As the intellectual and leadership center of the Air Force, the Air University (AU) produces cutting-edge scholarship on airpower to advance our understanding of defense and national security issues. The Air University Style and Author Guide helps ensure that the form and style of AU scholarship are as impressive as the substance.
Like its predecessor, this second edition of AU-1, Air University Style and Author Guide, will prove to be indispensable to AU faculty, staff, students, and prospective authors. Faithful use of this guide will help the airpower community produce scholarly manuscripts that conform to current academic norms of style,...
This section contains explanations of the conventional use of selected common words (e.g., a or an, bimonthly, entitle or title, while) and of terms having distinctive meanings in publishing (e.g., caption, foreword, glossary, illustrations/figures, running heads, tables). It also provides guidance on the use of terms that might prove distracting or offensive to readers (e.g., Negro, profanity, sexist language) and identifies acceptable variants of certain words (e.g., US Air Force / Air Force / USAF, weapon system / weapons system, World War I / World War 1 / First World War / Great War).
a/an. Use a before consonant sounds...
The broader term “abbreviations” includes acronyms (AMRAAM), initialisms (RPA), and contractions (Dr.). Use abbreviations sparingly: don’t abbreviate words and phrases merely for the sake of doing so when brevity is not of the essence, and don’t saturate writing with abbreviations to the detriment of reader comprehension.
Avoid using abbreviations in headings unless the spelled-out term would make the heading unwieldy. You may, however, begin or end a sentence with an abbreviation.
Spell out the name of an agency, organization, and so forth, the first time you use it, and follow it with the abbreviation in parentheses; you may use the...
active voice. When the grammatical subject performs the action represented by the verb, the verb is in active voice.
The congregation sang “Abide with Me.”
Mr. Conrad gave his son a car.
The police caught the thieves.
Most of your writing should be in active voice since it is direct, forceful, and emphatic. See also passive voice (3.1.20).
antecedents. A pronoun should agree with its antecedent (the word to which it refers) in number (i.e., singular with singular, plural with plural):
Incorrect: A student should treat their teacher with respect.
Correct: A student should treat his or her teacher with...
Use as few capital letters as possible, and avoid capitalizing anytime you are in doubt. The following conventions will help you decide whether capital letters are appropriate.
Proper nouns—those that name a particular person, place, or thing—are capitalized. One test of a proper noun is that it does not take a limiting modifier; thus,“ this [or] any [or] some 857th Combat Support Group,” for example, is not appropriate (since there’s only one such group). However, a common noun, which isn’t capitalized, can take a limiting modifier, as in “this combat support group” (since it’s generic). Because the following...
bibliography. A bibliography is a list of books, articles, and other works used in preparing a manuscript. It immediately precedes the index and may be arranged alphabetically or divided into the kinds of materials used (books, theses and papers, government publications, periodicals, etc.) (especially in a lengthy bibliography). Whatever the arrangement, do not list any source more than once. It may include only selected titles that may or may not be annotated.
You may annotate the bibliography to direct the reader to other works or to briefly explain the contents, relevance, or value of specific sections of the book.
Invert...
Air University (AU) Press, a division of the Air Force Research Institute (AFRI) at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, publishes scholarly books, journals, faculty research, student papers selected by AU schools, and textbooks, as well as the Air University Catalog and other administrative documents for AU. Our publications are used by airpower scholars and students throughout the world.
AU Press seeks manuscripts from both military and civilian writers on such topics as
air, space, and cyber power doctrine and strategy;
the nature and future of air, space, and cyber power’s role in warfare and peace;
the history of air, space, and cyber...
All manuscripts must comply with this style guide, which is based on the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. If you are interested in publishing a manuscript through AU Press, please read this section carefully. We cannot accept manuscripts that are not submitted according to the procedures described here.
To have a manuscript considered by the AU Publication Review Board, please send an electronic copy of the manuscript, preferably on a CD, along with a cover letter that identifies your probable audience, describes your project’s value to the Air Force, and tells us about your background and expertise, to the...
