Author Guidelines

Hume Studies: A Style Guide

(latest revision July 2024)

We are very pleased that your article or review will soon be appearing in Hume Studies. The careful preparation of your final manuscript will help to streamline the production process, hold expenses down, and guard against mistakes in the published version of your piece. Our policy is that production cannot go forward until we receive a manuscript conforming to our requirements. This Style Guide should answer most of your questions about the journal’s preferred style, but if questions remain, we would be more than happy to answer them.

Preparing the manuscript for publication

The final manuscript should be word-processed and submitted either through the editorial console (https://www.humestudies.org/ojs) or, if necessary, as an e-mail attachment to one of the editors. The entire manuscript, including block quotations and all notes, should be double-spaced, with generous margins on all four sides. References should be collected at the end as numbered endnotes (under the heading “NOTES”), and acknowledgments and similar material should appear in an initial, unnumbered endnote.

References to Hume’s Works

These should generally appear in the body of the text. The form of these references and the editions to which they refer (including The Clarendon Edition) should be explained in the first endnote referring to the work in question. Provide full bibliographical details in the initial reference to each of Hume’s works cited (see below for details).

For the Treatise (abbreviated as “T”), references should be to Book, part, section, and paragraph (citations from the Introduction to the Treatise should read “Intro.”), along with the page numbers for the edition cited, if it is not The Clarendon Edition.

For the Enquiries (abbreviated as “EHU” and “EPM”), references should be to section and paragraph, along with the page numbers for the edition cited, if it is not The Clarendon Edition. 

In each of the above cases, Arabic numerals (separated by periods) should be used throughout.

So, typical in-text parenthetical references to the Treatise and the Enquiries will look as follows:

• (T 1.4.4.13) [for a reference to The Clarendon Edition of the Treatise]
• (T 1.4.4.13; 230) [for a reference to the Selby-Bigge, revised by Nidditch edition]
• (EHU 10.12) [for a reference to The Clarendon Edition]
• (EPM 9.6; 272-3) [for a reference to the Selby-Bigge, revised by Nidditch edition]

When a passage is cited but not quoted, citations can take the following form:

• When he returns to the point at T 3.1.1.8 (458), Hume . . .

When several passages are cited together, the following format is convenient:

• (T 2.3.3.5, 3.1.1.8; 415, 458)

For Hume’s Essays (abbreviated “E”), references should provide an abbreviated form of the particular essay cited along with a page reference for the edition cited, including The Clarendon Edition.

So, a typical reference to Hume's essay "Of the Study of History" might look like this:

• (E-SH 26) [for a reference to The Clarendon Edition]
• (E-SH 563) [for a reference to the Liberty Fund edition]

For A Dissertation on the Passions (abbreviated as “DP”) and The Natural History of Religion (abbreviated as “NHR”), references should be to section and paragraph, along with the page numbers for the edition cited, including The Clarendon Edition.

For The History of England (abbreviated as “HIST”), references should be to the volume and page numbers for the edition cited. So, for example, a passage from volume two of Hume’s The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to The Revolution in 1688, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983):

• (HIST 2: 525)

For the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (abbreviated “DNR”), parenthetical references should be by dialogue and paragraph number, as well as page number. So, for example, a reference to Kemp Smith’s edition:

• (DNR 4.1; 158)

Authors are responsible for checking all quotations before submitting final manuscripts (that is, before their pieces reach the proof stage).

References to Other Sources

Hume Studies follows the Chicago Manual of Style. Initial references to books published after 1900 should include publisher, as well as place of publication and date. For books published before 1900, the publisher need not be identified (but its inclusion is by no means discouraged; in certain contexts, it may be essential). Book titles should be italicized rather than underlined. Initial references to book chapters must include page numbers, as well as complete bibliographical information for the book in which the chapter appears. Initial references to journal articles should include volume number, issue number, year, and page number, in the following form:

Roger L. Emerson, “Hume and the Bellman, Zerobabel MacGilchrist,” Hume Studies 23, no. 1 (1997): 9-28.

Note that “pp.” never appears in references. Subsequent references to books, chapters, and articles should be by author’s name or short title (or both), never by date, followed by page number, as in

            Emerson, 25.

or

            “Hume and the Bellman,” 25.

or

            Emerson, “Hume and the Bellman,” 25.

The following paradigms illustrate some of the most common initial references.

To a book with a single author:

John Bricke, Mind and Morality: Examination of Hume’s Moral Psychology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 21–27. 

To a chapter in an edited volume:

Knud Haakonssen, “The Structure of Hume’s Political Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd edition, ed. David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 341-80.

[Note the abbreviated form for page ranges where digits are shared for numbers greater than 100.]

To a journal article:

Peter Loptson, “Hume and Ancient Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20, no. 4 (2012): 741–72.

To a particular page in a journal article:

Peter Loptson, “Hume and Ancient Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20, no. 4 (2012): 741–72, 750.

To a multi-volume work:

Jonathan Bennett, Learning from Six Philosophers, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 1: 241–42.

[Be sure to include the number of volumes in every multi-volume work you cite.]

To an edited collection:

Elizabeth Radcliffe, ed. A Companion to Hume (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008).

To a co-edited collection:

Joyce Jenkins, Jennifer Whiting, and Christopher Williams, eds. Passions and Persons: Essays in Honor of Annette Baier (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2005).

A few miscellaneous points:

• Each of the three main divisions of Hume’s Treatiseis named “Book” (with a capital “B”), but for all other divisions, large and small, in all other works—including the Dialogues—we use lower-case letters throughout (thus “part,” “section,” “chapter”). Arabic numerals are used to number all books, parts, and sections (thus “Book 1 of the Treatise,” “part 10 of the Dialogues,” “section 12 of the first Enquiry”).
• When quoting Hume himself, his spelling should be used. However, outside of contexts of quotation, Hume Studies uses “skeptic,” “skeptical,” and “skepticism” rather than “sceptic,” “sceptical,” or “scepticism.” 
• Always use double quotation marks, expect for quotes within quotes, which are single.
• In a situation where a parentheses is within a parentheses, the inner set should be square brackets.
• For singular possessive when a name ends in “s,” the possessive form adds an apostrophe and an “s.” Example: Cleanthes’s (not Cleanthes’)
• Aim to avoid the overuse of contractions (e.g. isn’t, we’ll, etc.).
• When referring to people in the text, provide their first and last names on first mention.

The manuscript should also be accompanied by an abstract of 100–125 words (and in no case exceeding 150 words). In preparing the final manuscript after acceptance, the author should supply somewhere on the first page a brief self-identification (name, position, institutional affiliation and address, and e-mail address), which will be transferred to the the base of the first page of the article. See any recent Hume Studies issue for examples.

Finally, the manuscript should conclude with an alphabetically arranged list of all “Works Cited.” The format of entries in that list differs from the format for endnotes. Here are some examples:

Endnote versus Works Cited entries: selected examples

Contribution to a multi-author book:

First endnote reference:

Amy M. Schmitter, “Making an Object of Yourself: Hume on the Intentionality of the Passions,” in Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, ed. Jon Miller (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2009), 223–40.

Subsequent endnote references:

Schmitter, “Making an Object of Yourself,” 230.

Works Cited entry:

Schmitter, Amy M. “Making an Object of Yourself: Hume on the Intentionality of the Passions.” In Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind. Edited by Jon Miller, 223–40. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2009.

Article in a journal:

First endnote reference:

Peter Loptson, “Hume and Ancient Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20, no. 4 (2012): 741–72, 750.

Subsequent endnote references:

Loptson, “Hume and Ancient Philosophy,” 743.

Works Cited entry:

Loptson, Peter. “Hume and Ancient Philosophy.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20, no. 4 (2012): 741–72.

Endnote versus Works Cited entries for Hume’s works: selected examples

Endnotes for Hume’s works:

David Hume, “A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh” (Edinburgh, 1745).

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J.Y.T. Greig (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1:16.

David Hume, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987), 123.

David Hume, Principal Writings on Religion: Including Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion, ed. J.C.A. Gaskin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. T. L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983).

Works Cited entries for Hume’s works:

Hume, David. The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. 6 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983.

Hume, David. Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Edited by Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987.

Hume, David. Principal Writings on Religion: Including Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion. Edited by J.C.A. Gaskin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Hume, David. An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. Edited by T. L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Hume, David. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Tom Beauchamp. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Hume, David. The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols. Edited by J.Y.T. Greig. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Questions of style will almost certainly arise that this guide, even supplemented by recent issues of the journal, cannot answer. For matters not addressed in this Style Guide, please consult the 17th, online edition, or another recent edition, of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Quick Tips!

• Punctuation always goes inside quotation marks.
  
  
• Commas are used before page numbers in all notes and bibliographic entries except these two cases:
  
  (1) References to journals with page ranges (i.e., in initial endnotes and bibliographic entries). Then a colon is used before the page range.
  (2) Pages in a volume from a multi-volume work. Then the page is preceded by a colon, which is preceded by the volume number.

Book Reviews

Headings for book reviews must include author’s name; full title; editor’s name, if any; publisher, place of publication, and year; ISBN number with cloth or paper indicated; price in US dollars if available, otherwise price in the currency of the place of publication—as in the following example:

1999. O. MOUNCE. Hume’s Naturalism. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. Pp. 160. ISBN 14115191246, cloth, $85.00; ISBN 0415191254, paper, $27.95.

It is the responsibility of authors to provide all of the requested information. Details not included with the review copy should be available at the publisher’s website.

An overview of the production process

Once a manuscript has been accepted by the editors (and the author has made any last-minute changes), it is sent to a copy-editor, who marks corrections and formatting changes, using the "review" function of MS Word. An editor will then send back the corrected manuscript to the author for approval. The editors then assemble copy-edited and approved manuscripts into an issue for publication, which is forwarded to the Philosophy Documentation Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, for typesetting. Authors will receive page proofs (by e-mail, as PDF files) from the PDC. PDF files can be retrieved (and printed) in Adobe Acrobat, which can be downloaded without charge at adobe.com. Any final changes should be made on the .pdf document and returned to the PDC. Because author’s changes at this point in the process are time-consuming and potentially expensive, they are strongly discouraged. If such changes are extensive, authors may be asked to share in the cost. 

The editors (but not the authors) receive a second set of proofs from the PDC. Once this set of proofs is corrected, files are transmitted by the PDC to the journal’s printer, Malloy Lithographing of Ann Arbor, Michigan. After a final “book proof” is examined by the editors for any large-scale formatting errors, issues are printed and mailed by Malloy.

December 2010; revised 9 June 2019; further revised July and October 2021; July 2022; July 2024

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

A Note on Editions of Hume’s Treatise

Many authors now rely on the Oxford Clarendon editions of Hume’s works whenever possible. In the case of the Treatise, we encourage authors to check various editions. In the Clarendon and OPT teaching editions, the editors have made several changes to Hume’s original text, some small, but others significant. To read about their alterations to the text, see pp. 632–62 of Editorial Material, volume 2, of A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by David Fate Norton and Mary Norton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).

We recommend consulting for comparison other reputable and readily accessible texts of the Treatise. See, for example: 

• the Selby-Bigge edition, revised by Nidditch (Oxford University Press, 1978) 
• “Hume Texts Online,” DavidHume.org, a free, open-access collection of Hume’s works presenting accurate eighteenth-century publications 
• Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO)