Abbreviations For the Common Era and Before Common Era, use CE and BCE all caps. AM and PM for time of day. Most abbreviations which formerly had multiple periods are now written without periods, thus US, not U.S. Other abbreviations (except books of the Bible) are followed by periods.
	Academic and professional degrees Academic and professional degrees do not appear on the title page of a book except for M.D. Do not combine Dr. and Ph.D. Thus Dr. John Smith or John Smith, Ph.D., but not Dr. John Smith, Ph.D.
	Article before h Use "a" before a voiced h and "an" before unvoiced h; e.g., an honor, a history.
	Bible and biblical Bible is capitalized, biblical is not. Scripture is normally capitalized (but you may opt to leave it lower case if you are consistent), but scriptural is not capitalized.
	Capitalization of professional titles and organizations Titles of positions are never capitalized except when used with a proper name; thus: president of the United States, President Clinton. "He is associate professor of biblical studies."
	Capitalization of proper nouns Names of individuals and organizations are capitalized; but generic words referring to a specific organization are not. "He was chairman of the Board of Directors." "The board met yesterday." "He is in the United States Army." He is in the army.
	Comma in a series A comma precedes the "and" before the final element of a series. "He ran, threw, and kicked."
	Ellipses Ellipses are typed as period-space-period-space-period. Please do not use the ellipse character. No punctuation goes before or after an ellipse except that a question mark may precede one. A space goes before and after the ellipse except that no space is typed after an opening quotation mark or before a closing quotation mark. Similarly, an ellipse which opens a line is not preceded by a space and there is no space between an ellipse and a footnote marker. There is also no space between an ellipse and parenthesis. We do not use a fourth period even when the ellipse follows the end of a sentence. Ellipse is never used with commas, colons, etc.
	f and ff Please avoid the use of  f and ff to indicate next verse(s).
	Footnote/endnote markers Note markers are typed after all punctuation except dashes.
	Gentile Gentile is capitalized when it is a noun referring to a person or group. As an adjective, it is lower cased--He is a Gentile. He was in gentile territory.
	Gospel(s) Gospel(s) is capitalized when referring to a book or section of the Bible. Otherwise, it is lower case--We find in the Gospels. The gospel message is clear.
	Hyphenated and compounded words We will set these according to the form specified in Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition.
	Initials The initials before a person's last name are separated by a space. A. B. Smith, not A.B. Smith.
	Italics or quotation marks Never use italics and quotation marks together. Items which are italicized include: Titles of books, titles of movies, titles of plays, titles of television series. Items which get quotation marks include: Titles of poems, titles of songs, titles of individual television shows, articles in books or journals. Series names are capitalized without quotation marks or italics. Commonly used Latin words and phrases are not italicized (per se, passim, prima facie, etc.)
	It's This is a contraction for it is. The possessive form of it is its.
	Numerals or spelled-out numbers The rules determining when numbers are spelled out and when numerals used are too complicated to explain here, and there are too many exceptions. Just use what seems good to you and our copyeditors will correct it to CMS style. These may seem inconsistent to you, but they have been developed over the course of decades to make for ease of reading. You'll have to trust that we know what we're doing.
	Percent Except in tables, percentages are expressed by numerals followed by a space and the word percent, e.g., 6 percent.
	Possessives of singular names The form is the name + 's. Thus Hillers's, Sanders's, etc. There are three exceptions to this rule: Jesus', Moses', and Greek names ending in eze sound, thus Thucydides'.
	Quotations Quotations of three lines or more should be set off as indented blocks with no quotation marks at beginning and end. Acceptable changes to a quotation without indicating it are: 1) the first letter may be capitalized or made small case, 2) the closing punctuation may be omitted. It is not necessary to begin a quotation with an ellipse.
	Quotation marks and punctuation (see also "Single Quotation Marks") Periods and commas always precede the closing quotation mark. Semicolons and colons always follow the closing quotation mark. Question marks and exclamations marks may either precede or follow, depending upon whether they apply to the entire quotation or just an element inside the quotation.
	References to parts of a book These are always written with small case and numerals are used (even when the actual item referred to uses Roman numerals, etc.). Examples: see chapter 2, page 167, part 3, refer to the bibliography, see the appendix, etc.
	Scripture citations Please use a colon between the chapter and verse number of Scripture and deuterocanonical citations. Books of the Bible are spelled out in full when only the chapter is cited, but are abbreviated when chapter and verse is cited, even when the citation is at the beginning of a sentence. Abbreviations of books of the Bible are not italicized and are not followed by a period. The abbreviations are in accordance with the list in the Society of Biblical Literature's instructions for contributors. If you do not have a copy of this, ask and we will provide one.
	Single quotation marks Do not use the reverse mark `. Use an apostrophe for all single quotation marks. Our software will convert these to typographic marks automatically.

 

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