Retitling Entries / Taylor & Francis
Retitling Entries
It is crucial that entries are titled with the reader’s ease of use in mind. This rule has not been adhered to in the past, which has resulted in poorly organized
tables of contents. Published reviews have commented on this problem, which has resulted in lost sales.
Since the order of entries in an encyclopedia is alphabetical, any alteration in the title might change the location of the entry in both the print and electronic
product. Titles of entries must be analyzed early and often.
Retitling Standards
Encyclopedias have industry standards to indicate how a title appears. Taylor & Francis has set some additional standards due to typesetting conflicts.
Punctuation
All punctuation should follow the following guidelines:
 Colon (:): separates a title from a subtitle.
 Comma (,): indicates a title wrap (Drainage, Land Reclamation through). Please avoid wrapping titles whenever possible; a subtitle is much preferred.
 Serial Comma: a serial comma is the comma directly before the word “and” or “or” in a list of three or more items (One, Two, and Three). We use a serial
comma in such lists.
 Hyphen (-): used for compound words (Alumina-Based), relations (Boride-Nitride), or clauses (Ready-to-Wear).
 Em (—) or En (–) Dash: please avoid using these two symbols. It is difficult to control how these will be typeset, which might cause problems with our
electronic product.
 Slash (/): please avoid using this symbol because it will conflict with the slash separating the title from the contributors in the Tables of Contents.
Title Length
Taylor & Francis has no set limit at present for encyclopedia titles. However, we strongly urge that titles should be as concise as possible. We will rely on your
expertise in your subject to find the most concise title that is still sufficiently descriptive of the entry.
Many of the contributors of the entries listed in the examples below may be accustomed to writing journal articles. Most journals do set strict limits on article
titles, so they rely on the editorial staff to enforce those limits. Limits for encyclopedia entry titles are traditionally much shorter than those for journals.
Examples
Here are some real examples of excessive lengths for titles:
1. “Applications of Co-Injection Technology in Extrusion of Cereal-Based Extrudates”
2. “Fiber-Optic Measurement Systems in Microwave and Radio Frequency Heating Applications”
3. “Irreversible Protein Aggregation: Principles and Rationale for Common Stabilization Strategies”
4. “Meat Quality Improvement: Application of Hydrodynamic Pressure Processing”
5. “Biphasic Calcium Phosphate (BCP) Bioceramics: Chemical, Physical, and Biological Properties”
6. “Flame Retardant Materials: Non-Halogenated Additives from Brominated Starting Materials and Inherently Low Flamability Polymers”
7. “Innovative Statistical Considerations for Applying New CDER and TSER Indices in Pharmaceutical Research”
8. “Analytical Methods and Strategy of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals Released from Plastic Materials in Human Biological Samples for Exposure
Assessment”
9. “Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists White Paper on Implementation of Clinical Pharmacy Services”
10. “Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) - Cytogenetic detection of selected recurrent chromosomal abnormalities”
11. “Cancer chemotherapy - Overview on the clinical impact of polymorphisms in metabolizing enzymes”
12. “Methods for Determination of Design and Seasonal Heating Loads in Residential Buildings”
13. “Eliminating All Journal Subscriptions Has Freed Our Customers to Seek the Information They Really Want and Need: The Result-More Access, Not
Less”
14. “Dynamics in the Smallest Size Regime: From Analysis to Control in Clusters and Small Molecules”
15. “Electrically Conducting Polymeric Nanostructures: Techniques for One-Dimensional Synthesis”
16. “Accounting and Reporting for Private Nonprofit Organizations---Balancing Economic Efficiency with Social Mission”
17. “Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Reaffirmation Act (Gramm-Rudman-Hollings), 1987”
18. “Balanced Scorecard Tools for Organizational Assessment in Public Administration and Policy”
19. “Bacterial Products Important for Plant Disease: Diffusable Metabolites as Regulatory Signals”
20. “Aerial Ultra-Low-Volume Application of Insecticide to Control Adult Mosquitoes: Minimizing Non-target Impacts”
21. “Molecular and Cellular Approaches to Lead Optimization in Pharmaceutical Development”
22. “Adsorption on Activated Carbon and Zeolite Surfaces: Recovery of Chlorinated Organic Compounds”
23. “Fullerenes as Encapsulating Hosts: Preparation, Detection, and Structures of Endohedral Fullerenes”
24. “Crop Rotation and Farming Systems: Smallholder Farming Systems and Agroforestry Systems”
25. “Psychrometry for Measuring Plant and Soil Water Status: Accuracy, Interpretation, and Sampling”
Here are examples of how we might shorten those titles:
1. “Co-Injection Technology: Extrusion of Cereal-Based Extrudates”
2. “Fiber-Optic Measurement Systems: Microwave and Radio Frequency Heating Applications”
3. “Irreversible Protein Aggregation: Common Stabilization Strategies”
4. “Meat Quality Improvement: Hydrodynamic Pressure Processing”
5. “Biphasic Calcium Phosphate (BCP) Bioceramics”
6. “Flame Retardant Materials: Non-Halogenated Additives”
7. “CDER and TSER Indices in Pharmaceutical Research, Applying New”
8. “Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals Released from Plastic Materials: Exposure Assessment”
9. “Clinical Pharmacy Services: Implementation”
10. “Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML): Cytogenetic Detection of Selected Recurrent Chromosomal Abnormalities”
11. “Cancer Chemotherapy: Polymorphisms in Metabolizing Enzymes”
12. “Heating Load Determination in Residential Buildings: Design and Seasonal”
13. “Journal Subscription Elimination: Increase in Information Access”
14. “Dynamics in the Smallest Size Regime”
15. “One-Dimensional Synthesis: Electrically Conducting Polymeric Nanostructures”
16. “Private Nonprofit Organizations: Accounting and Reporting”
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Retitling Entries / Taylor & Francis
17. “Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act of 1987”
18. “Balanced Scorecard Tools for Organizational Assessment”
19. “Bacterial Products: Diffusable Metabolites as Regulatory Signals”
20. “Aerial Ultra-Low-Volume Insecticide Application”
21. “Lead Optimization: Molecular and Cellular Approaches”
22. “Activated Carbon and Zeolite Surfaces”
23. “Fullerenes: Endohedral”
24. “Crop Rotation: Smallholder Farming Systems and Agroforestry Systems”
25. “Psychrometry: Plant and Soil Water Status Measurement”
You may note that some of these shortened titles have left out some words that may be fairly important in describing the entries. This is where your expertise
will be needed: can we move these descriptions to the abstract without harming the entry?
Example: Moving Title Information to the Entry Abstract
“Aerial Ultra-Low-Volume Application of Insecticide to Control Adult Mosquitoes: Minimizing Non-Target Impacts” has become “Aerial Ultra-Low-Volume
Insecticide Application”. We may then add the following line to the abstract:
This entry discusses minimizing the impact of pesticides on non-targets. It uses the example of controlling adult mosquito populations; the procedures
described apply to other insecticide applications.
Capitalization
Taylor & Francis uses modified up-and-down style for capitalization. Here’s a quick review of how this style is created:
1. Set all words with a capitalized first letter, lowercase for remainder
2. Set the following in all lowercase:
 Conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, etc.)
 Articles (a, an, the)
 Prepositions (in, on, of, around, through, etc.)
3. Capitalize the initial letter of the first word (the first word should be already be capitalized since no entries should begin with any of the items in #2)
4. Capitalize the initial letter of the first word following a colon (the first word of the subtitle)
5. Set acronyms in all caps
Example
1. “Acute Myeloid Leukemia (Aml): The Cytogenetic Detection Of Selected Recurrent Chromosomal Abnormalities”
2. “Acute Myeloid Leukemia (Aml): the Cytogenetic Detection of Selected Recurrent Chromosomal Abnormalities”
3. “Acute Myeloid Leukemia (Aml): the Cytogenetic Detection of Selected Recurrent Chromosomal Abnormalities” (no change)
4. “Acute Myeloid Leukemia (Aml): The Cytogenetic Detection of Selected Recurrent Chromosomal Abnormalities”
5. “Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML): The Cytogenetic Detection of Selected Recurrent Chromosomal Abnormalities”
Retitling Methods
There are several steps to reviewing entries for retitling.
Topical Review
What are the most important topics in your field? You should find at least one entry for each big topic. If not, are there entries that mention this topic in the
title? Reviewers often comment that there are no entries (or only one or two) that cover a central topic, when in fact we have several that were improperly
titled.
Entry Review
Take a look at a sample entry. If you were a reader who wanted to find this specific entry, what letter of the alphabet would you expect to find it under? Don’t
rely on the indexers to identify the central topics; this makes the reader work harder than necessary.
Identifying Differences
One of the largest areas of concern will be avoiding overuse of the topic of your specific encyclopedia. Some of these will be unavoidable, but creative use of
terms might avoid a bottleneck under one word.
Examples
If your encyclopedia were about cats, almost every entry title could include the word “Cat” or “Feline.” This makes it difficult for the reader to locate the entry.
Seeing line after line of “Cat” entries in the Table of Contents also becomes unnecessarily repetitive.
To take one real example, the Encyclopedia of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering had the following entries:
1. Biomaterial Implantation, Surgical Principals of
2. Biomaterials, Immune Response
3. Biomaterials, Tissue Derived
4. Biomaterials: Protein-Surface Interactions
5. Biomedical Ethics
6. Biomedical Principles Applied to Skeletal Function
7. Biomedical Signals: Origin and Dynamic Characteristics; Frequency-Domain Analysis
Since the topic of the encyclopedia itself is Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, any use of these words is superfluous, and alphabetizing on them will
only frustrate the user. Here’s how we might retitle these entries:
1. Implantation: Surgical Principals
2. Immune Response
3. Tissue-Derived Biomaterials
4. Protein-Surface Interactions
5. Ethics
6. Skeletal Function
7. Biomedical Signals (since “Biomedical Signals” is an established phrase, this one cannot be avoided; the subtitle was dropped and described in the abstract
since this is the only entry dealing with this topic)
Related Entry Review
Is there one general entry on a topic, with several other entries that discuss a subset of that topic? You can draw more readers into reading the other entries by
using subtitles so that they fall directly after the general entry.
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Retitling Entries / Taylor & Francis
Example
The Encyclopedia of Biopharmaceutical Statistics had entries on the following:
 Adaptive Randomization (falls in Volume 1)
 Methods of Randomization (falls in Volume 2)
 Models of Randomization (falls in Volume 2)
 Randomization (falls in Volume 3)
However, we retitled the entries as follows (all following one after another in Volume 3):
 Randomization
 Randomization: Adaptive
 Randomization: Methods
 Randomization: Models
This will draw more readers into reading the article on Adaptive Randomization, since they’d be less inclined to flip back to the “A” entries; the colon in each
of the titles shows that it is a subset of a larger theme.
Conformity
It is important to maintain conformity of common terms in titles. We will rely on your professional judgment as to which is the preferred usage of a term. You
will set the standard. You may wish to list these standardizations in your “Other Guides” section of the Front Matter.
Acronyms and abbreviations are the most common offenders of this problem. If the acronym or abbreviation of a common term is used in the industry more
often than spelling it out, please make sure that this is standardized throughout the Table of Contents.
There are also some terms that are spelled slightly differently within the research community than they are by the general public. Using this alternate spelling
will increase the quality of the product by acclimating the reader to such idiosyncrasies.
Examples
Here are some real-life examples of common terms:
 Information Technology versus IT
 fluorescence in situ hybridization versus FISH
 Gas Chromatography versus GC
 Sweet Potato versus Sweetpotato
 Website versus Web Site
Journal Titling
Some entries are just titled poorly. Many authors are used to writing journal articles, where they have the freedom to title it any way they like.
Examples
Here are some examples of poor use of titles:
 “New Flame Retardant Materials”: retitle as “Flame Retardant Materials, New”
 “Analysis of Gait”: retitle as “Gait Analysis”
 “Primary Choice of Print Patterns”: retitle as “Print Patterns: Primary Choice”
 “Analysis of the Impact of the House Un-American Activities Committee”: retitle as “House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)”
 “Managing Intellectual Property”: retitle as “Intellectual Property Management”
Proper Names
Proper names of organizations or practices create exceptions to all of these rules. A key identifier of these proper names would be to follow the full name with
an acronym, if it is commonly used.
Examples
The following are some examples of proper names that will break the rules above:
 “Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP)”
 “Good Laboratory Practice (GLP)”
 “House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)”
 “Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV)” (in the Encyclopedia of Cats)
When to Retitle
There are many points at which we might alter titles to organize the Table of Contents better. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, so we prefer for this to
occur throughout the process.
Entry Suggestion
Please keep in mind this rule when proposing new entries. You are the individual in the best position to judge what the central theme of the proposed entry
would be. If we do receive a suggestion that may not fit our needs, we may give you suggestions of how it might be phrased better.
Entry Submission
Contributors will often change the suggested title to one more descriptive of their actual manuscript. When their initial manuscript comes in, we will send it
through the review process as it is. We will review the new title and suggest a more suitable one, if needed, when we send the approval with reviewer
comments to the contributor. We also encourage reviewers to keep this in mind.
Pre-Production
We will submit our list of entries on hand to you approximately one year before a print product is to be published. In this list, we may suggest retitling some
entries. The strength of retitling at this point is that you will have a big picture of the overall project. We can group like entries together using subtitles or
wrapping, or divide groups of entries if doing so has created too large of a group.
Production
We will send you a working Table of Contents after we have set the deadline for approvals and determined the final list of entries to be included. We strongly
urge you to review this list. This is our final chance to make sure all changes have been made properly.
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