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NANPS Guidelines for Authors

NANPS is a volunteer organization. We are keen to distribute information about native plants in North America. We welcome articles on this subject and will consider them for publication.

In particular we welcome updates from regional native plant societies, information about events anywhere in North America, and articles about native plant communities which are under threat or where restoration efforts are taking place. We do not pay for submissions.

If you are interested, please contact editor@nanps.org for further details.

NANPS Style Guidelines

This is a guide to promote and encourage consistency in style and format wherever practicable.

Editing

Documents written for NANPS should be professional in content and appearance. Articles will be edited, not just for grammar and spelling but also for cohesiveness and flow. Our editors will strive to present an article to our readers in its best possible form.

Names of species

Both common and Latin names should be used when a species is first named. The Latin name should be in italics, with the first name (the genus) capitalised, e.g. prairie smoke (Geum triflorum). In the body of the text, the common name should be in lower case unless it involves a proper name e.g. red maple (Acer rubrum), Norway maple (A. platanoides), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta). Reference – Wikipedia: “As a general rule, names are not capitalized, unless they are part of an official list of names, in which case they have become proper nouns and are capitalized. Names referring to more than one species (e.g., horse or cat) are always in lowercase. This is most common for birds and fishes. Botanists generally do not capitalize the common names of plants, though individual words in plant names may be capitalized for another reason: (Italian stone pine).”

English v US Spelling

The English spelling is our format of choice.

Units of measurement

Either metric or imperial is acceptable, but a conversion must be given e.g.”grows to 6 inches
(15cms)” or “up to three metres (10 feet) tall”.

Zones

When referring to climatic growing zones, the word should be capitalized e.g.”grows in Zone 3”.
The Canadian and US Zones are different, so the country needs to be specified if this is not clear
from the context.

Endangered Status

Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada designated status should be capitalized
e.g. the four-leaved milkweed (Asclepias quadrifolia) is Threatened and the Karner blue butterfly
(Lycaeides melissa samuelis) is Extirpated.

Colour and Fonts

The NANPS logo green can be defined as H 156 S 99 B 53, or as R 1 G 35 B 82. On the web it is
#018752.

The fonts used for our logo and mission statement, and in some of our brochures, are called
AGaramond (a font with serifs) and Frutiger ( a sans-serif font). Consider using these fonts
where appropriate.