Style Guide

Critical Fish style guide

The following should cover most of the questions you might have regarding the presentation of your text. Our editors will use/apply these when they review your submission.
There is quite a lot to go through – we will have a summary version for writers available shortly on our website

1. General
Preferred dictionary: Merriam-Webster online (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary) to check all spelling preferences
For hyphenation etc; use British English spelling and punctuation.

Use full names for people referred to the first time they’re mentioned in each essay, and subsequently use surname only or full name as appropriate. Exceptions to this are Old Masters, where last name only need be used.

2. Abbreviations
Avoid in running text; use ‘that is’, not ‘ie’; ‘for example’, not ‘eg’; but ‘etc’, not ‘etcetera’ (although ‘and so on’ is often preferable), okay, not OK (although this should only be used in interviews)

No full stops in abbreviations, nor spaces between initials – BBC, US, mph, 4am, lbw, No 10, PJ O’Rourke, WH Smith, AIDS, DIY; p(p). for page number(s), with no space between: p.4; Dr; St; c (circa); Anon (used in footnotes); (ed) or (eds) in footnotes for editor / editors

It should be: Washington DC (not D.C.)

3. Apostrophes
Morris’s, not Morris’
Goldsmiths – no apostrophe
Central Saint Martins – no apostrophe
Do not use for commonly abbreviated words: bus, flu, phone

4. Bibliography and endnotes
Surname, Forename, Title, Publisher, Place, Year

For example:
Stonard, John-Paul, Trials of Art, Ridinghouse, London, 2007
Reardon, John and Mollin, David, Ch-ch-ch-changes: Interviews with Artists that Teach, Ridinghouse, London, 2008

5. Capitalisation
a) Capitalisation in art movements
Upper case for art movements – Minimalism, Conceptualism, but Minimal/ist art, Surrealist, the Situationists. That is, capitalise first letter if used as a noun, but write general terms or adjectival form in lower case
Conceptual art, Pop art (but pop music), Op art, Dada, Art Deco, Land art
modernism, modern art, but Modern British
neo-Romantic; neo-Gothic; neo-Georgian; neo-Geo; except Neo Naturists
postmodernism
pre-Raphaelite
post-Impressionist
Performance art
the Sublime

b) Capitalisation in headings and titles
Text headings and sub-headings: title case
Journal, exhibition, catalogue and artwork titles: true to original where possible, otherwise title case

c) Capitalisation in job titles, names, departments and institutions
Lower case for jobs and departments – Fred Bloggs is professor of fine art in the department of sculpture at Goldsmiths
Upper case when used as a job title – Professor Fred Bloggs; Jill Howitt, Editor, The Critical Fish
Van Gogh but Vincent van Gogh; De Kooning but Willem de Kooning, etc

d) Capitalisation in compass points
Lower case for regions – the north, the south of England, the south-west, north-east Scotland, south Wales
Lower case for geopolitical areas – the west, western Europe, the far east, south-east Asia, central America
Lower case for the cultural, political, economic terms – the west, western culture, the east, eastern culture
Upper case when part of the name of a county –West Sussex, East Riding – or province – East Java – and for East End, West End (London), East Coast, West Coast (USA), Middle East, Latin America, North America, South America

e) Capitalisation in political parties/movements
Upper case for movements and regimes, Fascism, Communism, Socialism, Nazism
the Left, but left-wing, communist, fascist

6. Captions
Captions should be written in the following format:
Artist
Title, date
Medium
height x width x depth cm

dimensions up to one decimal point – if two or more, round up or down accordingly

7. Dates
a) General dates
twentieth century not Twentieth Century or 20th century etc, and hyphenated when used as a compound adjective: twentieth-century art
use of Common Era rather than before Christ/AD, eg: fourth century BCE, 2006 CE, 1000 BCE
1980s, not ’80s or eighties or Eighties or 80’s, but spell out ‘swinging sixties’
1968 not ’68
21–27 March 2008, but September – October 2008 (set off using en dash – rather than hyphen – or em dash —)
1 January 2000 (no commas, day before month)
Two digits after en dash in date ranges – 1922–24; 1989–94; 1998–2001

b) dates of works and exhibitions
Supply date of works and exhibitions in brackets after the title the first time mentioned in a text, but not subsequently.
If work is illustrated add p.xx after title of work to reference page number of plates, eg, Anya Gallaccio, because I could not stop (2000; p.xx)
Supply date of books, poems, films etc in brackets after the title the first time mentioned in text but not subsequently, eg, The Collected Writings of Jon Thompson (2011); The Waste Land (1922)

8. Ellipses
Close up space between word and ellipsis: ‘Do not… use full stops for ellipses’; ‘…do not use full stops for ellipsis’
No punctuation needed before or after the ellipsis in quotes
No ellipsis needed at beginning and end of a quote, even if the sentence quoted is incomplete
Use ellipses in interviews only when a sentence is left incomplete

9. En-dashes
Use en-dashes – not em-dashes —
No spaces if dashes in titles – Attitudes–Concepts–Images
Spaces in texts – ‘Jill and Lauren live in Hull – not Liverpool – and they edit The Critical Fish

10. Endnotes / Footnotes
Use endnotes, not footnotes
Place endnote indicator after first punctuation following reference
Two digits after dash in page ranges, full stop after p., no space between p. and number – pp.114–15

a) Example book references
Michael Corris (ed), Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth and Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, p.10.
Michael Corris and Paul Wood (eds), Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth and Practice, Cambridge University Press and MIT Press, Cambridge and Cambridge MA, 2004, p.10.
Michael Corris, ‘Conceptual Art’, in Paul Wood (ed), Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth and Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, p.10.
Ibid., p.3. – when same details as note above
Corris, op. cit., p.9. – when other notes have intervened
Corris, Conceptual Art, op cit – when more than one publication by same author is cited

b) Catalogue references
Charles Harrison, ‘Against Precedents’, When Attitudes Become Form, exhibition catalogue, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, pp.10–15.

c) Magazine references
Robert Pincus-Witten, ‘Naked Lunches’, October, no.3, spring 1977, pp.102–18.

11. Foreign words and phrases
Italicise foreign words and phrases: mise-en-scène, objet d’art, fin-de-scièle, trompe l’oeil, tableaux, cognoscenti, en route, hauteur, blitzkreig, di mensch maschine, except for vice versa, tabula rasa, avant-garde

12. Hyphenation
Use hyphens for compound adjectives, except where the adjectives are capitalised – Red Cross worker, Home Counties accent
Do not use hyphens after adverbs ending in ‘ly’ – a hotly disputed penalty, a constantly evolving newspaper, genetically modified food; hyphens are needed with short and common adverbs, eg ill-prepared report, hard-bitten hack
art world not art-world (unless compound adjective)
postwar, not post-war
readymade, not ready-made
south-east, not southeast
Follow www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary for hyphenation usage

13. Index
No spaces between entry and page numbers: Riley, Bridget 24, 28–29, 57
For page ranges, contract up to two digits – 23–24; 120–22
For page numbers with the entry in the footnote add ‘n’ – 24, 28–29, 57, 200n, 220
Use en-dash not hyphen for page ranges

14. Interview rules
Use full name on first usage and use initials of participants followed by colon thereafter; put questions in italics (unless recommended otherwise); titles etc that would otherwise be italicised in roman:
John Reardon: Can you tell me when you first started curating?
Charles Harrison: It was soon after I graduated that I was asked to put together an exhibition by some artist friends.
JR: How did the invitation to curate the English version of When Attitudes Become Form in September 1969 come about?
CH: I’d proposed to the ICA an exhibition of a group of English artists.

Use we’d, who’d, we’ve, you’re, it’s etc, to maintain conversational style

All editorial comments, such as [long pause], [laughs] in square brackets and italics

As a general rule, use full names for people referred to the first time they’re mentioned in each interview, and subsequently use surname only (or first name if clear who is being referred to). However, if the reader may have forgotten who they are by the time they’re mentioned again, repeat first name. Exceptions to this are Old Masters, where last name only need be used, especially where it helps retain conversational tone

Use as few ellipses as possible. Replace with full stops or question marks at end of sentences, or en-dashes in the middle of sentences, if genuinely parenthetical

Avoid repetitions unless absolutely essential to character of speaker

Avoid ‘yeah, ah, um’. ‘Yeah’ should read ‘Yes’; avoid overuse of ‘So’ or ‘Yes’ at the beginning of questions and answers. Avoid ‘I think’, especially at the beginning of sentences, unless doubt as to the accuracy of a memory etc is being expressed

15. Italicisation / Inverted commas
Use italics, followed by date in parenthesis for individual artworks, exhibitions, catalogues, books, albums, poems, plays
Use inverted commas for series titles (including television series), articles, songs, lectures
Use roman without inverted commas for large annual shows such as Prospect, Documenta or biennales
Use italics for newspapers, The Sunday Times; the Guardian
See Foreign words and phrases

16. Measurements
Figures, not words for amounts
In body text spell out measurements etc: 33 metres, 29 centimetres, 3 inches, but use abbreviations m, cm, in, etc in captions, with space between figure and measurement –
3 mm, 2 in

17. Numbers
Spell out one to ten, use figures from 11 to 999,999; thereafter use m or bn for sums of money, quantities or inanimate objects, eg £10m, 5bn tonnes of coal, 30m doses of vaccine; but million or billion for people or animals, eg 1 million people, 3 billion rabbits, etc; in headlines use m or bn

Spell out ‘second’, ‘third’ etc (but retain if part of official title, such as 3rd Berlin Biennale – do not use superscript)

Use figures with percentages and measurements: 11 per cent, 12 metres

Numbers above 11 written as digits, unless a number starts a sentence, when it should be written out, for example, Forty years ago there were more than 75 people.
OR if it is a term/phrase, for example, There are thousands of precedents

a) Contraction of dates, page numbers etc
Contract date ranges to two digits: 1922–26; except across centuries 1998–2001
For page numbers, use en dash no space, contracted to two figures after dash: pp.12–18, pp.110–21

18. Quotations
Single not double quotes, unless to denote a quote or title within a quote
Use comma or colon before quotes (colon only before indented quotes)
Indent quotes of five lines or longer, without quotation marks, but use single quotes to denote a quote or title with this quote
Punctuation should be outside quotes:
‘You can make a painter out of a peasant’, Picasso told the journalist Héléne Parmelin, ‘but you can’t make a peasant out of a painter’.
Unless a full sentence is quoted:

See Ellipsis for omitted text

19. Spelling
English spelling, not American – organise not organize, etc
Practising not practicing (but ‘practice’ for noun; follow the same system as you would for ‘advise’ and ‘advice’)
Use American or Australian spelling in quotations or for names of institutions: Pearl Harbor, Lincoln Center, Australian Labor Party

20. That / Which / Who
Use ‘that’ to introduce defining clauses: ‘The picture that was sold’, ‘the job that she did’
Use ‘which’ to introduce descriptive clauses or those that give additional details: ‘The wallpaper, which was designed by William Morris, is hand-printed.’
Two useful hints: a) there is always a comma before ‘which’, and b) if the sentence could exist without the clause under consideration, you probably need ‘which’. If the sentence would collapse without the clause, then use ‘that’.
Use who (or whom), not that, for people: ‘The artists who were working at this time’

21. Further miscellaneous rules
A hotel, a history, not an hotel, an history
Art & Language
art world, art form, art making
artwork
avant garde not avant-garde (unless used as compound adjective)
the Bible, but biblical
black and white (unless before noun: black-and-white photograph)
café
cliché
decor
Düsseldorf (English spelling takes umlaut)
facade
First World War, Second World War
Gilbert & George
Goldsmiths – no apostrophe
MoMA (after spelling out in full in first instance)
naive
Perspex – upper case P
postwar
rock ‘n’ roll
Second World War
site specific
St Martins – no apostrophe [TBC]
Thames & Hudson
Victoria & Albert Museum
wallpaper
Young British Art (not in single quotes; abbreviate to YBA)
Zurich (English spelling takes no umlaut)

The Style Guide needs to go here.