1.
Style
It
is important to strike the right tone
for your target audience. Your textbook is most likely to be aimed at
undergraduate students coming to the topic for the first time. A clear,
accessible and lively written style will engage student readers at every level.
Avoid use of technical language where possible. If it is
necessary to use terminology with which an undergraduate student may not be
familiar, be sure to include a full explanation.
Be concise. Keep sentences and
paragraphs to a manageable length and bear in mind the contracted word count.
2.
Structure
The
structure of any textbook should be clear, logical and easy to navigate.
Chapters should be divided into
manageable sub-sections – it is important for the student reader that the narrative
is broken up into bite-size parts. Sub-headings should be clear and descriptive
so that the overall structure is easy to navigate.
3.
Content
All content should be appropriate
for your target audience. Concentrate on themes and arguments that students will
find most interesting and/or difficult, or that are most typically discussed at
undergraduate level.
Avoid lengthy discussion of
secondary/critical material. In most cases, it is more appropriate to concentrate on
the primary material, encouraging students to engage directly with the text or
topic under discussion.
Keep quotations concise and to the
point.
Lengthy quotations can incur substantial permissions fees and can be
off-putting for the student reader.
Bear
in mind that the target audience is
international. Any cultural references should be appropriate for both a UK
and US audience.
Notes should be end of book and kept
to a minimum. Avoid long, narrative notes. The student reader can find extensive
notes off-putting and will not read them. Generally speaking, for textbooks at
undergraduate level, if a point is not central enough to be made in the main
body of the text, then it is probably not appropriate or necessary for the
target audience.
4.
Pedagogical features
From
the following list, please choose two or three types of pedagogical feature for
inclusion in your textbook to make it user-friendly for students and lecturers:
- Case Studies
- Further Reading boxes
- Activities
- Study Questions
- Sample Readings
- Examples of Good Practice
To
make the production process efficient, it would be helpful if you could
indicate where these pedagogical features occur within your manuscript by
inserting the following tags at the beginning and end of the relevant material
to instruct our team to insert boxes around them (these tags will later be
removed):
<BOX> Before text After text </BOX>
Please
also include the type of feature (e.g. ‘Case Study’ or ‘Activity’) in bold as a
heading (this heading will be printed in the book).
For
example, your manuscript should read:
<BOX
Case Study: [A SUBTITLE CAN BE ADDED IF YOU WISH]
text
</BOX>
NB:
Please ensure boxes are numbered if cross-references are made to them in the
text. Please number them according to the chapter they appear and their
position within it (eg. Activity 3.2 indicates that this activity is the second
activity in Chapter 3).
5.
Headings
To
indicate the different levels of heading and subheading in your manuscript,
please use <A> in front of main headings, and <B> and <C> in
front of headings that come below these.
For
example:
<A>Cross-Curricular Themes
Text……………………………………..
<B>Resources
Text……………………………………….
<C>Early Years
Text…………………………………………
We
will format these headings using different styles when we lay out the book so
as to make the structure of your text easy for the reader to follow.
6.
Chapter Outlines
At
the beginning of each chapter, please provide a list of all the main headings
(A heads) that appear in that chapter. Please insert the tags at the beginning
and end of this list as in the example below, and in bold add the heading
‘Chapter Outline’:
<Box>
Chapter
Outline
Cross-curricular themes
Developing children’s
creativity
[ETC…]
</Box>
This chapter outline would then appear as follows in
the book:
(Please note it is not necessary to add
pages numbers to this list; this will be done by us at proof stage.)
7. Figures and Tables
Please
supply all figures and tables in separate file(s) from the manuscript file,
with an instruction within the text to indicate where each should be inserted.
For
example: <Insert Figure 1.1 here> or <Insert Table 2.3 here>
8.
Other features
The use of bullet/numbered lists throughout the book is encouraged. Your may also wish to Include a list of Useful Resources at the end of each chapter.
9. Submitting your manuscript
Please submit your manuscript electronically, on a disk or as an email attachment (zip file preferred) in a Word for Windows compatible format.
