All IEP articles should be copyedited after being approved for their content. New articles should be copyedited first by the area editor, then by a volunteer copyeditor. COPYEDITING NEW SUBMISSIONS When area editors copyedit final drafts of accepted articles, permanent revisions should be made directly to the document file. At this stage in processing the article, virtually all of the changes will involve formatting, typos, and minor points of style, and these will not require approval by the authors. Here is an example of the process from the volunteer's viewpoint. The general editor will send you an original article manuscript that has been approved by the referees and modified by the author and perhaps the area editor.  Make a copy of the file, then do your copyediting on the original.  This manuscript will probably be an MS Word document. Your goal is to produce a copyedited version which you will send to the editor who sent you the original. The editor will examine the new version and then send it on to a formatter to produce a formatted version that is placed within the Encyclopedia. In  the document that you are copyediting, you may indicate your changes in two ways: (1) In the case of new articles in MS Word format, mark up the original MS Word document using that program’s built-in markup feature; note proposed revisions by using strikeout font for deletions and color font for additions as in the example; (2) or make a separate errata list, such as this: 1. Section 4: replace “most men are mortal” with “all men are mortal”. Using way (2) will be more tedious.  When and if you advance to the stage of being an advanced copyeditor, you may simply change the original document and not make a record of your changes (as you did when you used way (1) or (2) above). COPYEDITING EXISTING ARTICLES Edit in WordPad. Copyediting of all existing articles should be done to the original HTML code within WordPad. This will ensure that the files will not have to be HTML-ized again, and that no extraneous HTML tags have entered the original code through an HTML conversion tool, such as that within MS Word. Retain the original code that is to be revised by enclosing it in double brackets. Here is an example: [[most men are mortal]] all men are mortal. Here is the same point made another way. Look at the posted encyclopedia article with you web browser such as Internet Explorer. Then click on View and then source. This will open the html file in Notepad as a .txt file. Save this txt file. Then close Notepad and re-open that txt file in WordPad and do your editing in WordPad. This way you won't be destroying all the html formatting. In order to show us where you've made changes, place everything you want to delete in double brackets such as [[most men are mortal]]. Use the same brackets to make comments to us within the article: [[Do you think the author is counting Jesus as an immortal? If so, then we should leave it as "most men are mortal"; otherwise we should say "all men are mortal".]] Spell Check. WordPad does not have a spell check feature. If copyeditors feel the need to use spellcheck in MS Word, then they should do the following: (a) make all initial changes to the original html code within WordPad, as indicated above. (b) Copy/paste the entire code from WordPad into MS Word, and then hunt for misspellings. (c) Manually make the changes one at a time to the original code within WordPad, and not within MS Word. DEPTH OR EXTENT OF COPYEDITING How much copyediting is appropriate? Don't be picky; change only what is clearly confusing or sloppy. What that vague comment means is illustrated by this example. AVOID AWKWARD PHRASES Notice the last two words in this sentence: If mind and sensation appear on the scene only as after-affects, one has to wonder how human experience can be anything but an ineffectual, spectatorial undergoing. The last two words are confusing. Rewrite them this way: If mind and sensation appear on the scene only as after-affects, one has to wonder how human experience can be anything but an ineffectual, spectator process. STYLE PREFERENCES Author Guidelines Become familiar with the author guidelines so that you have a good sense of what we expect from our authors. You are the enforcer of those guidelines. Summary All articles should begin with a 200-500 word summary (synopsis). If the summary is absent, or significantly short or long, then contact the person who sent you the article. The summary should not contain any heading or sections or internal links to the table of contents, but it is OK for it to be broken into paragraphs. Article length For typical articles, those with between 4,000-8,000 words, authors are requested to use between 5 and 15 section headings or sub-headings. Check the word count. You can do this by copying the file, minus the references and further reading, into Microsoft Word; then go to Tools | Word Count. If you notice that the article doesn't fall within the 4,000-8,000 range, contact the person who sent you the article. Headings All article titles, headings and sub-headings should be in caps and smalls. Many authors will use full caps; but change these in order to conform to our style. Table of contents The opening summary should be followed by a table of contents that indicates the section headings and sub-headings of the article. Contact the editor if this isn't the case in the article you are copyediting. The table of contents can either be flat (see the article on Hume, David -- a. Life and Writings for an example) or hierarchical (indented), with main sections and then sub-sections within them (see the article on the Aztec Philosophy for an example). In either case, your table of contents must follow a precise numbering convention in order to be formatted correctly.  1. Heading one 1a. Subheading one 1a.i. Subsubheading one 1a.i.1) Subsubsubheading one 1a.i.2) Use Caps and Smalls 1a.ii. Subsubheading two 1a.ii.1) Subsubsubheading one 1a.ii.2) Subsubsubheading two 1a.iii. Subsubheading three 1a.iv. Subsubheading four 1b. Subheading two 2. Heading two 3. Heading three 4. References and Further Reading Notice that this number is different from the numbering that is produced in the article when it is posted on the Internet; our HTML FORMATTER program will turn this into: 1. Heading one a. Subheading one i. Subsubheading one 1) Subsubsubheading one 2) Use Caps and Smalls ii. Subsubheading two 1) Subsubsubheading one 2) Subsubsubheading two iii. Subsubheading three iv. Subsubheading four b. Subheading two 2. Heading two 3. Heading three 4. References and Further Reading   Indentation is optional when copy editing; it will be produced automatically by our formatting program that creates the final document to be posted in the IEP.  Some use of italics is OK in headers, for example, if it contains a foreign word; but don't use boldface.   Author's name Remove all titles from the author's name. For example, change "Sir Michael Dummett, Ph.D." to "Michael Dummett". Use American spelling and punctuation British spelling: Aristotelean, favourite, defence, sceptic, behaviour, realisation. American spelling: Aristotelian, favorite, defense, skeptic, behavior, realization. Don't change the words if they occur in titles of books or articles.  Don't change "The Foetus: Its Defence" (for a book published in the U.K.) even though its title would be "The Fetus: Its Defense" if it were published in the U.S.  Regarding punctuation, use double quote marks around direct quotations, names of journal articles, and mentioned terms.  Also, use double quote marks for scare quotes. The British use single quotes for all these.  Normally, quotations begin with a capital letter, but continued quotations do not.  Note the case of the words "It" and "and" in this example: According to Quine, "It has now become fashionable to question the notions," for example, the notions of observation terms and observation sentences, "and to claim that the purportedly observable is theory-laden in varying degrees."   References and Further Reading. Articles from authors will very often contain an ending section called "Sources" or "Bibliography" or "References" or "Notes". Change these to "References and Further Reading." This section can have sub-headings such as "Original sources,” "More advanced studies,” and so forth. The entries may or may not be annotated. The entire section should not exceed 1,000 words. Let us know if it does. When there are more than two entries for the same author, repeat the author's name in the second and subsequent entries. Many authors prefer to use a dash in place of the author's name when it occurs a second time, but replace all these with the author's actual name. Otherwise, we do not have a standard format for the References and Further Reading section and will accept any coherent bibliography style. Remove all internet addresses from references. Links No hyperlinks should mention web sites external to the IEP. If you notice that your article contains them, and you haven't been told to include them, then write the editor about what to do. Although external links to articles outside the Encyclopedia are to be avoided, links to other articles within the Encyclopedia are encouraged, as are links to other places within the same article. Some authors are overly eager to include these links and will ask for a hyperlink for every occurrence of the term, but you should include only one link per term, usually upon the term's first occurrence in the text. Footnotes Articles should contain neither footnotes nor endnotes. If you notice that your article contains them, and you haven't been told explicitly to include them, then write the editor about what to do.  Acknowledgements and Thank Yous In journal articles, authors regularly thank their colleagues for help in writing or editing the article.  But this isn't proper for encyclopedia articles.  The authors should thank their colleagues privately.  The copy editor should remove all the thank yous and acknowledgements. Referring to words or terms incorrect: Tarski's favorite word is 'snow.' correct: Tarski's favorite word is "snow." Referring to sentences incorrect: When I say 'Snow is white', I mean that snow is white. correct: When I say, "Snow is white," I mean that snow is white. The change in the comma above conforms to the current style of American literature even though the original is more logical. Like vs. as           Don't bother correcting this minor error.   Number adjectives incorrect: Firstly, snow is white. Secondly, grass is green. correct: First, snow is white. Second, grass is green. Ellipsis incorrect: She said, "Snow is white ..." correct: She said, "Snow is white...."           Edit both the space error after the word "white" and the error in the number of periods.   Ego         Revise self-referential and egotistical phrases such as the following:         I think he means...         My book about him says...         I believe Passmore's description is right.         This concludes what I take to be the major influences on Mitchell’s thought.   Pejorative terms Do not permit your authors to use pejorative phrases such as "the idealist curse" and “which certain irrational philosophers still believe.”   Underlining Do not allow authors to use underling for names of books; changes these to italics. Do not allow authors to use underlining for emphasis, nor in section titles. Use italics.  Be conservative; some authors are excessive and use italics for emphasis is nearly every other sentence.   Dates Articles about people will have a birth and death date in the title.  Use "B.C.E." rather than "B.C." for dates before the birth of Jesus. "B.C.E." stands for Before the Common Era. The IEP is multicultural, so we do not want to place all events on a Christian timeline.  Change an author's "Pliny (A.D. 62-113)" to "Pliny (62-113 C.E.)."  We use C.E. only when it might be unclear whether the date is before or after the beginning of the Christian era.  Regarding approximate dates, our style is to use "Ramanuja (c. 1017 - c. 1137)" and not "Ramanuja (?1017 - ?1137)" nor "Ramanuja (CA 1017-1137)."  [The "c." stands for the Latin term circa.] Numbers          Spell out short numerals but not long ones: He is one of six children. He wrote 116 articles.   Agreement in number incorrect: The evidence from the neurosciences are impressive. correct: The evidence from the neurosciences is impressive. Back to Top

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