Format
Articles should be submitted to the editors by email or in hard copy with disk in MS Word, line spacing 1.5. Contributions should be printed in a generally accepted font; the use of different fonts should be avoided.

Length
Contributions should not exceed 8 000 words (excluding footnotes).

Reviews and Review Articles
Although in most cases reviews will be solicited, the review editor will consider unsolicited reviews. A review article should be longer and more detailed than a review, and should discuss the book or books in the historiographical context of the field of study as a whole. Review articles may qualify for subsidy purposes by those attached to South African universities. Books sent out for review must be reviewed by the date stipulated. If reviews are not received by that date, the review editor may request that the book or books be returned forthwith.

Subsidy
As the Journal is on the approved list of the South African Department of Education, the cost of an article authored by an academic employed in South Africa can be recouped from the subsidy payable. The editor will request such authors employed by South African universities and other tertiary institutions to pay page costs.

Page Proofs
Corrected page proofs are to be returned to the editor by contributors within five days of receipt of them.

Offprints
Authors will not be given offprints of their articles, but will receive one copy of the African Historical Reviewfree of charge.

Maps, Diagrams and Photographs
Where maps, figures and graphs are presented, they must be professionally produced and ready for photographic reproduction. Photographs should be submitted in the form of black-and-white prints.

Footnotes
Sources in the text should appear as footnotes, numbered consecutively in Arabic figures.

Upper-case style is used for the titles of books and articles.

References to books should give the initial(s) and surname(s) of the author(s), the title in full (underlined or italicised), the place of publication, the publisher and the date of publication (within brackets), and the page(s) referred to. For example:
J.B. Peires, The Dead will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7 (Johannesburg, 1989), 66-7.

All subsequent references to the same book should use the surname(s) of the author(s) and a short title:
Peires, The Dead will Arise, 67.

References to chapters in books should give the initial(s) and surname(s) of the author(s), the title of the chapter (within single inverted commas), followed by the full details of the book:
N. Etherington, 'The "Shepstone System" in the Colony of Natal and beyond the Borders', in A. Duminy and B. Guest, eds, Natal and Zululand from Earliest Times to 1910: A New History (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1989), 172-7.

All subsequent references to the same source should use the author's surname and a short title: Etherington, 'The "Shepstone System"', 178.

References to articles in journals should give the initial(s) and surname(s) of the author(s), the title of the article (within single inverted commas), the title of the journal in full (underlined/italicised), and the volume, number, date and page number(s). For example:
R. Levin and M. Neocosmos, 'The Agrarian Question and Class Contradictions in South Africa: Some Theoretical Considerations', The Journal of Peasant Studies, 16, 2 (Jan. 1989), 230-51.

Subsequent references to the same source should use the surname(s) of the author(s) and a short title:
Levin and Neocosmos, 'The Agrarian Question', 252.

References to theses should give the initials and surname of the author, the title of the thesis (within single inverted commas), and the degree, the university where it was awarded and the date (within brackets):
M.J. Rayner, 'Wine and Slaves: The Failure of an Export Economy and the Ending of Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1806-1834' (PhD thesis, Duke University, 1986), 260-7.

Subsequent references to the same thesis should use the author's surname and a short title:
Rayner, 'Wine and Slaves', 282.

Archival references should indicate the archival depot, library or museum, and identify the collection or group of documents or papers:
Cape Archives (hereafter CA), Colonial Office (hereafter CO) 291, Letters and Papers Received, Agents in the Interior, 1826, J. Melvill to R. Plasket, 2 June 1826.

Subsequent reference to this archival group can be made as follows:
CA, CO 291, Melvill to Plasket, 5 July 1826.

Full stops should not be used in citing archival references; for example, use CSO, not C.S.O.

Avoid op. cit. and loc. sit.

Sentences
Write with precision, clarity and economy. Use short, compact sentences and avoid complicated multi-phrased constructions. Use the active voice.

Quotations
Short quotations should be indicated by single inverted commas, with double inverted commas for quotations within the main one. Quotations of more than 60 words will be printed in smaller type without inverted commas and not indented. Omissions are indicated by an ellipses (three equally spaced points …).

Numbers and Dates
Dates used in the text should be given in the form: 12 October 1936. In footnotes, however, the names of all months except May, June and July should be abbreviated as follows: 12 Oct. 1936. For indicating page numbers and dates, use the least number of numerals possible: 52-5, 181-4; 1921-5, 1921-37.

Numbers below 10 in the text should be written out in full: four, seven - not 4, 7. Figures should be used to indicate numbers above 10: 10, 78, 174.

Example: eighteenth century, not 18th or 18th century
Note: eighteenth-century music
BUT: The 10th UNISA International Music Competition.

Abbreviations
1. When a word that can be abbreviated is first used, write it out, followed by the abbreviation in brackets. Use the abbreviation thereafter.
2. Do not use contractions.
3. Do not use abbreviations in the text (only in brackets).
4. Use full stops in: e.g. and i.e. and et al. Initials - A. N. Other (note that they are spaced).
Do not use full stops in the following cases: UN, MPs .

Bias-free language
Use gender-neutral language and language free of slighting allusions, assumptions, or stereotypes based on race, ethnicity, religion, disability, birth or family status.

Infinitives
Do not to split infinitives.

Interword spacing
Do not put two spaces after a full stop or colon.

Italicisation
Italic is used for
1. titles of books, periodicals, newspapers, plays, some musical works, paintings and films.
2. foreign phrases not yet naturalised in an English sentence - these should have the correct accents

Paragraphs
Leave a line between paragraphs.

Parochialism
Think of readers in other countries. Use 'South Africa' instead of 'this country'; South African' instead of 'our'; 'in the early 1990s' instead of 'in the last few years'. Avoid 'we'. Check in which hemisphere the reader will be in cases where words such as 'winter' and 'summer' are used.

Participles
Avoid 'dangling' participles.

Spelling
Ensure that names are spelt correctly.
Use the British form of words, e.g. dreamt, learnt not dreamed and learned.

URLs (uniform resource locators)
Punctuation: even if it follows a period, the first letter of the protocol (e.g. the h in http) is not capitalised. Punctuation marks used following a URL are perceived as belonging to the surrounding text. It is therefore unnecessary to omit appropriate punctuation after the URL or to bracket the URL.