• Unless an abbreviation is very common it should be spelled out in full when it is first used, with the abbreviation appearing in brackets immediately afterwards. Note that while abbreviations are generally in capitals, the term when spelled out does not necessarily require initial caps.
• Do not use full stops for
  Dr Mr Ms St Jr USA UK eds
  Use full stops for
  e.g. i.e. no. p. pp. vol. ed. trans. esp. id. ibid. etal. etc.
• Spell out ‘for example’ and ‘that is’ in running text; use the abbreviations e.g. and i.e. only in tables, notes or parentheses.
• The abbreviations i.e. and e.g. are never followed by a comma.
• Abbreviations of biblical books should be in roman and rabbinic literature in italics. The following abbreviations are recommended:
  Bible OT Gen. 1:1
  Bible NT Matt. 1:1
  Mishnah mBer. 1:1
  Tosefta tBer. 1:1
  Palestinian Talmud yBer. 1:1 (2c)
  Babylonian Talmud bBer. 2b
• Abbreviations of Classical works and authors should follow the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edition).
• For detail on biblical and rabbinic abbreviations please consult The SBL Handbook of Style.

• References to titles reviewed should be in this form:
  Jonathan Edmondson, Steve Mason and James Rives (eds), Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. xvi, 400 pp. £75.00. isbn 0 19 926212 8.
• No brackets should be used around publication details.
• Do not insert hyphens in ISBN numbers.
• Book reviews should have no footnotes.

• All photographs, diagrams, charts, graphs are called figures. Number them consecutively and refer to them in the text as (Figure 1), (Figure 2), etc.
• Maps should be referred to in the text as (Map 1), (Map 2), etc.
• Both figures and maps should be supplied in TIFF or JPEG format at minimum 300 dpi at the size at which they will appear (approx. 10 cm wide). Do not compress the file. EPS (vector) images are also acceptable. All images are published in greyscale.
• Authors are responsible for obtaining reproduction permission and if necessary paying for it.

• Use footnotes in articles only.
• Please use Word’s automatic footnotes function.
• Footnote superscript numbers should preferably be placed at the end of sentences, and should follow any punctuation marks.

Numbers

• One to ten in words, 11 and above in figures.
• Always use commas to indicate thousands and millions: 1,545 2,350,000
• Page spans: use the fewest figures that will make the span clear:
  pp. 27–9 pp. 105–37
  Use an en-dash (Word:Insert>symbol>special characters) between numbers.

Dates

• Dates should be in the form day (with no ‘th’), month, year: 11 January 2000
• Decades: 1980s, not the eighties, nor the 80s, nor the 1980’s
• Centuries: twentieth, not 20th century
• Use an en-dash for date spans: 1974–88 1965–8
• Do not elide any figures for years of birth and death: 1917–1994

Dashes

• Follow the Oxford style guides on the rules for hyphenation of words.
• Use an unspaced en-dash (not hyphen) between numbers or spans.
• Use a spaced en-dash parenthetically between words.

Ellipses

• Do not key in three or a random number of full stops but insert the ellipsis symbol (Word: Insert>symbol>special characters)
• Leave a space on either side of an ellipsis if it is inside a quotation; do not leave a space if the ellipsis is at the beginning or end of a quotation.

Emphasis

• Use italics, not bold, for emphasis.

Italics

• Use italic type for titles of books and for words (but not proper nouns) in languages other than English.

Brackets

• Use square brackets only for editorial interpolations within quoted text.
• Use of bracket within the bracket is strongly discouraged.

Slash symbol (solidus)

• Use unspaced: Bodleian/Oxford, not Bodleian / Oxford

• Always use single, not double, quotation marks unless it is a quote within a quote, when double should be used (and single again for a third level of quotation).
• Follow the British convention where in a quote which is a full sentence, the closing punctuation comes inside the closing quotation mark: ‘I think we should call it a day.’ When the text quoted is not a full sentence, the closing punctuation comes after the closing quotation mark: They agreed that they would ‘call it a day’.
• Quotations of 50 words or more should be displayed as separate indented paragraphs.
• Quotations of fewer than 50 words should run on in the text; they should begin and end with single quotation marks (they can also be displayed if you want them to stand out).
• Any text following a displayed quotation should start on a new line.
• Do not impose our house style on quotations; maintain the original spelling and punctuation.

• Reference style should be consistent.
• Use full stops at the end of references.
• Do not quote the full reference to a publication in the main text: place it in the footnotes.

Names

• Author’s full first name or initials, followed by family name. Use full stops after initials, with no spaces between multiple initials.
• Works with more than two authors should be referred to with all the authors when first cited, thereafter only with the first author followed by et al.: Bennett, Russell and Mills (1995), and then Bennett et al. (1995)

Titles

• Put book and journal titles in italics. Use initial capitals for all important words in book, booklet and journal titles.
• Put single inverted commas around article, chapter and unpublished document titles. Use initial capitals for the first word and any proper nouns only.

Publication details

• Put brackets around the publisher, place of publication and year of publication. Do not include day and month of publication unless they are needed to identify the issue, e.g. of a daily newspaper or monthly magazine.
• If no date is available, use (n.d.).
• Use only Arabic numerals for ancient works e.g. Jewish War 2.168
• Do not use op. cit. for repeated references, but use short title (see examples below).

Examples of references

Single-authored books
S. Stern, Time and Process in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003), pp. 20–25.
Subsequent short reference:
Stern, Time and Process, p. 15.
Multi-authored books
G. Vermes and M. Goodman, The Essenes According to the Classical Sources, Oxford Centre Textbooks 1 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), p. 56. Subsequent short reference:
Vermes and Goodman, The Essenes, p. 34.
Translated books
H.L. Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. M. Bockmuehl (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), p. 3.
Subsequent short reference:
Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, p. 357.
Hebrew books
G.G. Scholem and B. Joel, Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts in the National and University Library, Jerusalem. vol. 1: Kabbala (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: University Press, 1930), p. 95.
Subsequent short reference:
Scholem and Joel, Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts, p. 95.
Articles or chapters in multi-authored edited books
P. Schäfer, ‘From Cosmology to Theology. The Rabbinic Appropriation of Apocalyptic Cosmology’, in R. Elior and P. Schäfer (eds), Creation and Re- Creation in Jewish Thought. Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Dan on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), pp. 39–58.
Subsequent short reference:
P. Schäfer, ‘From Cosmology to Theology’, p. 57.
Encyclopedia entries
S.G. Wald, ‘Johanan ben Zakkai’, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 11, pp. 373–7.
Subsequent short reference:
Wald, ‘Johanan ben Zakkai’, p. 374.
Articles in journals
F. Millar, ‘Christian Emperors, Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora in the Greek East, CE 379–450, Journal of Jewish Studies 55 (2004), pp. 1–24.
Subsequent short reference:
Millar, ‘Christian Emperors’, p. 6.

Websites

• Because of the ephemeral nature of some URLs, it is important to indicate when a site was last accessed:
  www.jjs-online.net, accessed 26 May 2011.
• If referring to a specific page, provide explicit directory and filenames and extensions:
  www.jjs-online.net/

• Use ‘ize’ endings in words as organize, realize, etc. (but NB analyse, surprise, comprise, advise, paralyse).

• Use transliteration where possible.
• For detail on transliteration please consult The SBL Handbook of Style.