How to Write a New Textbook Chapter

The following is a guide to authors for creating new IMOS Textbook Chapters.

Chapter Title

Chapter Titles are two parts: [Material:  Descriptive Subtitle]

For example: Copper and Bronze: Trading Material Resources and Knowledge

Case Study Chapter Outline

• Chapter Number and Title
• Author Name, followed by their discipline in parentheses
• Epigraph including its source
• 150-word Abstract at the start of each chapter
  • Use an unnumbered first endnote for any special acknowledgements specific to your chapter
• Chapter Text (around 5,000 words)
  • Introductory paragraph
    • Begin with a hook related to the big idea of the chapter. What have people never stopped to consider, that you are going to explore in some depth here?
    • Foreground the fact that recovering the interdisciplinary perspectives to this topic help us to understand the scientific, technological, and cultural aspects of this material.
  • Then give a mid-range overview of the general concepts and background information about this material’s import in human civilization. Add any important broad historical overview
  • Move to a particular case study and discuss it in more detail.
    • Introduce background on case study as needed
    • What does this case study reveal to us about the relationship of materials to society?
    • Ensure to define main humanities concept (entanglement, trade, symbolic value, etc.)
  • Closing
    • Explain larger, modular focus
    • Point to the implications for today’s engineers, the engineers of tomorrow, innovation, and/or future materials?
• Keywords
  • Make a list of your keywords for a box at the close of the chapter, and define each of them in a separate document for the end-of-book glossary
• 3-5 Discussion Questions
  • These are broad questions that can be discussed by students in small groups, or as the basis for an individual reflection activity.
• 3-5 Reading Comprehension Questions
  • These are short, specific questions that enable a student to see if they have mastered the key concepts and facts in the chapter.
• Suggested Readings or Resources for More Information
• Author Biography (150 words)
• Endnotes

Tips on Writing the Chapters

Think of undergraduate lecture style rather than journal article style.

​​Go back and review the Stephen Sass Substance of Civilization chapter on your material, and make sure your chapter isn’t following his too closely.

Relate your subjct matter to student culture as a way of getting the human in. Every chapter should have a human experience in them. “When you do this as a student, you expect…but what if you were a medieval monk in a scriptorium”. Engage students throughout the essay directly, not just in sidebars and activities.

Reduce passive voice & hidden agency (e.g., “it has been noted that, has been said that”).

Use more argumentative (hourglass) than journalistic (inverted pyramid) paragraphs

If describing an image was important to your lecture, consider adding such comments in your chapter.

Style Guide for Authors:

• The final chapter will be a hyperlinked ePAF.
• Use the Chicago Manual of Style
  • Italicize foreign words within each chapter.
  • Single spaces between sentences
  • U.S. vs. American
  • CE vs. BCE, etc.
• 5000 word text (including headings, not captions)
  • Use subheadings to break up sections of the text. Use subheadings and/or graphics to break up at least every 500 words of prose. Do not number these subheadings.
  • Bold all key concepts and keywords in the reading upon their first use.
• Each chapter will have its own page numbers (beginning at 1) to allow for remixing of the textbook.
• Embed hyperlinks to stable resources
  • URLs should open in a new window
  • Consider adding one funny “Easter egg” (a link to a funny resource like this) if you wish
  • Feel free to link to other chapters in the textbook, using this style and an embedded URL: (see Gillespie, Clay, p. X).
• Include 2 good and stable videos (via hyperlinks or embedded content for very short videos)
• Include 1 image/page (see copyright information below).
  • Color is fine
  • Number images/figures consecutively as “Figure 1, 2, 3”.
  • Italicize image captions. Although the captions are brief, consider using more creative information to grab viewers vs. purely descriptive information. Of course you should identify what the photo is, but focus on what you’d like the reader to see.
• Include 2-3 Sidebars, which can include:
  • “Key Concept” boxes with a border around them to define particularly important concepts, places, people.
  • “Consider This” boxes with a border around them to share interesting information tangential to the current flow of the text
  • “Activity” boxes with a border around them to describer related activities that students can do (e.g., watching a video and answering some questions).
• Endnotes (Chicago Manual of Style, short form)
  • Place endnote following period at the close of the sentence.
  • Do not use “ibid.”
  • Use endnotes also to give copyright information for video/image sources.
• Copyright for images and videos:
  • Please use endnotes to note the original source of copyrighted material
  • If you are following a particular rights statement (like from a museum or artist), use their language. If they don’t give a formal statement to use, use this form: Courtesy of ____
  • When do you NOT need copyright?
    • You created the original image or hired someone to do it
    • You re-arranged published data into a chart of your own design
    • Many museums no longer require authors to secure permission for academic works, but you’ll need to check with each museum
    • Materials from the Library of Congress or any other federal agency (these are owned by the public)
    • The work is retrieved from Flickr Commons, Wikicommons, or another fair-use source
  • When DO you need copyright?
    • Publications still in print
    • Museums that require authors to secure permission
    • When original work is owned by a corporation/company/organization
    • When the work is copyrighted (e.g., a chart published in another book as is)
    • An art gallery represents the artist