title that you are linking.
- Pull up the item's record in the Portal. Click on the box near the top that says MARC.
- Just to the right of the gray box that says 001, you will see a number that is 3 to 5 digits long. This is the record's unique identifier (bib number). Paste that number on to the end of your URL as described above, just after the = sign.
- Under Further Sources, whenever appropriate, add a link to a canned search for that topic in the TJ Portal.
- Simply do a keyword search for the topic (some lend themselves better than others) in the TJ Portal.
- Copy the URL (it will be VERY long).
- Go to Texas A&M University's Canned Search Generator.
- Paste the long URL into the space provided, follow the instructions, and paste the new URL into the article under Further Sources. Link the following phrase: "Look for sources in the Thomas Jefferson Portal."
Linking to Other Thomas Jefferson Foundation Sites and Projects
- If we sell a book online from our gift shop, include a link where appropriate. Ideally use it under the Further Sources heading, but if it is just cited, then put it in under the Footnotes heading by the citation. Use this phrase/link: Available for purchase at [URL link to item Monticello Gift Shop]
- This may also be done for other items sold by the Museum Shop.
- Eventually, we should be able to link to images in the Thomas Jefferson Digital Library. We do not have this ability yet, but when we do the procedure will be similar to linking to the TJ Portal. Use the phrase: "Search for images in the Thomas Jefferson Digital Library."
Linking to WorldCat
- Search for the item by title at http://www.worldcat.org.
- Select the appropriate record.
- Once you have the single item record displaying, go to the address bar in your browser and copy only the first part of the URL, up to the end of the accession number. For example, the stable URL for Jefferson's Memorandum Books looks like this: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/25629653.
- Once you have copied the stable URL from WorldCat, paste it into your article just as you would with any other external link.
