Authors must observe the following guidelines and house rules when preparing their articles. Articles that do not conform to these guidelines may be sent back to authors for amendment. Particular attention should be given to the form of references, and for general conventions authors should consult a recent copy of the Journal.
Alternative editorial guidelines for the Transactions are available here.
Articles for the Journal should be sent to the Honorary Editor, Dr John Munns – editor@thebaa.org.
Contributors are asked to be concise and to limit the size and number of illustrations. The Journal accepts original research articles (usually 7,000-9,000 words) and shorter notices (c. 1,500-3,500 words). Authors of articles longer than 10,000 words should discuss the length of their work with the editor before submission.
Copy should be fully checked before submission, as the Association will not cover the cost of author corrections at proof stage. The cost of any alterations other than the correction of printer’s errors may be invoiced to the author.
Contributors should email a copy of their article to the editor in MS Word .doc or .docx format, together with any illustrations. If images are too large to send by email they should be sent via WeTransfer, Dropbox or similar, or by CD/USB stick if absolutely necessary. Printed copies are not required
Contributing authors must transfer copyright in the work to the British Archaeological Association, in all forms and languages, and for the full period of copyright, so that all published articles carry the standard copyright line © The British Archaeological Association (with the year of publication).
Authors who wish to reproduce material from previously published sources or where the copyright is owned by a third party, such as sections of text, tables or images, must obtain written permission from the copyright holder (usually the publisher) and the author(s)/artists of the original material. A line giving the full source of the material should be included in the manuscript. If material from the author’s own published work is to be used, permission must still be obtained from that publisher. Copyright is required for use in all formats (including digital) and in perpetuity. Any costs relating to this must be borne by contributors. For more information, please see the copyright advice for authors section of the Taylor and Francis website.
Papers should be preceded by a short abstract, in italics, of no more than 200 words and a list of between five and seven keywords.
The title should appear in bold Roman type, using upper and lower case, ranged left. Ordinals should be spelled out.
The author’s name should appear after the title, with their affiliation, if applicable. Authors are also asked to provide the editor with an email address and street address for correspondence (these will not be published).
If you need to use subheadings, please apply the following conventions. Level 1: small capitals, ranged left; level 2, upper and lower case, italics, ranged left; level 3, upper and lower case, roman, ranged left; level 4, upper and lower case, bold, ranged left and followed by a 2-em space, with the text running on the same line.
Spelling Please use British (-ize) spelling consistently throughout your manuscript.
Quotations Use single quotation marks, and double quotation marks for quotations within quotations. Use the smart quotation marks available on your computer (see Formatting below).
Dates In giving approximate dates, please use circa, abbreviated as c., followed by a single space, for example ‘c. 1490’.
Italics Note that certain Latin words and abbreviations in current usage are not italicized, for example, cf., e.g., et al., etc., ibid., i.e., passim.
Abbreviations Where the abbreviation ends in the same letter as the complete word, a full stop is not necessary: Mr, St, Dr, fols, nos, pls, figs, pt and pts (for example) appear without stops, whereas Pl., Fig., fol. and illus. (for example) need stops. An exception to this rule is made for some indicators of measurements.
Measurements An exception to the abbreviations rule is made for: ft, m, and mm. None of these needs a full stop or plural s. Note however that the abbreviation of inch is ‘in.’, to avoid ambiguity, e.g., ‘a timber, 7 in. in width’. Please also note that cm is not a standard measurement – use m or mm. In all cases insert a space between the digit and the abbreviation.
Dates Except for titles, ordinals defining centuries are written in numbers, e.g., 11th century. Specific dates should be cited, for example, as 16 May 1538. For decades, use the form ‘the 1340s’, not ‘the 1340’s’. Terminal dates should be given after a dash (en-rule), e.g., ‘1234-38’. Regnal dates should be give (for example) as ‘Bishop Longchamp (1189-97)’, not ‘bishop from 1189 to 1197′. Dates BC should be given as ’27 BC’, and dates AD as ‘AD 320’, without full points and in small capitals. Papers dealing entirely with dates AD need not specify.
Numbers Numbers up to one hundred should be written out in full except where the result would be inelegant, or when the context is statistical, or when figures are being used for dates and units of measurement. Please note that in expressing inclusive numbers falling within the same hundred, only the last two figures should be given, e.g., 13-15, 44-47, 104-08, 1933-39. This also applies to page numbers in references, e.g., 201-04. Full page spans must be given: citations of the form ‘202 et seq.’ or ‘202 sqq.’ are not permissible.
Titles Titles affixed to personal names should have initial capitals: ‘King Richard’, ‘Bishop Roger’. Note however ‘Roger, bishop of Salisbury’, ‘William, duke of Normandy’, etc.
Personal Names Spellings of major persons should be as cited in E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter and I. Roy ed., Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn, Royal Historical Society, Guides and Handbooks, 2 (Cambridge 1996). Ecclesiastics should be cited in the forms used in the modern editions of Le Neve’s Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae.
Place-names For running text and citations of place of publication, current English forms for foreign or other non-English place-names should be used, e.g., Cologne not Köln, Rhine not Rhein. In the case of Lyons, Marseilles, Rheims, the English forms rather than the French forms (Lyon, Marseille, Reims) should be used. For other French place-names follow current usage, and note that place-names taken from saints’ names should be hyphenated, with Saint and Sainte spelled out in full, e.g., ‘Saint-Paul’.
Counties Counties, départements, Länder, regioni, etc. should be added after a place-name to avoid any confusion, e.g., Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon (Seine-Maritime), Moulins-sur-Cephons (Indre).
Architectural Terms To avoid inconsistencies, reference should be made to J. Lever and J. Harries, Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture 800-1914 (London 1993). See further the section on hyphens below.
Figure References The Journal has illustrations integrated in the text, and all such illustrations are referred to as figures (the Journal no longer uses plates). For references in the text either spell out the words in the text, e.g., ‘as shown in Figure 1’, or use parentheses: ‘(Fig.1)’ or ‘(Figs 4 and 5)’. Please note the capitalization.
Hyphens When a two-word phrase consisting of an adjective and a noun or of two nouns is used descriptively before another noun, the two words are hyphenated, e.g., ‘dark-green attire’, ‘ground-floor room’, etc. The same applies to two-word phrases consisting of an adverb and a participle, e.g., ‘now-lost charter’, ‘hard-won battle’, ‘well-known figure’. An exception is usually made for adverbs ending in -ly (e.g. ‘swiftly resolved situation’). Note further the hyphenation in ‘early-11th-century’, ‘mid-12th-century’, ‘late-12th-century’, etc., and in the terms given below:
angle-buttress
ball-flower
barrel-vaulting
bay-window
bench-end
chantry-chapel
chapter-house
coat of arms
collar-beam
corbel-table
deer-park
desk-end
dog-tooth
ground floor
hammer-beam
hood-mould
keystone
manor-house
market-place
market town
nail-head
poppy-head
quatrefoil
rood-loft
rood-screen
roof-boss
string-course
tie-beam
tomb-chest
wall-painting
Do not insert page breaks. Hard returns should be used only at the ends of paragraphs, after headings, or in lists and verse where definite line breaks are required. Do not use ‘hard’ hyphens or ‘discretionary’ hyphens to improve word splits at line endings.
Start new paragraphs consistently. Paragraphs should be left-justified. Do not put an extra line-space between paragraphs. Start new paragraphs with a single tab, not multiple spaces, or format them with indented first lines.
If your article contains unusual characters or accents, please indicate this in a covering note to the editor.
Some BAA conventions require the use of small capitals. In Word, these can be formatted by highlighting the relevant text, and selecting Format > Font from the menu bar, and then ticking the ‘small caps’ box. Note that for a letter to appear as a small cap, it must be typed in lower case before formatting.
Always type a space after initials in names, and do not put double spaces at the end of sentences.
Do not attempt to improve the presentation of your article by the use of multiple typefaces and type sizes. Use one size of one simple typeface (preferably Times New Roman in font size 12), and avoid centred and justified type.
Use the standard quotation mark key on the keyboard as appropriate, with the ‘smart quotes’ function switched on. (In Word this can be found by selecting Format > AutoFormat > Options, and then clicking on the ‘AutoFormat’ tab.)
If you are confident that you know which is appropriate, use the em or en dash available on your computer. An em dash can be represented by two hyphens. En dashes should be used instead of hyphens in number spans (page spans, date spans, etc.)
Acknowledgements General acknowledgements should be placed in a separate headed paragraph at the end. The heading should be centred and in capitals. Note that some grant-aid bodies stipulate acknowledgement at the head of the article (e.g., the Marc Fitch Fund).
Please format your references as endnotes. References should be formatted using the automatic endnote facility of a word-processing programme.
Endnotes should be kept to a scholarly minimum. They are meant to provide references to the text and should not be used either to expand discussions or to give extensive descriptions or arguments that are not entirely relevant to the article. Authors should be aware that editors often have a lot of trouble with references, and every care should be taken to follow the conventions given below. If references constitute more than 25% of an article’s word-length, the article may be returned to the author for revision.
Please note that all references to books and articles after the first reference should use the author’s surname, followed by an intelligible shortened (preferably single-word) form of the title. Examples are given below. Any form of the Harvard system using author and a date is not acceptable, and the References section should not be prefaced with a list of abbreviated titles.
Note that the phrases ‘loc. cit.’ and ‘op. cit.’ are not used in the Journal. ‘Ibid.’ may be used only for a repeat citation in the same note, or in the following note where no other citations intervene. If possible, a reference should not begin with an abbreviation that is normally printed in lower-case characters (for example, ‘e.g.’, ‘i.e.’, ‘ibid.’). If this cannot be avoided, the initial letter should be in upper case, e.g., 21. Ibid.
Citation of Published Works and Theses: please read carefully
Authors and editors should be given with initial(s) only.
The title of a book should appear in italics. The title of an article in a journal, a chapter in a multi-author/multi-editor publication, or of an unpublished thesis should appear in Roman, within single inverted commas.
It is important that titles of books, articles, theses and series be given with the capitalization with which they appear in print.
Where the citation of a title page as printed is likely to be unclear, a colon should be inserted, e.g., T. Cocke and P. Kidson, Salisbury Cathedral: Perspectives on the Architectural History, RCHME (London 1993)
The place and date of publication should be given in round brackets (parentheses), at the end of the reference, but before the citation of any specific volume or page number/span. The place and date of publication should not be separated by a comma.
Where there is more than one place of publication, all places should be given.
The edition number (abbreviation ‘edn’) should be given, where appropriate, before the place and date of publication.
The number of volumes (abbreviation ‘vols’) should be given, where appropriate, before the place and date of publication, and after any edition number.
Where a particular volume of a work is being cited, the volume number should appear in capital roman numerals: I, II, III, etc.
Issue numbers of journals should be given in Arabic numerals
Part numbers of individual volumes should be given in lower-case Roman numerals: i, ii, iii, etc.
It is only necessary to give the part number of an issue (or the month or season of publication) if the part numbers (or months or seasons of publication) are individually paginated. If this happens, the part number should be given in the form in which it occurs in the publication.
Where a work is one in a series, the name of the series should be given in Roman after the title of the work, with the volume number in that series given in the form in which it appears in the work as published. Exceptions: for Rolls Series and BAA Transactions, the series volume numbers should be given in Roman numerals, in small capitals. Note also the abbreviated forms of some series titles given in the Abbreviations list below (e.g., BAA Trans., B/E).
Sample Citations with Possible Short Titles
1. A book by a single author.
F. Haverfield, The Romanization of Roman Britain, 4th edn (Oxford 1923), 48-56.
Possible short title: Haverfield, Romanization
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Haverfield, Romanization, 51.
2. A book by multiple authors.
D. Knopp and G. P. Jones, The Mediaeval Mason (Manchester 1933).
Possible short title: Knoop and Jones, Mediaeval Mason.
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Knoop and Jones, Medieval Mason, 67.
3. An edited book.
D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke and V. London ed., The Heads of Religious Houses in England and Wales, 940-1216 (London 1972).
Possible short title: Heads of Religious Houses. (Note editors’ names not included.)
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Heads of Religious Houses, 371.
4. A book that is one of a series.
R. Favreau, Épigraphie médiévale, L’atelier du médiéviste, 5 (Turnhout 1997)
Possible short title: Favreau, Épigraphie
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Favreau, Épigraphie, 27.
5. An edition.
Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ed. W. Stubbs (Rolls Series, XLIX, 1867), 231-32. Please note that all references to the Rolls Series volumes must be in this form.
Possible short title: Gesta Regis.
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Gesta Regis, 193.
6. A translation.
P. Breuval, The Cathedral Buildings of the Gothic Period, trans. R. Baldry, rev. 2nd edn, 2 vols (London 1956-59).
Possible short title: Breuval, Cathedral Buildings.
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Breuval, Cathedral Buildings, I, 91.
7. A chapter in a multi-author/multi-editor volume.
C. Norton, ‘Early Cistercian tile pavements’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. C. Norton and D. Park (Cambridge 1986), 228-55.
Possible short title: Norton, ‘Tile pavements’.
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Norton, ‘Tile Pavements’, 253.
8. An article in a journal with continuously paginated annual volumes.
A. Arshavir, ‘False Fronts in Minor Domestic Architecture’, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, ns, 4 (1956), 110-22, fig. 22 and pl. 14.
Possible short title: Arshavir, ‘False Fronts’.
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Arshavir, ‘False Fronts’, 112.
9. An article in a publication that does not have through-paginated volumes.
R. Haslam, ‘Uppark, West Sussex’, Country Life, 189/xxi (25 May 1995), 68-73.
Possible short title: Haslam, ‘Uppark’.
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Haslam, ‘Uppark’, 69.
10. An unpublished thesis.
R. K. Morris, ‘Decorated architecture in Herefordshire’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1972)
Possible short title: Morris, ‘Decorated architecture’.
Form for subsequent citation (where ‘ibid.’ is inapplicable): Morris, ‘Decorated architecture’, 253.
Citation of Works in Manuscript
The first reference to a manuscript should include the city where the library it located, the name of library, the class of manuscript (where this is not indicated as part of the manuscript designation), the manuscript designation, and the folio number. These items should be separated by commas. Subsequent references to the same manuscript should consist of a shortened form of the library’s name, the manuscript number, and a folio reference. Recto and verso should be specified in all instances, and the abbreviations MS, MSS, fol., fols, should be used.
First reference: London, British Library, MS Cotton, Caligula D III, fol. 15r
Later references: BL, Caligula D III, fol. 15r
First reference: London, British Library, MS Add. 13457, fol. 4v
Later references: BL, MS Add. 13457, fol. 4v
First reference: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. B 323, fol. 3r
Later references: Bodl., MS Rawl. B 323, fol. 3r
Certain abbreviations are standard to the Journal and the Transactions.
| Antiq. J. | Antiquaries Journal | |
| Archaeol. J. |
Archaeological Journal | |
| BAA Trans. | British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions | |
| B/E | N. Pevsner et al., The Buildings of England (Harmondsworth various dates) | |
| B/Ir | The Buildings of Ireland (Harmondsworth various dates) | |
| B/S | The Buildings of Scotland (Harmondsworth various dates) | |
| B/W | The Buildings of Wales (Harmondsworth various dates) | |
| Bull. mon. | Bulletin monumental | |
| CA |
Congrès Archéologique | |
| EH | English Heritage | |
| HBMC | Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission | |
| JBAA | Journal of the British Archaeological Association | |
| JRIBA | Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects | |
| Med. Archaeol. | Medieval Archaeology | |
| NMR | National Monuments Record | |
| PRO | Public Record Office | |
| RCHME | Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England | |
| VCH | Victoria History of the Counties of England |
Most illustrations will be reproduced in colour in the printed and online journal. Authors wishing to have more than two illustrations per 1000 words should consult the editor, as the cost implications need to be considered.
Authors should submit illustrative material for their articles together with their texts. This will greatly ease the editing process, particularly where texts include detailed architectural descriptions. If images for reproduction are not ready when the text is submitted, then authors should send a rough scan or low-resolution image for guidance.
Authors should also indicate a desired approximate size for each illustration. This should be a quarter page or third page for most illustrations, a half page for important illustrations, and very occasionally a full page for very important and detailed illustrations, particularly if these are plans. Authors may also indicate a desired layout, though final decisions will rest with the editor and the publisher.
All illustrations should be supplied in digital format, as TIFF or JPEG files. Black and white illustrations need to be saved at a minimum input scanning resolution of 300 dpi for halftones, 600 dpi for simple line, 1200 dpi for fine line; colour illustrations should be supplied in CMYK, not RGB. For photographs (as distinct from scans) then the number of pixels is critical and we would recommend that images have a minimum of 2,500 pixels along the long side. For practical purposes this means that if you are submitting images as jpgs, the properties should be at 2,500 x 1,800 pixels. The file should be named with the a short form of the essay title and the figure number, e.g., ‘BecketrelicsFig7’. (To check the pixel numbers for any digital scan, right-click on the icon of the file, select ‘Properties’, and the click on the ‘Summary’ tab.)
It is anticipated that virtually all illustrations, at least illustrations other than plans and line drawings, will be supplied digitally. These can be sent by electronic file transfer (e.g., via https://www.transferbigfiles.com/, Wetransfer or, ideally, Dropbox).
In the event of queries, authors are encouraged to contact the Editor for help prior to submission.
A list of captions to illustrations must be supplied together with the text in a separate Word document. The abbreviation for Figure should be Fig., with a full capital F, and small capital I and G.
Where the illustration is not that of the author, permission to reproduce must be obtained by the author, and the caption should include any relevant copyright or photographic acknowledgement. If acknowledgement other than that in the caption is required, this must be specified to the editor. In submitting illustrations for publication and an associated list of captions, the author indemnifies the publisher, the BAA and the editors of the volume against any action taken as a result of infringement of copyright.
Authors will be sent one set of proofs. These are to check that the text and illustrations have been properly set and are not for rewriting.
Wherever possible, authors will be emailed proofs in fixed pdf format to save time.
Proofs must be returned within the timeframe specified by the editor. The editor will amalgamate any corrections with necessary corrections from the editor and send a single proof to the publisher. If the author does not return the proofs in the allotted time, the editors’ proofs will be used as the basis for the final version.
Revised 28 January 2024