When writing your manuscript, please pay attention to how you write your dates and times, so it is consistent across the entire work.
If you are using a formal style guide, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, then please format your dates and times according to that guide.
Otherwise, please employ a consistent format throughout your work. We have set out our suggestion for how to handle dates and times in a clear and consistent fashion.
Dates
Dates should be in the format of day, month, year. It is better to write it out completely, for example: the 1st of January 2021, or 1st January 2020.
The letters in the ordinal should be normal text and should not be superscript.
Using the preposition “of” in the middle of the date is not required, but you should make the decision about whether or not you intend to use it consistently throughout the work. There is no need for a comma after the month.
You can shorten the date to be month and year or just year, but you should not shorten it to be day and month or just day.
There is some scope for diverging from any of these rules if it improves the flow of the prose.
If you need to write out the date entirely in numbers, then please use the format day/month/year or year-month-day, for example 17/01/2020 or 2020-01-17. The format month/day/year will be rejected and a clearer format demanded.
Centuries
Generally, we prefer to use ordinals to describe centuries, rather than Roman numerals. For example: the 17th century, not the XVII century. However, if you want to use Roman numerals, then please use them consistently throughout the whole document.
The letters in the ordinal should be normal text and should not be superscript. Please do not write out the ordinal in words, for example: the seventeenth century.
Please use a space between the ordinal and the word “century”, no dashes. Please leave “century” without a capital letter.
Please do not use an apostrophe when referring to “the decade” or “the century”, but please make sure the century is explicit. For example, we prefer the 1900s or the 1970s, and would rather avoid the 1900’s and the 70’s.
You may choose to use the terms BC and AD, or BCE and CE, as you prefer. Whichever version you choose, please omit any dots (we prefer BC to B.C.) and please use this choice consistently throughout the work.
Periods
If you want to refer to a certain period of time by an arbitrary descriptor, such as “the Georgian period” or “the renaissance”, then you should include a definition of this period, so that readers understand what you understand this period to include.
You may include this definition in the main prose or in a footnote, as you prefer. Example definitions could include:
- “The Victorian period lasted from Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne in 1837 until her death in 1901.”
- “The renaissance is generally understood to have followed the high medieval period. In this work, it is used to describe the period between the 14th and 16th centuries.”
- “Some scholars use the term Dark Ages to refer to the period from the Roman withdrawal from Britannia in the early 5th century to the Norman conquest in the 11th century.”
It is up to you how you choose to define your use of any given term for a period of time. However, you should make sure that your readers understand what you mean by this term in this particular work.
Times
We do not mind if you would rather use 12-hour or 24-hour format. However, you should be consistent throughout the whole work.
If you are using 24-hour format, then please use a colon to separate the numbers, for example 16:00. Please make sure to use two digits to describe each part of the time, so we would prefer 09:00 to just 9:00, since 09:00 makes it clear that you are using 24-hour format and that this time is in the morning.
If you are using 12-hour format, please provide the number, then use a space, and then am or pm (we prefer without dots, since this improves clarity at the end of a sentence). For example, 9 am and 4 pm.
When using 12-hour format, for any time past the hour, please use a colon and provide the rest of the details, such as 4:15 pm. For whole hours, you can either leave it just as a single number, such as 4 pm, or include the double 0 for clarity, such as 4:00 pm. Whichever option you prefer, you should use it consistently throughout the document.
Midnight and midday or noon should be referred to as midnight, midday, or noon. If you are using the 24-hour format, then 00:00 and 12:00 are acceptable. If you are using the 12-hour format, then 12 am and 12 pm are not acceptable, because these make no sense: noon is not before or after noon, and midnight cannot be described usefully as before or after noon, and it causes unnecessary confusion.
Quotes
Whatever formats you choose to use for writing dates and times, quotes should be reproduced without changing how they present dates and times.
For example, if you prefer to use BCE and CE in your work, but a quote refers to BC and AD, then you should not modify the quote, because the original author may have used those terms for a reason.