The Capsule Style Sheet:

Before submitting, please ensure that you are handing in “clean copy.” This means: 

• The document should contain no line breaks or page breaks.
• The document should not have any unresolved comments or unapproved changes.
• The “spacing before” and “spacing after” settings should be at 0 pt.
• The entire document is double spaced and in 12 pt. Times New Roman font. 
• Each citation on the Works Cited page is formatted using a hanging indent. 
• The entire document is left aligned, not justified.

Citations:

•   Book and journal titles should be italicized, not underlined. Article titles should be in quotations, not italicized.
•     Cite all sources quoted directly in the body of the essay.
•     For legal case names, too, the date of publication should be included via parenthetical citation unless noted in context. 
•   Block quotes should be indented and double-spaced.  Only quotations exceeding four lines should be formatted as block quotations.
•   Include an MLA-style Works Cited page with all the cited sources formatted according to the MLA style guide.
•   Ellipses should be used to mark omitted text within a quotation. Ellipses should NOT be enclosed by parentheses or brackets. 
•   The capitalization of quoted material should be respected. If the first letter of a quotation is capitalized in the original, there is no need to change the capitalization and bracket the changes.
• For images and figures, please defer to the MLA-style guide for proper citations.

Style:

•   Essays should be written in 12 point Times New Roman font, double-spaced with NO empty line between paragraphs.
•   The beginning of each essay need only include the title of the essay and the name of the author. Include one extra space, and then begin the first paragraph of the essay, so the top of the first page should look like this: 

“Title of Essay”

Author’s Full Name

This is the first sentence of the essay.

•   The first paragraph in each essay and essay section should remain flush left. Indent all subsequent paragraphs 1/2 inch using the tab key; do not use multiple spaces to create an indent.

•   Single space, not double space, after a period. The document should contain no double spaces at all. You can “Find and Replace” spaces between periods easily in Word.

•   Follow British rather than American spelling conventions (“neighbour” rather than “neighbor,” “travelled” rather than “travel,” “licence” rather than “license”).
•   Serial/Oxford commas should be employed (“eats, shoots, and leaves” not “eats, shoots and leaves”)
•   Dashes should appear as follows—not as – or–; Word should format dashed items this way automatically.
•   Acronyms should remain unpunctuated (ex. “US,” “UT” and “PhD”). 
•   Use “aka” as an abbreviation for “also known as.”
•   “Find and Replace” straight quotes and apostrophes/single quotes (“…” and ‘…’) with typographer’s quotes and apostrophes (“…” and ‘…’).
•   Single quotes (‘…’) should be used to mark rhetorical terms.
•   Punctuation marks, such as periods and commas, should be inside quotations.
•   Names and other singular nouns ending in “s” should have the second “s” added in possessive form (“Davis’s argument” rather than “Davis’ argument”). 
•   Numbers below one hundred should be spelled out. This rule applies to ordinal numbers as well. Change “19th century” to “nineteenth century.”
•   Any academic area of inquiry that ends with the term “studies” (like “African studies”) should be treated as a singular noun (ex. “African studies is growing”). 
•   If a footnote is absolutely necessary, format the footnote as Word does automatically. 
•   Use CE/BCE as appropriate.
•   Chapter numbers should be capitalized (“Chapter One” rather than “chapter one”).
•   Non-English words and terms should be italicized.
•   Note particularly for bios: Official university affiliations should be capitalized, such as “the Department of English at the University of British Columbia.“
•   Note particularly for bios: The official names of departments should be used (“the Department of English” as opposed to “the English Department”).

Employ the following hyphenation and capitalization practices. Keep in mind:

•   Proper nouns should be capitalized. These include the specific names of people, places, and things.
•   Capitalize a job title or position when the title precedes a name, but not when the title is used alone or after a name. For example, capitalize “Professor Moriarty,” but not “he was our professor.”
•   Often, terms that are not hyphenated when used as nouns (left wing), will be hyphenated when used as adjectives (left-wing party).
•   If an ordinal number is part of an adjective phrase (such as “nineteenth-century literature”), make sure that there is a hyphen between the ordinal number and the word that comes after it.  If another adjective precedes that ordinal number, however, do not use a hyphen between the first adjective and the ordinal number (“early nineteenth-century literature” rather than “early-nineteenth-century literature”). 
•   Any difficult terms not covered by the below list should be addressed to the editorial board.
• For CAP specific acronyms (eg. CAP, PPE, CAPCON): these should be defined in the editor’s note (eg. Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE)) and used as acronyms from then onwards.

Hello, Capsule community!

Thank you for coming to the planning session last week. The agenda was as follows:

1. Icebreaker
2. Announcement: opening of journal roles
3. Sign-up for journal roles [formal role offers TBA via email]
4. Deliberation: should the Capsule’s team members be allowed to submit their work? [resolution: TBA]

Please stay tuned for the next meeting!