Proposal Policy

UK English

punctum's loose rule is that UK English is acceptable if that spelling is also used in US English; for example, towards, amidst, whilst, so forth. This is if they are spelling in the UK spelling consistently. If not, then the editor should edit for US spelling. UK spellings that are not acceptable are colour, behaviour, theatre, centre, analyse, aeroplane, programme, draught, jewellery, and so forth.

Identities

When describing Black, Brown, and Indigenous people and a specific experience, Black, Brown, and Indigenous are capitalized because it indicates the collective, diasporic sense of history, identity, and community specific to Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. When describing white people, white is not capitalized. For more on this, consult Guardian article here. Neither adjective should be used as singular nor plural noun.

“African American" is less specific to American-born Black people. In this case, “Black Americans” is more appropriate. This also lends itself to expressions of other nationalities (e.g., Black Britons, Black French, Black Brazilians, etc.). Furthermore, when referring to specifically Black experiences, Black + noun is fine, but when referring to people who are not white, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) + noun is more appropriate.

In US English, “Black” and “Blacks,” when used as nouns, is never appropriate except in the original quotations. Black is an adjective that should modify a noun as specified as much as possible; e.g., Black communities, Black property, so forth. While Black people might work in general cases, it would be best to be as specific as possible because though the capitalization of Black suggests similarly shared experiences, these experiences are not monolithic and still vary intersectionally.

Following AP style and common cultural use, punctum does not hyphenate identities, even if they modifying nouns. This goes for ethnicities and other identities, e.g., disability, 2SLQBTQ+. For that matter, we also do not use commas to separate them either, e.g., fat queer scholars of color, Black queer author. Identities are not hyphenated, even if the term is used as an adjective or otherwise modifies a noun; e.g., "Mexican American," "Mexican American cultures," and so on.

Use as specific terminology as possible; e.g., "unhoused" over "homeless."

If possible, discourage them from aggregating economic, political or cultural identities at all. Advise the author not to use terms such as "third-world countries" but rather advise the author to be as specific as possible when describing states. "Developing countries" or "Global South" might be attractive and sometimes accurate, but the first suggests a hierarchy between "developed" and "developed countries," and the second suggests a geographical orientation that is not always accurate. For more on this topic, reference this page.

e.g., when referring to a community of Native peoples, first of all, use "community" not "Tribes" unless it is used by a Native author and research that community's specific autonym. Furthermore, advise the author to include IPA or phonetic pronunciation in parentheses. For an excellent resource for Native style in publications, reference this page.
e.g., the Spokane people are spoqín people, and there are three clans: the sntʔtʔúlixʷ (Upper Spokan), the snxʷme̓nʔey (Middle Spokan), and the scqesciłni (Lower Spokan). For more on this, reference this page. These responsibilities should be shared between the editor and the author in equal measure.

Geography

Capitalize “Southern” in "Southern America" because it suggests a shared lived experience between specific types of planters, in this case, those who share the economic trappings of slave-ownership. “Southern” here refers to the southern states or the southern United States, which is an appropriate designation to describe the “southern United States.” When capitalized, it takes on a specific set of economic, cultural, and political experiences and development, informed by slavery, in the southern states in relation to northern experiences. The same rule would not apply to what could almost be called “Northern America” because, first, it sounds too close to North America the continent. Second, one would lowercase the “n” when "northern" modifies a noun, for example, “northern industrialization” because industrialization as an indefinite set of changes and “progress” in industry does not suggest a set of experiences that can explicitly be defined as a singular, “northern” experience. Though, of course, not one of these terms are comprised of homogenous experiences – and describing that set of experiences as homogenous would crumble at the first blow of scrutiny – and neither describe monolithic conceptions of shared experience, the capitalization of “Southern America,” or preferred "American South," can suggest the broad ways in which the southern states historically developed economically, culturally, and politically. “American” here stays because “American colonies” is common use in historical sources and because the United States, as a country, was, like many new countries, a bit fuzzy around the edges early on. Lastly, cardinal directions should not be capitalized (e.g., southeast Asia, northwestern United States). A region, however, can be capitalized when defined on certain parameters above (e.g., the American South during the Antebellum era; the United States Southwest).

“American” can be used when referring to anyone from North, Central, or South America. When referring to people in the United States, be as specific as possible (e.g., The United States Postal Service, “people in the United States”). Though, in many cases, "American" will have to do. Indeed, people of the United States need a different demonym because “Americans” may be associated with the 35 or so countries on the two continents. This might seem contradictory to the note I just made about Black Americans, but punctum does the best we can with the languages we have.

Non-English Terms

Philosophical terms (e.g., unheimlich, Dasein, epokhē) are placed first in the writing with the English translation following in parentheses if it is not explained more thoroughly in the following sentences. However, if the word is in another language and does not refer to a key philosophical term, it is not italicized and the English translation follows in parentheses. For example, "La Ley de Memoria Histórica (The Law of Historical Memory)." In an example from one text: the name of concepts that are in a language other than English are italicized (e.g., yuan qi); names of people, deities, mountains, so forth are not italicized (e.g., Yuanshi tianzun). Further, it is punctum style to list the term in the language other than English first, then place the English translation in parentheses. Likewise, titles appeared in the same way, except in the bibliography where the English translation is placed in brackets per Chicago style. This format borrows from that in the following example: when an author places, for example, acronyms in parentheses, this signals that the term in the parentheses will be the reference henceforth (e.g., the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [ICTY] will be referred to as the ICTY henceforth). Likewise, the English term is expected to be used throughout, though the original-language term should be used..

Document Control

Document ID	POL-005
Document Owner	Vincent
Version	1.0
Last Date of Change	November 10, 2025
Next Review Due Date
Version & Change Tracking