Style Guide for

Defence Strategic Communications

It helps us a great deal if manuscripts are clearly presented and submitted in our

house style. Our style is based on the MHRA Style Guide, Third Edition (2013) and

the New Oxford Style Manual (2016). These will provide guidance on points not

covered in these notes. When submitting material for publication, please read and

adhere to the advice given below as closely as possible.

Italics are used for titles of books, journals, films, etc., if they are complete, published

works. If you are referring to an individual article within a larger publication, single

quotation marks should be used. Italics should not be used for the names of

businesses or institutions, but should be used for the names of ships and television

shows.

Bold text may be used sparingly to add emphasis.

Spelling

The title of the journal is Defence Strategic Communications. Please note that

Quotations from other sources retain the spelling convention of the original.

Capitalisation

The use of Capitals should be kept to a sensible minimum.

Use headline-style capitalisation for all titles—capitalise the first and last words, and

all other words apart from articles, prepositions, to when used as part of an infinitive,

and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, not, for). A subtitle following a colon is

capitalised just as a main title.

Acronyms and initialisms in capitals should have no stops (e.g. UK, UN, BBC,

NATO). On first use the full name of an organisation should be given with the

acronym or initialism in brackets, e.g. the United Nations (UN), and thereafter only

the acronym or initialism should be used thereafter.

Contractions have no stops (Mr, St, PhD), though abbreviated words that do not end

with their final letter do (vol., ed., but vols, eds). Note that no. and nos. both have full

stops.

For names (J.P. Morgan; Morgan, J.P.) stops are used with no spaces between the

initials.

page numbers in references.

- Hyphens are used to join words to indicate they have a combined meaning, such as

compound adjectival phrases like twenty-first century or Russian-speaking citizens.

Numbers and Dates

Spell out numbers one to ninety-nine; then 100; 1000; 10,000.

Use figures in percentages: 36 per cent

Numbers at the beginning of a sentence should always be written out.

Use € 300 or EUR 3 bn, but not 25€ or 25 EUR.

Lists

● bullets and/or numbered lists may be used

Quotations

Short quotations should appear in ‘single inverted commas’, “double” for a quote

within a quote’.Note that quotation marks precede punctuation, except in the case of

Quotations of 4 lines or more should be justified, indented left and right, and made

smaller by 1 pt.

The military-first solution relied heavily on representing Tuareg subjects not only

as occasional smugglers and petty criminals, but as inherently lawless professional

felons. This representation focused on rebel leader Ibrahim ag Bahanga, who in

2007 refused to disarm and held out with a small force in Tin Zaouatine, on the

Algerian border.

1

separate pages using originals where possible. Please do not embed them in the

manuscript file.

Clearly indicate where tables and figures are to be inserted in the main body of the

text. All tables and figures must be referred to in the text of the article (Table 1;

Figure 1).

Each table and figure should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals with an

appropriate caption:

Please provide the highest quality figure format possible. Please be sure that all

imported scanned material is scanned at the appropriate resolution: 1200 dpi for line

art, 600 dpi for grayscale, and 300 dpi for colour.

Appendices should be submitted separately from the main text.

Additional guidance on the preparation of illustrations, figures, and tables in

electronic format is available. If you would like assistance, please write to

Linda.Curika@stratcomcoe.org

OR

Stanley McChrystal, retired US Army General, stated…

Sun Tzu, the reputed author of The Art of War (Sūnzǐ Bīngfǎ ), wrote: ‘Strategy

without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise

before defeat.’

Second mentions consist of surname only: Nye argues…

In general, when writing about people who hold special titles, the title need not be

mentioned more than once.

provide a bibliography at the end.

When a note contains not only the source of a fact or quotation in the text but related

substantive material as well, the source comes first. A full stop usually separates the

citation from the commentary.

Capitalise titles and subtitles in headline style, regardless of the capitalisation of the

Forewords and Introductions

Corpore (New York: William O‘Donald and Son, 1990).

Organisations as authors

brackets. Languages written in non-Roman script should bе transliterated. Please

refer to the transliteration guide.

‘Pervaja razvilka: mirovaja vojna i kompleks nepolnocennosti [The First Crossroad: the

Chapter in edited book

Oxford University Press, 2008); quoted in William Keegan, David Marsh and Richard

([London]: OMFIF [Official Monetary and Financial institutions Forum] Press, 2017), p.

25.

(International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006).

Timothy Thomas, ‘Russia’s Military Strategy and Ukraine: Indirect, Asymmetric—and

updated 16 October 2017.

M. Goldman, ‘Evolution of Paganism in the Nordic States’ [in Swedish; English summary]

Unpublished material

Theses, dissertations

Upright, Cynthia B., ‘Narrative Disambiguation and the Professional Editor’, (University

3246A.

Online sources

Increasingly the sources used in scholarly publications can be found online.

Whenever possible, include a web address to help readers locate your sources, be

they news websites, electronic journals, OECD or EU publications, blogs, or Twitter

accounts. These sources should be cited as carefully as material published in print

form.

DOIs and URLs (Digital Object Identifiers and Universal Resource Locators)

Many scholarly articles can be found in databases that include a DOI. If a DOI is

available, cite that instead of the URL. The DOI is analogous to the ISBN number for

Online newspapers and magazines sometimes include a ‘permalink’ or shortened,

stable version of a URL. These can often be found linked to a ‘share’ or ‘cite this’

button. If you can find a permalink, use that instead of the URL.

If there is neither DOI nor permalink, cite the URL. URLs are used for ephemera as

well as for lasting resources, and it is not uncommon that such addresses change or

are taken down entirely. For this reason the date of access should be included in

It is the policy of the journal to ‘hide’ URLs in hyperlinks connected to the title of the

referenced work, meaning that the length of the URL is irrelevant because it won’t be

seen. Most word processing programs make it possible for you to easily insert

hyperlinks yourself. Information is readily available online. If you are unable to do

this yourself please add the URL to your citation enclosed in angle brackets < > for

Include all relevant information in your notes, as you would for a print document.

This is especially important when the source is behind a paywall and can not be

accessed directly by clicking.

<http://clarionproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Dabiq-Issue-14.pdf>

Aspen Institute Germany. <http://www.aspeninstitute.de/aspen-germany/?lang=en>

Ulrich Speck, Facebook post, 18 January 2018.

<https://www.facebook.com/ulrich.speck/posts/10210373239396975> [Accessed 29

histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/>

Emmanuel Macron, ‘Initiative pour l'Europe: Une Europe souveraine, unie,

démocratique’, speech at the Sorbonne, full text English version, 26 September 2017.

<http://international.blogs.ouest-france.fr/archive/2017/09/29/macron-sorbonne-

verbatim-europe-18583.html>

rity_Regulations&oldid=3390721>

Charles Kriel, ‘Expert testimony on “Fake News”’, Meeting of the UK Parliament, Digital,

Culture, Media and Sport Committee, chaired by Damian Collins, 23 January 2018.

<www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDwgJFrUfdo>