Style Guide

• General Style
• Formatting
• Punctuation
• Tone
• Quotations
• Footnotes & Bibliography
• Captions

Most all assignments in this class are submitted as Word documents. The tutorials below all address how to apply formatting in Word. As a BYU student, you have free access to Microsoft Office including Word. Download Word.

For general questions of style, use the most recent edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, published by the University of Chicago Press. This is the standard reference for art and humanities writing, and this is why it is required for this course.

Unless dictated otherwise by the assignment or required template, use the following formatting.

• Do not include a cover sheet. At the top of your paper, put your name, assignment name, date of submisssion, and title of the essay.
• Double-space all copy including footnotes, bibliographies, quotations, etc.
• Consistently use 12-point Times New Roman, Helvetica, or Arial for all type.
• Do not mix fonts in a single file.
• Do not break words (hyphenate) at ends of lines.
• All text should be left-aligned. The first line of new paragraphs should not be tabbed or indented. At the end of a paragraph, press Return twice before starting the next paragraph. Footnotes and bibliographies have their own indents as outlined in their sections below.
• Do not bold any text.
• Before submitting your paper, eliminate all double spaces after periods and elsewhere.

For questions about when to use italics vs. quotation marks (especially in titles of artworks, songs, books, and so on), refer to the table in “Titles: Italics, Quotation Marks, or Naked?.”

I have created a few videos to walk you through some formatting concerns in Word. You will find them scattered throughout the course style guidelines below.

General Formatting

You may need to log into your student Box account to view the video. General Formatting (03:46)

The following resources are helpful for punctuation concerns:

• Punctuation: for instructions on when to use hyphens, en-dashes or em-dashes, quotation marks, etc., view ”The Punctuation Guide“.
• Hyphens: for how to appropriately use hyphens, refer to this chart.  

Hyphen vs. En Dash vs. Em Dash

You should also know the difference between a hyphen (-), en dash (–), and an em dash (—) and use them appropriately (see link to The Punctuation Guide above).

• Mac Hotkeys
  • En dash: option + hyphen
  • Em dash: option + shift + hyphen
• PC Hotkeys
  • En dash: alt + 0150 or alt + function + mjim
  • Em dash: alt + 0151 or alt + function + mjij

Ellipses

The Chicago Manual of Style states:

An ellipsis is a series of three dots used to signal the omission of a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage. Such omissions are made of material that is considered irrelevant to the discussion at hand (or, occasionally, to adjust for the grammar of the surrounding text). Chicago style is to use three spaced periods [. . .] rather than another device such as asterisks. These dots (which are sometimes referred to as suspension points) may also be used to indicate faltering speech or incomplete thoughts [. . .]. The dots in an ellipsis must always appear together on the same line (through the use of nonbreaking spaces [. . .]), along with any punctuation that immediately follows; if an ellipsis appears at the beginning of a new line, any punctuation that immediately precedes it (including a period) will appear at the end of the line above.

Non-breaking spaces are made using the following hotkeys:

• Macs: option-space
• Windows: control-option-space
• HTML:  

Word processors may use a nonbreaking three-dot ellipsis character (Unicode 2026). Please follow the Chicago style and replace these with spaced periods. For more about bracketed ellipses, used when omitting sections of quotations, see The Chicago Manual of Style.

For this course, the expectation is that you are writing thoughtful, serious, academic papers. You can have fun and be serious at the same time. Do not be frivolous and juvenile in your writing. Consider the following:

• avoid contractions
• limit the use of exclamation points (they should be extremely rare)
• avoid rhetorical questions (they are OK sometimes, but they should be rare)
• avoid using “you,” “we,” “us,” “me,” and “I” within your writing, so the papers are about ideas and not about you or me
• refer to the artist by their full name (with birth and death years in parentheses), and thereafter refer to them primarily by their last name, not their first
  • For example: “Shigeko Kubota (1937–2015) first came into contact with George Maciunas and Fluxus in . . .,” and “Kubota purchased a Sony Portapak in 1970 and immediately turned the lens on herself and her friends.”

Block quotations should be indented without double quotation marks around the quote. Double-space block quotations as well. An extra line space should immediately precede and follow a blocked quotation (two returns).

Quotations must be absolutely accurate and carefully transcribed. An ellipsis (three spaced dots) indicates words dropped within a sentence. A period and three spaced dots indicate a deletion between sentences. Unless ellipses are part of the original quote, place the ellipses in brackets to indicate that you are abridging the quote. Brackets in quoted material indicate author’s interpolation.

Foreign-language quotations in both text and notes should be translated into English, unless the significance of the quotation will be lost. The original text may be included in a note if it is unpublished, difficult to access, or of special relevance to the article.

Notes should be numbered sequentially and submitted as footnotes, not endnotes or parenthetical author-date references. Therefore, all citations should appear at the bottom of the accompanying page. Do not use smaller type for the text of footnotes. For citations of periodicals, include volume, number, and full date of the issue. Footnote numbers in the text should use unique superscript Arabic numerals placed after punctuation.¹ Almost always, footnotes appear at the end of the sentence containing the cited material. Rarely will a footnote appear mid-sentence. For exceptions refer to The Chicago Manual of Style.

All references to publications and the like should appear in full form (including place of publication and publisher) only once. Subsequent appearances should use a short form: surname of author, short title if necessary, and page reference. Consult The Chicago Manual of Style for details. Do not use ibid. or op. cit.

All research papers should include footnotes and a bibliography. Exhibition reviews or works of direct criticism may not require them. The bibliography is a place to cite all works referenced when researching the paper regardless of whether information from the sources was used directly in the paper or not. Therefore, bibliographies typically have longer lists of sources than footnotes and may appear even when there are no footnotes in a paper. If there are any footnotes in a paper, there will always be a bibliography.

For style information regarding notes/bibliography, please refer to The Chicago Manual of Style’s chapter on Notes and Bibliography. Specifically, you can refer to the Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide.

Footnote Examples

Footnotes are notable for commas separating most sections, the author’s first name listed first, and formatted with the first line indented.

1. Christopher Knight, “William Pope.L Sets the U.S. Flag Waving at the MOCA/Geffen,” LA Times, March 24, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-pope-l-moca-review-20150324-column.html.
2. Roland Barthes, “Death of the Author,” in Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 147.
3. Barthes, “Death of the Author,” 149.
4. “The Museum of Modern Art History,” Museum of Modern Art, accessed September 9, 2018, https://www.moma.org/about/who-we-are/moma-history.
5. Katie Bouman, “How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole,” filmed November 2016 at TEDxBeaconStreet, Brookline, MA, video, 12:51, https://www.ted.com/talks/katie_bouman_how_to_take_a_picture_of_a_black_hole.

Bibliography Examples

Bibliographies are notable for a period separating most sections, the author’s last name first, and formatted with a hanging indent.

Barthes, Roland. “Death of the Author.” In Image Music Text, translated by Stephen Heath, 142–148. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.

Bouman, Katie. “How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole.” Filmed November 2016 at TEDxBeaconStreet, Brookline, MA. Video, 12:51. https://www.ted.com/talks/katie_bouman_what_does_a_black_hole_look_like.

Knight, Christopher. “William Pope.L Sets the U.S. Flag Waving at the MOCA/Geffen.” LA Times, March 24, 2015. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-pope-l-moca-review-20150324-column.html.

“The Museum of Modern Art History.” Museum of Modern Art. Accessed September 9, 2018. https://www.moma.org/about/who-we-are/moma-history.

Note: “Accessed” only appears for website content that cannot be dated, not online articles that include publication dates, etc. There is an assumption that articles are static and will remain the same once published and dated, whereas website content is dynamic and could change from time to time without citing a date.

Below are links to video tutorials on formatting footnotes and bibliographies.

Footnote Formatting

You may need to log into your student Box account to view the video. Footnote Formatting (06:16)

Bibliography Formatting

You may need to log into your student Box account to view the video. Bibliography Formatting (07:16)

Whenever available and appropriate, image caption information should appear in this order:

• Artist (birth year—death year (when applicable and available))
• Title, in italics
• date
• medium and support (when applicable)
• dimensions in inches (h × w × d in.) followed by dimensions in centimeters (h × w × d cm) in parentheses, or duration (hh:mm:ss), and/or date of event
  • for dimensions, use a multiplication sign (×) rather than an “x”
  • dimensions should include a space between the numbers and the multiplication sign
  • abbreviations for units of measurement are as follows: m, cm, ft., in. (note the period trailing the imperial units of measurement)
• if applicable:
  • Name of collection
  • City of collection
  • Donor, accession number or other collection information
  • Credit-line and/or copyright for both the artwork and/or photograph of the artwork, in parentheses

Basic Caption Style

Artist, title, date, medium, and dimensions are separated by commas, and these elements are followed by a period. Collection, city, and credit lines follow, separated by commas. After this, in parentheses, come all copyright and photograph credit lines. There is no terminal period, unless the basic caption information is followed by a descriptive sentence, which occurs rarely. Complete information on medium, dimensions, and collection should be provided if possible.

If a copyright notice and/or the © symbol is requested by the rights holder or representative, please indicate if the copyright applies to the artwork, or the photograph of the artwork. In some cases, the artwork be in the public domain, but the photograph of the artwork is not.

It is acknowledged that the information (above) and examples (below) won’t apply to all artworks. Some may involve multiple objects, some are performative, others are digital, some are durational, and some are conceptual. If you have questions, please try to follow the spirit of the directions above, and then consult with your instructor.

Sample Captions

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1881–1918) and Morton Schamberg (1874–1927), God, 1917, gelatin silver print, 9 ½ × 7 9/16 in. (24.1 × 19.2 cm). Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1973.637

Diana Al-Hadid (1981–), Untitled, 2011, charcoal, watercolor, Conté and pastel on Mylar, 41 ½ × 54 ½ in. (105.4 × 138.4 cm). Private collection. (photograph by C. Timothy Barkley at Weatherspoon Art Museum/UNCG, 2013, image courtesy of Miyoshi Art Projects, Santa Monica, California)

Shirin Neshat (1957–), Passage, 2001, color video and sound installation, 00:11:30. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2001.70 (artwork and image © Shirin Neshat)

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt (How to explain pictures to a dead hare), 1965, printed 1997, gelatin silver photograph, 12 × 8 in. (30.7 × 20.5 cm). Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Mervyn Horton Bequest Fund 1997, 434.1997.9 (photograph © Ute Klophaus)