Style Guide

  • The spelling and hyphenation of words should conform to Canadian English usage. RACAR prefers -re rather than -er word endings (e.g., centre, not center) and -our rather than -or endings (e.g., labour, not labor). Where both are possible, use -ize endings, not -ise endings, but note that there are words where "s" is essential (e.g., advertise, supervise, etc.). For further clarification, see the Oxford Canadian Dictionary. Foreign words should be italicized; however, those that have been absorbed into the language, particularly art terms (e.g., chiaroscuro) need not be italicized, and accents can normally be omitted. Place names should generally conform to the spelling of the native country or region (e.g., Regensburg, not Ratisbonne; Livorno, not Leghorn); anglicization of long standing (e.g., Rome, Florence) are, however, acceptable.
  • For quotations and single words picked out in the text, please use double quotation marks. Use single quotation marks only for quotations within quotations. Final quotation marks should always follow sense stops, such as commas or periods. Longer quotations of more than roughly forty words, should be differentiated from the text by indentation, and set out as extracts, without quotation marks. All shorter quotations, however, should be incorporated in the text and set within quotation marks.
  • Ellipses in quotations. Use three spaced dots to indicate words dropped within sentences and a period followed by three spaced dots to indicate deleted sentences.
  • Please use the Oxford (serial) comma.
  • Please use italics for titles of publications, artworks, exhibitions, and for foreign terms. Underlining is used only for URL addresses. ​
  • Indicate if you are responsible for translations of quotations by adding before the first note: “Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.”
  • Dates. Use nineteenth century, or nineteenth-century [art] (written in full), not 19th century, or 19th-century [art]. Use 1930s, not ’30s or thirties. Use July 19, 1992, not 19 July 1992 or July 19th, 1992. For approximate dates, use ca. 1203, rather than circa 1203, c.1203 or c. 1203.
  • Other numbers. Spell out numbers less than one hundred, other than dates and measures, that occur in isolation in the text. Round numbers of more than one hundred can be spelled out. Arabic numerals may be used when several numbers are being mentioned or for comparisons. Write all numbers of three digits or more in arabic numerals. When specifying a hyphenated range of numbers, include the last two digits of the final number, thus: 152–55, 1980–88. However, when the last two digits would begin with a zero, use a full reference, e.g., 101–102. Use en dashes between numbers.
  • Language. RACAR favours the use of gender-neutral language, US instead of American, and capitalization of the words Black and Indigenous.
  • Use metric rather than imperial units. Abbreviated units do not change in the plural, e.g., 3 km (not 3 kms).
  • For other points of style, consult the Chicago Manual of Style. 

FOOTNOTES AND ENDNOTES
  • We adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., Notes and Bibliography style. Articles and reviews should include notes but not bibliographies or works cited lists.
  • Note that a new guideline in CMOS 18 (14.30) does away with the requirements to list places of publication in citations, except for cases when the location is of particular significance.
  • In general, we use footnotes for articles and endnotes for book/exhibition reviews.
  • Notes should be used sparingly. Where lengthy notes are deemed essential by the author, consideration should be given either to adjusting the text or to the addition of an addendum or addenda.
  • In all references, the choice between given name(s) and/or initial(s) for authors should follow the author’s own practice, as reflected in their published works. Titles of published books and periodicals should be italicized. All important words, both in titles and subtitles, should be capitalized (i.e., use title case rules). If a book is part of a series, the series name should not be italicized. Note that quotation marks always follow sense stops. Page numbers are not preceded by p. or pp. See below for detailed exemplars. If a reference is not covered in this list, adapt it as closely as possible to the most similar exemplar.
  • A full reference should be given initially. All subsequent note references to the same work should be in standard shortened title form: author’s last name, the key word(s) of the title, page number(s). See examples below. In accordance with CMOS 18, the use of "ibid." is discouraged.
  • In exceptional cases where a single work is discussed at length or cited repeatedly, bracketed page references may be inserted directly in the text after the full citation has been made in a note.
  • For online sources, dates of access are usually not required.  

  • Monograph
    Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray: The Caricaturist (Phaidon, 1965), 82–84, 130–31.
    Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285–1385, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles V, ed. J.J.G. Alexander, 2 vols. (Miller, 1986), I, 30–32, fig. 32.
  • Multi-Authored Work
    Bernadette Fort and Angela Rosenthal, eds., The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 2001), 78.
    Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr., eds., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (University of Chicago Press, 1948), 112–22.
    [where there are more than three authors or editors, list the first, followed by “et al.,”]
  • Article in a Periodical
    Norman D. Ziff, “Jeanne d’Arc and French Restoration Art,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6, no. 93 (January 1979): 38.
    Maureen Ryan, “Picturing Canada’s Native Landscape: Colonial Expansion, National Identity, and the Image of a ‘Dying Race,’” RACAR 17, no. 2 (1990): 150–57, figs. 85–91.
  • Online Journal Article
    Sandra Yin, “Colour Bind,” American Demographics 25, no. 7 (2003): 22–26, http://www.galileo.usg.edu.
  • Article in a Multi-Authored Work
    Angela Rosenthal, “Unfolding Gender: Women and the 'Secret' Sign Language of Fans in Hogarth's Work," in The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference, ed. Bernadette Fort and Angela Rosenthal (Princeton University Press, 2001), 124.
    Claude Blair and John Blair, “Copper Alloys,” in English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products, ed. John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (Hambledon, 1991), 81–106, esp. 93–95.
    Millard Meiss, “Jan van Eyck and the Italian Renaissance,” in The Painter’s Choice: Problems in the Interpretation of Renaissance Art (Harper & Row, 1976), 19–35.
  • Exhibition Catalogue
    Joan Murray, The Art of Tom Thomson, exh. cat. (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1971), 51.
    Jean Clair, ed., The 1920s: Age of the Metropolis, exh. cat. (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1991), 450–71.
    The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, exh. cat. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980), 246. [exhibition locations are not required for travelling exhibitions]
  • Book in a Series
    Francis Muel, et al., La Tenture de l’Apocalypse d’Angers, Cahiers de l’Inventaire IV (Inventaire général, 1987), 45.
    E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Representation, Bollingen Series XXXV, 5, 2nd ed. (Princeton University Press, 1960), 223–28.
  • Translation
    Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, French Eighteenth-Century Painters (1880-82), trans. Robin Ironside (Phaidon, 1948), 32.
  • Incunabula
    H. Badesius, De Sacello Sixti. V. Pont. Max. In Exquiliis ad praesepe Domini extructo (Rome: Ex Typographia Vaticana, 1588), 6, 8, 11.
    I. Castalionus in H. Badesius, De ... Sacello Sixti V. Pont. Max. (n.p., n.d.), 17.
  • Re-Edition
    P. Fabricio, Delle allusioni, imprese, et emblemi ... sopra la vita, opere, et attioni di Gregorio XIII ... Libri VI (1st ed., 1585; Rome: Bartolomeo Grassi, 1588), 331, Emblem CCXXII.
    Martin Shaw Briggs, Baroque Architecture (1913; repr. Da Capo, 1967), 33–52.
  • Dissertation
    M.L. Shapiro, “Studies in the Iconology of the Sculptures in the Tempio Malatestiano,” PhD diss., New York University, 1958, 196.
  • Sales Catalogue
    Sotheby Parke Bernet and Co., London, The Thomas F. Flannery, Jr., Collection: Medieval and Later Works of Art (1 December 1983: lot 5; 2 December 1983: lot 403).
  • Newspaper Article
    Mario Proth, “Voyage au pays des peintres,” Le Réveil, May 1, 1885, 1.
  • Website
    Anita Ramasastry, “Toppling Saddam, Not His Statues,” Findlaw’s Writ, April 22, 2003, http://writ.news.findlaw.com.
  • Interview
    Donna E. Shalala, interview by author, Madison, Wisconsin, December 1, 1992.
  • Shortened Titles
    After a source has been cited in full, subsequent references consist of the author’s last name and a shortened form of the title, usually consisting of the first words of the title. Some shortened titles from the above examples are listed below:
    Hill, Mr. Gillray, 172–74.
    Fort and Rosenthal, eds., The Other Hogarth, 145.
    Murray, The Art of Tom Thomson, 45.
    Ziff, “Jeanne d’Arc,” 38.

CAPTION STYLE
Text references to illustrations should take the form (fig. 2). For all captions, appropriate photographic credits and/or permissions must be included. It is the contributor’s responsibility to obtain such permissions. Only actual titles of works, not descriptions (such as the names of buildings), are to be italicized. Please check that titles and/or descriptions used in captions exactly match the relevant reference in the text of the article. Exemplars for the main sorts of captions are listed below:

Examples:
  • fig 1. Lucius O’Brien, Lords of the Forest, 1874. Watercolour on paper, 67.2 x 46.6 cm. Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, The Bert and Barbara Stitt Family Collection. Photo: Art Gallery of Ontario.
  • fig 2. Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Jerome, 1629. Oil on canvas, 125 x 100 cm. Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphili. Photo: reproduced from Jonathan Brown, Jusepe de Ribera: Prints and Drawings (Princeton, 1973).
  • fig 3. Anonymous, Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall, 1st ed., 1523, title page. Photo: Göttingen, Universitätsbibliothek.
  • fig 4. Henry II entering a church. Pontifical of Henry II, ca. 1007–24. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Lit. 53, fol. 2v. Photo: Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich.
  • fig 5. Mainz Cathedral. Tomb slab of Archbishop Siegfried III von Eppstein, ca. 1250. Photo: Marburg/Art Resource, New York.
  • fig 6. Bishop Sigebert of Minden accompanied by two priests and two deacons, ca. 1030. Ivory plaque, 14 x 7 cm. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. qu. 42, book cover. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne.
  • fig 7. St. Paul’s, Halifax. The interior as it appeared in 1987 (chancel of 1872). Photo: T.U.N.S. / P. Toman.
  • fig 8. St. Paul’s, Halifax. Reconstruction of the ground plan as built in 1750. Photo: author.
  • fig 9. James Gibbs, Mary’bone Chapell, St. Peter, Vere Street. Engraving: The North Side, with the plan in small. Photo: reproduced from A Book of Architecture (London, 1728), pl. XXIV.
  • fig 10. Olowe of Ise, Veranda Post (Opo), 1910/14, from the Palace of the Ogaga (king) of Ikere. Nigeria, Ikere, Yoruba. Wood, traces of pigment, h. 153.7 cm. Art Institute of Chicago (1984.550), http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/afr/81pc_olowe.html.