Vol. 1-5 Copy Editing Guidelines

Vol. 1-5 Copy Editing Guidelines for Scanned Articles

1. Check whether the article has already been done in the GAMEO title index. It could have been part of a volume 5 article that was done earlier.
2. Each article is sent as separate file.
3. Each article is carefully proofread to check the accuracy of the OCR program
4. Biography titles should be arranged:
   Stolypin, Peter A. (1862-1911)
   Stordeur, Jean (d. 1539)

5. Geographic titles should be arranged:
   Saskatoon (Saskatchewan, Canada)
   Sugarcreek (Ohio, USA)
   Buenos Aires (Argentina)
   Delaware (State)
   Filidelphia (Fernheim Colony, Paraguay)
   Ontario (Province)
   India

6. Congregational titles should be arranged:
   Stony Brook Old Order Mennonite Church (York County, Pennsylvania, USA)
   Stoner Heights Mennonite Church (Louisville, Ohio, USA)
   
   If there is a denominational abbreviation as part of the title, it should be removed in the title, but expanded and hyperlinked in the first sentence of the article, e.g. Stoner Heights Mennonite Church (Mennonite Church USA), near Louisville, OH….

7. The first sentence of the article should generally be a complete sentence. Proper names should begin in natural order (ie, Peter A. Stolypin became prime minister…)
8. Dates should be changed to the following sequence, with months spelled out:
   17 March 1942

9. Avoid abbreviations except when clearly defined early in the article, i.e. Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) ….
10. Books of the Bible should be spelled in full. Change roman numerals to Arabic, e.g. II John to 2 John.
11. If all or part of the article is written in the present tense, generally change the verbs to past tense, and indicate timeframe as appropriate -- In 1955 the congregation had a membership of….; Ministers who served the church prior to 1955 included ….
12. The Bibliography section should not include any abbreviations – names of journals and books should be spelled out completely. Follow the style sheet for bibliographic entry. If you want to add more recent bibliography, this is OK.
13. The article should be sent in rich text format (rtf) with no formatting except for boldface and italics. No paragraph indents, no line breaks within paragraphs, but one blank line between paragraphs.
14. Maps should be scanned separately and sent as a separate jpg file. Scan maps at a high density – at least 300 dpi. (Or I can do this for you.)
15. If you are able, combine the articles in a zip file that is titled something like: ME3_p101-110.zip. This would be helpful in organizing the files on my computer, since I know I will run well behind the flow of articles that come.
16. Send the file as an email attachment to Sam Steiner at samsteiner@sympatico.ca. Any complications arising in the scanning or copy editing should be identified in the email. The first time a set is sent, you might want to identify which pages in which in which volume you are responsible for. I will need to track this.

Thanks.

Sam Steiner
18 November 2006
Last changed 30 November 2007