For Authors > Author's Guide > Fonts and Unusual Characters in Manuscripts

Fonts and Unusual Characters in Manuscripts

1. Important Information for All Manuscripts:

When you are creating your manuscript, please choose a common unicode font. Good fonts to use are Times New Roman and Minion Pro; both of these fonts have very large character sets, so they can provide unicode characters for the vast majority of what is needed. Use Arial if you need a sans serif font; for example, when you need to embed the font in an illustration file.

If your manuscript does need characters that are not present in your main text font, it’s okay to use a second font for these special characters, as long as it’s also a unicode font. If this situation arises, please discuss this with your acquiring editor to be sure you are using a suitable font.

Regardless of the font chosen, if your manuscript has a lot of foreign language or special characters, please provide a sample Word doc to UMP early on, so that we can confirm that the characters are truly in unicode and will work for us. Please provide the same sample as a PDF too, so we can see what the characters are supposed to look like.

At the time of final manuscript submission, UMP should receive a full text PDF from you. Please check your PDF carefully, to make sure all the special characters that you expected to be visible actually are. UMP will be relying on your PDF as the definitive source of information as to what the characters in your manuscript are supposed to look like. In addition, if your manuscript has a lot of special characters, please also snail mail a printed hard copy of the PDF.

2. If Your Manuscript Uses Greek:

1. We suggest you use the SCS’s Greekkeys package. Available at https://classicalstudies.org/publications-and-research/ about-greekkeys-2015. There is a small fee to use this resource.

2. If at all possible, please set your entire manuscript in New Athena Unicode, or, Times New Roman. These two fonts contain large Greek sets, including underdots. If your manuscript does not use underdots, you could choose to set your entire manuscript in Minion Pro.

3. Please do not use an IFAO-Grec font in your manuscript. These fonts are not suitable for print or ebook publishing. (They are missing essential font weights such as italic and bold, and some characters within these fonts are "private use"—they are not unicode and will drop out of an ebook.)

4. We very much appreciate every effort you make in delivering your manuscript in the unicode fonts that we request. Please be aware that there are rare and unpredictable circumstances in which an author’s unicode font does not work for our publishing processes. In the unusual cases where that happens, we will be in touch to discuss alternatives.

3. If Your Manuscript Uses Asian Characters:

Recommended unicode fonts, such as Adobe Song Std, Adobe Ming Std, or Adobe Han Serif TC (Traditional Chinese), often have the characters that are needed.

4. If Your Manuscript Uses Musical Symbols in the Main Text:

We suggest you use Times New Roman for your entire manuscript; it has an extensive music character set.

In addition, if you are using the “sharp” and “flat” symbols in your manuscript, please do NOT use a “pound” sign and a lowercase “b.” Please enter the actual symbol for sharp and flat, in Word, using a standard unicode font in Word, such as Times New Roman.

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