Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for Authors

Please follow these guidelines precisely when preparing your manuscript for publication. Please note that with respect to translations, responsibility for adhering to the following guidelines lies primarily with the translator of the manuscript, not the author.

 Manuscript Preparation Guidelines PDF

Complete Book Manuscript

The manuscript submitted in final form for publication should be complete and include the following, except as noted, and be prepared in this order:

Front Matter

  1. Title Page, giving the title of the book and the name of the author as he or she wishes it to appear.
  2. Copyright page (to be supplied by the Press).
  3. Dedication (if desired) 
  4. Table of contents 
  5. List of maps, list of tables, list of figures, list of plates. Lists should be brief, including only item number, title, author and credit acknowledgment, when applicable. 
  6. Foreword (if desired by author). The foreword is brief and usually written by a recognized authority in the field and is signed. 
  7. Preface and acknowledgments. The preface should state the purpose of the book and specify the audience for which the book is intended. Authors may append a paragraph or two of acknowledgments to the end of the Preface. The Preface is not signed. 
  8. List of abbreviations or chronology. 

Text Proper

The text proper consists of the complete text, divided into chapters (which may be grouped into parts).

Back Matter

  1. Appendix(es). 
  2. Endnotes (if endnotes are used), numbered consecutively within each chapter.
  3. Bibliography, with full publication data. 
  4. List of contributors in a multi-author volume, with academic background and present affiliation. 
  5. Index copy. This is prepared by the author from page proofs. Usually the preliminary structuring of the index, selection of key words for entries, can be well in advance of page proofs. 

Permissions

Production of a manuscript does not begin until all necessary permissions are in our files. Responsibility for obtaining and paying any fees for permissions rests with the author. All permissions necessary for reproduction of illustrations, quotations, and other protected or copyrighted material, whether published or unpublished, are considered part of the manuscript and should be submitted with the final manuscript, after formal acceptance of the manuscript for publication by the Press. 

Style 

For questions concerning spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation, consult Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus (www.merriam-webster.com).

For questions concerning editorial style, consult The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

The Press will offer suggestions concerning many bothersome questions that can be reduced to rule. Good writing, of course, is not merely a matter of following rules; writing is an art. Even the most specialized work can be made to read well and accessibly if prepared with care by a sensitive and meticulous writer.

Many authors find it helpful to read—and reread from time to time—some of the many excellent style guides that are available. One we especially recommend is The Elements of Style, 3rd ed. by William Strunk Jr., and E. B. White (New York: Macmillian, 1979). Although it is unlikely that the study of any style guide will work miracles, it can help the author avoid the most jarring infelicities.

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscripts should be submitted in Microsoft Word.

Formatting Manuscript Files 

NB! We need to strip most formatting in order to lay out your text in a publishing program, so excess formatting such as centering of heads and subheads, adding headers and footers, tabbing, etc., creates extra work.

Please use 1.5 line spacing and 12 pt for body text, single line spacing and 10 pt for notes. 

Put the whole manuscript into a single file. 

Submit tables in files separate from the main text. Save each table as a separate file, with each file labeled by the corresponding table number (for example, Table 1.1). Submit computer-generated figures in the same way. Make sure to mark in the text where each table or figure goes. 

Please pay attention to the uniformization of hyphens, en and em rules. E.g. re-use [hyphen]; 1995–96, Polish–Lithuanian [en dash, ctrl -]; took shape in—and in turn shaped—the fields of medicine [em dash, ctrl-alt -].

If the text requires special characters such as non-English letters, diacriticals, or mathematical symbols, bring it to the editor’s attention. 

Chapter Titles and Subheads 

Begin each chapter on a new page. Strive for conciseness and brevity in your chapter titles. Type subheads flush left on the page, caps and lowercase. Chapter titles and subheads should not be in caps, underlined, in boldface, or in oversized type.

If you use subheads, each chapter should contain an introductory paragraph preceding the first subhead.

Quotations

If they are brief (10 lines or fewer), quotations should be run in with the text. Longer quotations should be indented.

Notes

Use superscripts for note numbers within the text proper. Authors should eliminate lengthy discursive notes either by omitting the material or by working it into the narrative body of the text—especially if they would like to have footnotes in the text. Endnotes should be numbered consecutively within each chapter, beginning with note “1” in each chapter, and collected at the end of the chapter. Double check to be sure that the superscripts are numbered consecutively and that the superscripts in the text match the note numbers.

In the notes section, do not put extra space between notes.

In manuscripts containing a bibliography as well as notes, use short form for the notes, citing the author’s last name, a short title for the work, and page numbers. Only the bibliography should carry full publishing information. Sample short-form notes:

  1. Kennedy, The Klan Unmasked, 45.
  2. James, “Labor Revolt,” 376–78.

Of course, if there are two different Kennedys in the bibliography, first names or initials must be used in notes citing the Kennedys in order to distinguish them. 

Books with no bibliography. In books having no bibliography (as is often the case with multi-author volumes or volumes of an author’s collected essays), the first citation of a work in the notes should carry complete bibliographic information. Use shortened form for subsequent citations within the same chapter and the long form for first citations in subsequent chapters. Use Ibid. if the source was cited in the preceding note. NB! Never use op. cit. loc. cit.

Author-date system. Some authors may wish to use the author-date system for documentation. The author’s name and the date of the work’s publication are given in the text, in parentheses. Page numbers follow the date, separated either by a comma or a colon. Text references are keyed to a list of works cited that serves as a bibliography. A sample: 

Most definitions of Mississippian culture cite corn agriculture as a characteristic (Griffin, 1985, 63).

The biographical citations in a book using the author-date system for notes should list the date of publication immediately after the author’s name, not at the end of the entry:

Lentini, P. (1995). Elections and Political Order in Russia.Budapest:
Central European University Press.

Bibliography 

In bibliographic entries, please use the style shown below. Note that the name of the publisher should be that of the original imprint and date of publication (the names of some publishers have undergone changes over the years). Publishers’ names must be completely spelled out. If the city of publication is not widely known, the abbreviation of the state name should follow it. For example:

Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1975.

The state of publication should be abbreviated in the following manner: NY., not N.Y.; Conn., not CT; Mass., not MA. If the place of publication has an English name, please use that in the bibliographic references. E.g., Moscow instead of Moskva. In historic volumes, use the place of publication appearing in the original instead of the city’s current name. E.g., Pozsony, 1828 instead of Bratislava, 1828.

The Press prefers to carry one bibliography at the end of the volume, combining primary and secondary sources, books and articles, all into one alphabetical list for easy reference. In multi-author volumes or edited collections of one author’s work, we will accept reference lists at the end of each chapter in place of a single bibliography at the end of the manuscript.

Bibliographic entries should follow this style:

Entries for Books: 

1 author Brown, J. G. History of Florida. Syracuse, NY.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945.

2 authors Frydman, R. and A. Rapaczynski. Privatization in Eastern Europe: Is The State Withering Away? Budapest: Central European University Press, 1994.

1 editor Dixon, Marlene, ed. Nicaragua under Siege. San Francisco: Synthesis Publications, 1985.

2 editors x and y, eds. …

article Sundhaussen, Holm. “Die Köningsdiktaturen in Südosteuropa: Umrisse einer Synthese.” In Autoritäre Regime in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa 1919–1944. Edited by Erwin Oberländer. Paderborn and Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001, 337–348.

In notes:

1 author Brown, J. G. History of Florida (Syracuse, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945), 17.

2 authors Frydman, R. and A. Rapaczynski. Privatization in Eastern Europe: Is The State Withering Away? (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1994), 214, 301–21. 

1 editor Dixon, Marlene, ed. Nicaragua under Siege (San Francisco: Synthesis Publications, 1985), 35.

2 editors x and y, eds. …

article Michnik, Adam. “Independence Reborn and the Demons of the Velvet Revolution” in Between Past and Future, eds. Antohi S. and V. Tismaneanu (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), 81–99.

translated Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), vii.

Entries for Journals:

James, Daniel S. “Labor Revolt in Eighteenth-Century Peru.” Journal of Peruvian Studies 16, no. 14 (October 1977): 276–82. [vol. #, issues # (month and year): article page #’s]

Directly following foreign titles in your bibliography, please insert an English translation in parentheses (no quotes, no underlining, and only the first word and proper names capitalized):

Adorno, Theodor W. “Der Essay als Form” (The essay as form). 
Noten zur Literatur 21 (1963): 13–14.

If a title is given only in translation, the translation is treated as the title, but the original language must be specified:

N. M. Pirumova. The Zemstvo Liberal Movement (in Russian)
(Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Nauka,” 1977). 

The Chicago Manual of Style,16th ed., contains numerous sample entries for both notes and bibliography, and authors are encouraged to consult them. 

If there are more than one bibliographic entries from the same author, please use 3 m-dashes instead of his/her name from the second one on:

Ianulov, Iliia, Economic Bulgaria and the Reparations. Sofia: Royal Printing Office, 1929.

———, Sotsialnata Politika na Bŭlgaria prez Vreme na Voinata ot 1915–1918[Social policy of Bulgaria in the period of the 1915–1918 war]. Sofia: Dŭrzhavna Pechatnitsa, 1941.

———, Sotsialno Pokrovitelstvo na Maichinstvoto u Nas i v Chuzhbina [Social protection of motherhood in Bulgaria and abroad]. Sofia: Pechatnitsa “Stopansko razvitie,” 1943.

List of Contributors

In the back matter of multi-author volumes, following the bibliography, provide a list of the contributors’ names and institutional affiliations. For example: 

Eric Davis is associate professor of political science at Rutgers University.

Also please send us a list of the contributors’ addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Tables 

Tables should be identified by chapter and table number and by title. (For example: Table 3.4 Agricultural Production, 1935–1945.) Tables in chapter 1 should be numbered as table 1.1, table 1.2, table, 1.3, and so on; tables in chapter 2 should be numbered as table 2.1, table 2.2, table 2.3, etc.

Since the tables should be submitted in a separate document, please key each of them in the text by writing “table 3.1 near here,” where you want each table to appear. 

Illustrations

Black and white photographs. When submitting the final version of the manuscript, following acceptance by the Press, please send us original, glossy black and white photographs with good tonal range (light to dark areas), preferably 8” × 10” or 5” × 7” or a digital version bigger than 300 dpi resolution. Color photographs that will be printed in black and white are not recommended. Photographs cut from or shot from printed material are not recommended because they have already been screened for the printing process and will reproduce poorly if screened again. We will not reproduce from photocopies, but we do request photocopies early in the consideration process.

Color illustrations. If the Press has approved full-color illustrations for your book, please choose photographs with good color and sharp detail (at least 300 dpi if in digital). 

Numbering and labeling illustrations. Black-and-white illustrations (and color art to be reproduced in black and white) and line drawings (except maps) should be labeled “figures.” Color art to be reproduced in color should be labeled “plates.” Frontispiece and cover illustrations should be labeled “frontispiece” and “cover.” 

Marking art placement. In brackets indicate where you want b/w figures and maps to appear in the text by writing “figure 1 near here” or “map 1 near here.” Color plates are generally grouped together in the book and printed on glossy paper.

List of illustrations. To prepare lists of illustrations for the manuscript’s front matter, see page 1 of these guidelines. Provide separate lists for plates, figures, maps, and tables, with each list starting at the top of a new page in the front matter.

Submitting illustrations. Illustrations should be separated from the manuscript and clearly labeled.

Copyright for illustrations. Many illustrations are under copyright; thus it may be necessary for the author to obtain permission to reprint illustrations. Please consult with us before seeking such permissions, and we will provide guidance and instruction.

Number of illustrations. CEU Press does not have pre-set limits for illustrations. Check your contract for details of the number and type of illustrations agreed for your book.

Captions. Illustrations should also be accompanied by a list of their captions. Identify the illustration by its number, describe it with a concise caption (include the location and date, if relevant/known), cite the full source, and acknowledge credit (permission granted). In any art book, captions should include the artist’s name (if relevant/known), title and/or description of the artwork, year of the artwork, year or time period (if known), medium, size, and archival location.

From Manuscript to Book

After a manuscript has been accepted for publication, one of our editors will examine it for conformity to these guidelines. If the editor discovers problems, the editor will return the manuscript to the author, with detailed instructions for additional preparation that must be done before copyediting can begin. Manuscripts that arrive at the Press in excellent condition may be passed directly into copyedit, with no delay.

The copyeditor’s task is to prepare the manuscript for the compositor. This editor is concerned primarily with details: correct sentence structure, clarity of expression, other aspects of good grammar (abbreviations, spelling, capitalization), and consistency. The best editing is unobtrusive. The copyeditor is not a rewriter, but the person responsible for putting the final touches on the manuscript and seeing it into and through production.

When the manuscript is edited, it is sent to the author for review and for resolution of the editor’s queries. Because changes are time consuming to effect after a manuscript has been set in type, we ask authors to read the copyedited manuscript as they would galley proofs.

When the edited manuscript has been returned to the Press with the author’s approval, it is released for design and composition and a production schedule is prepared. From the moment a book enters this production phase, it is most important that the author and publisher work in strict accordance with established schedules. A standard rule in every publisher’s office is to drop everything in order to deal with proof, as it must be kept moving, first to the author, then back to the typesetter. One set of proofs is sent to the author for checking, and a second set is checked by a professional proofreader. Changes should be limited to those necessary to correct typographical and factual errors. The author returns his or her set of proofs to the editor.

The author completes his or her index from the page proofs. The single-column index should be returned to the editor with any page proofs on which the author has made final corrections.

The Press copyedits the index, sends it to the typesetter, and proofreads and corrects the index proofs without sending them to the author.