AJC House Style Guide
For Fiction and Narrative Non-Fiction Works
Style Manual: online Australian Style Manual (ASM) – deferring to online Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) and APA for fiction and narrative non-fiction elements where ASM is silent or contradicts standard book publishing conventions.
Dictionary: online Macquarie Dictionary – defaulting to online Premium Oxford Dictionary where Macquarie is silent.
Acronyms & Abbreviations
- No full stops unless part of an official organisation’s name – USA, UK, but U.S. Consulate
- Full stops with abbreviations not ending in last letter – Sgt., tbsp, Vic., but Cwlth
- No full stops in qualifications – PhD, MD, Dr
Apostrophes
Descriptive (attributive) phrases
- Descriptive phrases about time: no apostrophe – 4 weeks wages, 2 days time but a day’s work (to show singularity)
- Descriptive nouns – ladies toilets, visitors centre, directors meeting
Possessives
- Singular noun: add an apostrophe and s – the clown’s car, the manager’s office, the tree’s leaves
- Plural nouns ending in s: add an apostrophe only – both bunkbeds’ coverings, all the teams’ performances, the Smiths’ boat
- Plural nouns ending with es: the Joneses’ house, the bosses’ offices
- Individual possession: Jones’s and Smith’s careers
- Joint possession: Ahmed and Sasha’s garden
Contractions
- Ensure all apostrophes faces backwards on words with missing first letters in colloquial speech – ’cause, ‘scuse me, I told ‘im not to.
Capitalisation - General
*Defer to APA style
Title case:
- Capitalise first word and all major words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and all words four letters or more.
- Lowercase minor words: conjunctions, prepositions and articles (unless four letters or more). Includes words linked by hyphens.
Sentence case: Capitalise only the first word and any proper nouns.
Titles of works
(Defer to CMOS)
- Books, poems, articles, works of art: title case, italics – Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Periodicals/newspapers: title case, italics – Woman’s Weekly
- Song titles: title case, roman, double quotes – “The Road to Gundagai”
- Film, videos, radio, TV programs: title case, italics – The Brady Bunch Revisited
- Episodes: title case, roman, double quotes – “The Heroin Wars”
- Band names: title case, roman (unless trademarked otherwise)
Personal names and titles
- Common civic titles: Miss, Mrs, Mr JW Smith (no full stops or spaces between or after initials)
- Honorifics: Sir James, Lady Swanson but Yes, sir. Of course, ma’am. Excuse me, my lord/my lady
- Ranks/roles/titles 1: capitalise when used as full title or when addressing – Captain Smith, King Richard, Sergeant Baker, Yes, Captain
- Ranks/roles/titles 2: lowercase when used generically – the captain, the king, the guard, the teacher, Get a move on, soldier
- Nicknames / epithets: capitalise – Susie “Sugar” Brown, Catherine the Great. Where are you, Poppet? I’ll give Lucky a ride
- Kinship: lowercase unless used in place of a name – My father loves pie. My uncle died. but Let’s go, Mother. Father will be late today
- Terms of affection: lowercase unless the term is always used in place of a name – Thanks, honey. Get in the car, son
Capitalisation - Fantasy and Science Fiction
Species and race or civilisations
Definition: Species is generally determined by biology. A race is a category of beings within a species, which share common characteristics, whether physical, geographical or cultural.
- Species (biology): lowercase – humans, dogs, flowers
- Classification: (common characteristics): Danish (race), bull terrier (Caninae), rose (Rosa)
Fantasy: generally takes place in one world so capitalisation isn’t too complex.
- Species: humans, werewolves, dwarves, dragons, orcs, gnomes, elves, witches etc.
- Race/civilisations: Watchmen, Eastward Witches, Glass Dragons, White Dwarves, Cave Orcs
Sci-fi: often features several worlds with made-up names of places and beings. Complexity increases and often style choices come into play.
- Species: humans/humanoids, raptorwhiles, sandworms, slugs, stareaters, lightstrikers.
- Race/civilisations: Earthlings, Martians, Hothians, Wookies, Vulcans, Hutts.
Consistency
Ultimately what matters is consistency for ease of understanding. A style sheet indicating capitalisation (and italics if applicable) is essential to keep track of style decisions.
Captions and Labels
Roman, min caps. Place below figures / above tables
Commas
Quick guide to most common comma uses
- Inside quote mark for dialogue with attribution/dialogue tag – “Thank you,” he said.
- Comma before introducing a name – “Hey, Jerry.” “Come on, Sally.”
- Comma after an interjection or phrase – “Oh, really?” “Well, I guess not.” “Okay, honey.” “Oh my god, no.”
- Comma before “then” when used as a conjunctive adverb – He closed the door, then removed his hat.
- Comma before conjunction followed by introductory adverbial phrase/clause – They beat him, and though it hurt, he refused to cry.
- Comma after conjunction when used parenthetically – She bent and, nerves jittering, picked up the child.
- No comma between two dependent clauses linked to conjunction – I wanted to dance, but my ankle was broken and I had a cold.
- Optional comma before short adverbs at end of sentence – He decided he would come too / He decided he would come, too.
- No Oxford (serial) commas unless needed for clarity
Copyright
Refer to Arts Law and Copyright
Refer to Arts Law and Australian Copyright Council
Lyrics: to use any amount of someone else’s lyrics in your writing – even a single line – you need to obtain copyright permission.
Song titles: are not copyright, and may be referred to in your writing.
Poetry: to use any amount of someone else’s poetry in your writing – even a single line – you need to obtain copyright permission.
Dates
- Australian date format – Tuesday 25 April 1990
- Centuries: spell out – twentieth century
- Decades – eighties, 1980s or 80s (no apostrophe – descriptive not possessive)
- Eras: roman, capitals, no full stops – 55 BCE (before common era), CE (common era) BC and AD are no longer used
Ellipses
Insert a space before an ellipsis, and after unless it ends a sentence.
- To signal a mid-sentence pause: “I’m not … really sure.”
- To signal a trailing off: “If he hadn’t done it, well, I don’t know if I …”
- To signal trailing off, then starting a new sentence: “I’m not really sure … Oh, do you mean Poppy? I saw her leave.”
- To signal an unheard start of sentence: “… and then we’ll take them by surprise.”
- To signal missing words in a quote: The minster wrote, “The industry has reached a crisis … change would be implemented.”
Hyphens and Dashes
Defer to CMOS for hyphenation and numbers.
Hyphens
Ages and measurements
- Five-year-old child
- Twenty-six-year-old man (or 26-year-old man)
- One-hundred-metre race (or 100-metre race)
- Two-and-a-half-year period but we did it for two and a half years
- Six-foot-high fence but the fence is six foot high
- Thirty- to forty-foot-high hills (hanging hyphens joins thirty to the compound adjective)
- Two and half minutes went past (no hyphen when used as a noun)
Compass points
- north-west
- south-easterly wind
- east-north-east
Dashes
- Spaced en dashes for parenthetical (or unspaced em dashes if client prefers – but note em dashes can cause accessibility issues)
- En dashes for ranges – Thirty–forty trees, june–july
Italics
- Dialogue: use sparingly and only for emphasis, else use roman with double quote marks
- Foreign or unfamiliar words (first use only if repeated throughout, and only if not in dictionary)
- Interiority/thoughts: only use italics if thought is present tense and unclear the prose is interiority
- Interiority/thoughts: use either italics or quotes marks, not both
- Interiority/thoughts: do not use italics if thought tag is used: He would never do it, I thought.
- Onomatopoeia (unless word appears in dictionary)
- Text messages: italics and indented
Numbers
Use comma delineator.
Words or numerals
- Narrative: spell out numbers 1–100, or any numbers that can be written in three words or less – five, two hundred, seven thousand, two hundred thousand, twenty-two thousand
- Dialogue: use words if more natural – he paid me one hundred and fifty thousand
- Numerals when accompanied by abbrev. units or symbols – 8 km 55 ˚C
- Ordinal numbers: suffixes not superscript
- Numerals and words: if a number over 100 is used in the same sentence as a number lower than 100, use numerals for both – Paul ran 9 km, while Therese ran 105 km
Currency
- Spell out 1–100 and simple rounded amounts – three cents, fifty dollars, two hundred dollars, million-dollar loan
- Numerals above 100 and specific or uneven amounts – $1.15, $250, $75.56, $30,000, $1.4 million
- Numerals to avoid large, hyphenated numbers as adjectives – a $100,000 loan (not one-hundred-thousand-dollar loan)
Measurements and Symbols
- Metric unless US or imperial style requested or used figuratively – It felt like miles from home
- Numerals for quantities accompanied by abbrev. units or symbols – 10 km, 25 ºC, 49˚ (angle), 30%
- Words when used discursively, especially dialogue – one hundred per cent
Quote Marks
- Use double quotes to assist accessibility.
- While some Australian publishers still use single quotes, there is a movement towards double quotes due to issues with text to talk software.
- Always use smart (curly) quotes.
Block quotes
- Block quotes: use for 30 words or more, no quote marks
Coined expressions, scare quotes, quoted speech
- Double for scare quotes, coined expressions, irony, colloquial use: They call him “Digger”. That was “interesting”.
Dialogue
For full explanation and further examples, see blog: How to punctuate dialogue
- Double quotes (unless client/publisher prefers single)
- Ellipses with space before and after for mid-sentence pause: “I’m not … really sure.”
- Ellipses with space before for trailing off dialogue: “If he hadn’t done it, well …”
- Unspaced em dash for interrupted speech: “But you said you would—”
- Unspaced em dashes for dialogue interrupted by action: “If we’re going to make this last”—he pointed at the money—”we should invest it carefully.”
Thought - direct and indirect (interiority)
Defer to CMOS 13.43
- No quote marks used for indirect or direct thoughts
- Italics for direct thought only if unclear it is interiority (present tense) – Is he serious?
- Roman for indirect thought (past tense) – This was going to hurt.
- Roman, no quotes with attribution – Can I do this? she wondered. There’s no way I can do this, he thought.
Quoted (reported) speech
ASM page 113
- As soon as he’d yelled “take it all”, I grabbed the box and ran.
- “I couldn’t find it”. That’s what I recall him saying.
- “Don’t get under my feet”, my father always said.
CMOS: When using whether, that or if
- Was it Stevenson who said that “the cruellest lies are often told in silence”?
- He wondered whether “to think is to live”.
Quotes within quotes
(Australian Handbook for Writers & Editors, M McKenzie pp181-183)
- Single for quotes within quotes
- Terminal punctuation inside: “I wasn’t going to go, but he said, ‘I really need you there.’”
- Direct speech, attribution comma inside: “I heard her. ‘Don’t go,’ she said. So I didn’t.”
- Indirect speech, no attribution, comma outside: “He told me his name was ‘Thor’, but I doubted it.”
Referencing
- Cross-referencing – p. 22, pp. 22–23 (en dash)
- Reference lists and in-text references: Author–date system
Signage
Either:
- Roman, colon, double quotes – The sign read: “One Way Only”.
- Small caps, no quotes – The notice said: ONE WAY ONLY.
Time
CMOS style punctuation used for reader accessibility
- Use words where possible within narrative – three o’clock, four in the afternoon, quarter to seven, five thirty
- Numerals where specific time is needed – 5:35 a.m. 6:17 p.m.
- In dialogue: spell out – eight forty-five in the morning, five thirty in the afternoon
Words and letters as terms
- Words as words, letters as letters: What does “incandescent” mean? It’s “a” not “an”
Manuscript formatting
Based on submission requirements for trade publishers
- The following standard 9 ribbon styles are standard for formatting novel and narrative non-fiction manuscripts.
- Some publishers require 1 inch (2.54 cm) margins.
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Font: Times New roman |
Paragraph Styling
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Style Name |
Size |
Style |
Align |
Indentation |
Space before/after |
Line spacing |
Space between paragraphs with same style |
Other |
|
Body (indent first line) |
12 |
– |
Left |
First line .8 cm |
– |
2 |
No |
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Left / FirstPara (opening para) |
12 |
– |
Left |
– |
– |
2 |
No |
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Centre (dinkus breaks) |
12 |
– |
Centred |
– |
24pt before 24pt after |
2 |
No |
Three asterisks |
|
Chapter Title |
At least 20 |
Bold |
Centred |
– |
60pt before 24pt after |
Single |
No |
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|
Subtitle |
At least 14 |
Bold or italics |
Centred |
– |
24 before 36 after |
Single |
No |
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Front Matter |
10 |
– |
Left |
– |
– |
Single |
No |
|
|
Block Quote |
12 |
– |
Left |
1.6 cm right 1.6 cm left |
12 before 12 after |
2 |
Yes |
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Title |
24–48 |
Bold |
Centred |
– |
120 before 48 after |
Single |
Yes |
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Text Msg |
12 |
Italics optional |
Left |
1.2 cm |
12 after |
2 |
No |
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