Please submit a single Microsoft Word document that adheres to the guidelines below.

Content

Lexicon. On issues of spelling, meaning, and usage, authors should refer to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary or its abridgment Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Copyeditors will do the same. (Access is available at Merriam-Webster.com.)
Style. Authors should consult the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style as well as the press’s style guide on all style issues, especially the documenting of sources. All copyediting shall follow Chicago’s recommendations.
Documentation. All references to cited material must be present, complete, and up to date and should adhere to Chicago’s systems for documenting sources. Deviations should be approved well in advance by your acquisitions editor.
Elements. If any front- or back-matter elements will be included in the finished work, they must be included in the manuscript file (with the exception of the index, which cannot be built until the manuscript is typeset).
Title page. Place the title and subtitle on the title page as you intend it to appear everywhere. Do the same with the names and order of the authors and editors.
Subsidy credits. Credit to organizations providing grants, subsidies, or subventions should appear in the original manuscript following the title page. Such grantors often have specific wishes regarding the language of credit lines that should be honored. More detailed thanks may also be included in the Acknowledgments.
Chapter titles and subtitles. Use upper- and lowercase letters rather than full capitals. The titles should match the entries in the table of contents. Chapters should start with numbers. If one chapter has a subtitle, then all chapters should have one, and they should follow a clear, discernable pattern. Notes in titles and subheads should be avoided.
Tables. Tables are best assembled in Microsoft Word and placed where they should appear. Precede them with a caption. Large or complicated tables that take up multiple pages should be placed in a separate file and called out in the manuscript as with illustrations. If your manuscript contains many tables, contact your editor for more detailed formatting instructions.

Formatting

Simplicity and Consistency. Generally speaking, opt for a simple approach when in doubt about how to prepare your files. Removing problematic elements in files is almost always more difficult than adding the correct elements. When you find a method that works, stick with it. Variance confuses copyeditors and typesetters. Editors of multiauthors works should be especially dilligent in making sure that contributors’ style and documentation choices are aligned.
Indenting. To indent the first line of a paragraph or items in a vertical list, use the Tab key or Microsoft Word’s paragraph indention features rather than the space bar. To achieve hanging indention for runover lines (as in a bibliography or index), use your software’s indent features, not hard returns and tabs or spaces.
Chapter divisions. Insert section breaks between chapters and front- and back-matter elements.
Subheads. Set subheads on a new line and use Word’s Style feature to apply a style such as Heading 1, Heading 2, or the like.
Prose extracts. Extracts (or block quotations) should be indented from the left margin using Microsoft Word’s indent feature. If the extract is a single paragraph, do not give the first line an extra indent. If it contains multiple paragraphs, give a first-line indent to all paragraphs.
Notes. To take advantage of automatic renumbering, create notes that are linked to the text by using the Insert Footnote function in Microsoft Word and then opting for endnotes. Avoid appending note references to chapter titles or epigraphs. Notes to tables should be numbered separately. Avoid putting more than one note in the same place.

Callouts and Captions

Inserting illustrations. Rather than relying on illustrations placed within the document, use callouts as described below to indicate where they should be placed. 
Placement instructions. Callouts should be placed on their own line and inside square brackets—never within a paragraph. Follow them with a caption and, when required by the rights holder, an italicized credit line. Remember that the information within the brackets is for editors and designers and will not be printed on the page. For example:

[Insert figure 12.]
Northern Twin Mound before excavation. Courtesy Arkansas Archeological Survey.

Figure numbers. Avoid beginning captions with a figure number. Consult your acquisitions editor if you feel it necessary for making references in the text.
Additional instructions. Include any instructions about how you would like the images treated, like layout, size, or grouping preferences. For example:

[Insert figures 23, 24, side by side.]
Selected artifacts from the Ozier Mound. Southeast profile of stratigraphic trench. Author photo.
Selected artifacts from the Cochran site area. Courtesy University of Arkansas Libraries.

Importance of consistency. The numbering in the callouts should be double checked assiduously against the numbering of the illustration files and tables. Misplaced and mislabeled figures are often only discovered in proof—very late in the publishing process—and are expensive to correct. If problems are missed in that stage too, then the author and the press can be exposed not just to embarrassing errors and but also to serious intellectual-property violations.

Multiauthor Works

Volume Editor’s Responsibilities. Please review the sections in The Chicago Manual of Style that describe the responsibilities of volume editors in the preparation of multiauthor works, which include the management and double-checking of many of the guidelines above.
Style Sheet. Along with your manuscript document, please deliver to the press a short memo that describes the uniformity of style that you’ve imposed with respect to documentation methods and citation syntax. This style sheet is essential in assuring that the copyeditor assigned to your project is well informed and able to support the guidance you’ve given your contributors.

Poetry

PDF. In addition to the manuscript file described above, please deliver a PDF that you’ve reviewed that demonstrates exactly how you’d like the text to be set. Our designers will use this as a guide during layout.
Stanza breaks. Create stanza breaks with two consecutive hard returns: one at the end of the line leading into the break, the other for the line of blank space that follows. Do not use two consecutive hard returns for any other reason than to create line space between stanzas. To create ornamented section breaks between lines (dinkuses), set three asterisks on a line by themselves.
Prose paragraphs. To indicate intentional line breaks in a stanza, use paragraph returns or manual line breaks. However, in the case of prose paragraphs where lines should break naturally according to the size of the page, avoid paragraph returns or manual line breaks, and let the lines break automatically accoring to the dimensions of your page.
Line length. Most poetry books at the press are printed at a trim size of 5.5 × 8.5″. To get a rough sense of how long your lines can be without breaking, set up your Word document with 2.25″ margins on 8.5 × 11″ paper—essentially creating 4″-wide text box—and use ten-point Times New Roman to approximate the smallest font size the designer could use.

Please provide print-ready digital versions of whatever illustrations you want included in the final work. Collect images files in a single folder with no subfolders and deliver them to the press at the time you deliver your manuscript.

Resolution of continuous-tone images. Continuous-tone images are images such as photographs and paintings. For 6 × 9″ books with typical margins, submit JPEGs, PNGs, or TIFFs that are at least 1200 pixels wide (for landscape images) or at least 2100 pixels tall (for portrait images). For large format books, consult your acquisitions editor for a specific figure. (You can find image dimensions on a PC by looking in the file’s Properties and on a Mac by selecting Get Info.)
Resolution of bitonal images. Bitonal images—such as line art, maps, graphs, and charts—are best submitted as vector files from the design software in which they were created, such as EPS or AI files. (Please outline fonts and strokes and include necessary links and data.) If only image files are available, submit files that are at least 4800 pixels wide (for landscape images) or at least 8400 pixels tall (for portrait images).
Altering image resolution. Never artificially inflate an image’s resolution by resampling pixels in a photo editor. The result is a muddy image that will cause problems at the printer.
Low-resolution images. Remember that we cannot improve the material that you send us and are limited by the quality of the files you deliver. It can be impossible or prohibitively difficult to find high-resolutions images for some illustrations. Original prints are sometimes unavailable for reshooting or rescanning, and web versions are often limited to screen resolution. In these cases, we opt to omit such illustrations, believing that poor images do not aid the reader and degrade the quality of the book.
Naming system. The filenames of all illustrations (including photos, drawings, maps, and charts) should begin with unique serial numbers (e.g., 101, 102, 103, . . . , etc.) that correspond exactly to callouts in the manuscript. In the case of heavily illustrated or multiauthor works, double enumeration may be used, providing the chapter number, followed by a period, followed by the figure number (e.g., 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, . . . , 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, . . . , etc.). The numbers need not be in the order of appearance in the work, but the same number should never be used twice.

Under the terms of our publication agreements, authors are the sole bearers of the responsibility to secure any necessary permissions for material they use that they did not create themselves, including text quotations, images, and other reprinted materials. Authors should educate themselves on the details of intellectual property regulations and fair use to avoid the possibility of copyright infringement.  The resource linked here, prepared by the Association of University Presses, provides a good primer that clarifies when and why permission should be sought and how to get it. It also provides letter templates for making requests from rights holders. Sound and succinct guidance is also available in The Chicago Manual of Style.

Before your title can be scheduled for publication, you must file a permissions log and all corresponding permissions documents with the press. You can download a template for a permissions log here, where you should make careful records of all illustrations and text included in your work that are not original. For each item logged, provide a copy of a permissions request signed by the current rights holder when it is required. If you are claiming that permission is not necessary for an item, provide an explanation of why that situation applies based on public domain or fair use exceptions.

If you are the volume editor of a manuscript comprising contributions from various authors, please download, fill, and return this contributor list so that that press can prepare and execute publication agreements with the chapter authors.

Click here to fill and submit an author questionnaire. The questions in this document are essential to our efforts to describe and position your book effectively in the marketplace. Please consider them thoughtfully and respond as thoroughly as you can.