Style Guide for Editors
General Guidelines
Dashes
Sentence Clauses – Any place in a sentences where dashes have been used in place of commas, semi-colons, or parenthesis, em dashes should be used—without surrounding spaces.
Grandmother—she’d been dead a while—laughed and laughed.
Spans and Ranges of Numbers – Any dashed numerical range should use an en dash with surrounding spaces.
RIP Beatrix Potter, 1866 – 1943.
Compound Words – Words that are joined with a dash should use the ordinary hyphen found on the computer keyboard. No surrounding spaces.
Boy, someone must have beaten you with an ugly-stick.
Acronyms and Initials
Initials and acronyms should never use periods. In cases where there are multiple initials together, there should be no spaces and no periods.
PT Barnum was a bit of a huxter.
Ellipses
All ellipses should use the ellipses character (…) rather than a string of three periods.
Lists
Bulleted or numerical lists should use the HTML format rather than manually typed bullets or numbers. You can use the Bulleted List or Numbered List buttons in the WordPress editor.
Possessives
If a possessive name or word ends with the letter “s”, use an apostrophe with no added “s” afterward.
Mister Burns’ power plant is a paragon of workplace safety.
Poems
Dedications and Afters
Dedications, afters, and other types of attributions should be offset with an em dash (without a space after) and set in italics. These should not be blockquotes.
—for my father
—after Khalil Gibran
Epigraphs
The entirety of an epigraph at the start of a poem should be placed in a block quote, including the citation, which should be offset with an em dash (without a space after) and set in italics. The quoted portion of the epigraph should be placed between double quotes, and there should only be a soft return between the quotation and the citation.
“We all need someone we can bleed on.
And if you want it, baby, well you can bleed on me.”
—The Rolling Stones
Sections
Where a poem is broken up into numbered, lettered, or titled sections, the number letter or title should be given its own paragraph breaks and bolded.
1
There was an angry man after me.
2
I ran as fast as the angry man.
Capitalization
The poet’s intent should be honored in all titles and in the bodies of poems. Artist names should always be capitalized normally.
Artist Bios
Artist Names
The first instance of an artist’s name in a bio should be bolded.
Jane Doe is a poet who lives in Wordtown, Rhode Island.
Capitalization – Artist names should be capitalized normally.
Titles
Journals – Titles of journals should always be in italics.
Jane Doe has been published in Adroit.
Chapbooks / Books – Titles of books and chapbooks should always be in italics.
Jane Doe is the author of the chapbook, Various Weather Conditions.
Poems – Individual poem titles should always be in double quotes.
Jane Doe’s poem, “Sunshine,” is awesome.
Publishers – The names of publishers should always be capitalized but otherwise given no special formatting.
Jane Doe’s chapbook was published by Climate Press.
Commas
Lists – Lists of items, such as publication credits, with more than two items should always include an Oxford comma. Lists of only two items need no comma.
Jane Doe’s work has appeared in Adroit, Rust + Moth, and The Rusty Nail.
Jane Doe has two cats—Dimitri and Svetlana.
Other
Currently – In most cases, you should remove the word ‘currently’ from bios. It rarely adds to the meaning.
Years-Old – The words ‘year-old’ or ‘years-old’ should use a hyphen, not a space.