Writing for the NYG&B Record

The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record has published scholarly articles concerning New York families and their ancestors and descendants since 1870.

You are advised to study recent issues of the NYG&B Record to become familiar with the kind of manuscripts generally accepted for publication. Modeling the style of your submission after a similar, recent article increases its chances for acceptance and speeds up the editorial process.

In general, your submission should be a unique manuscript that has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. If any of the material in your article has been or will be published, please consult with the editor before submitting your work.

Articles should be submitted electronically to editor@nygbs.org.

 

Content

The primary focus of your article should be on residents of New York State and its colonial predecessors. It’s fine if your article also involves other areas as long as a significant part of the material relates to New York State. Articles may address families belonging to any ethnic or religious group and may cover any time period, but should not mention living people unless those people have granted permission.

Articles in the Record usually fall into one of the following genres:

  • solutions to difficult problems, such as identifying a spouse, parent, or place of origin
  • compiled genealogies, usually tracing the descendants of a single person or couple
  • combinations of the above two genres (a problem-solving section followed by a compiled genealogy section)
  • biographical sketches
  • corrections or additions to an earlier article in the Record (corrections no longer than a page or two are included in an “Additions and Corrections” column in the October issue)
  • transcriptions or abstracts of genealogically or historically significant records

 

The Peer Review Process

Your manuscript will be evaluated by the editor initially. Promising articles are usually forwarded to additional reviewers. The Record’s editorial board also reads over all articles before publication.

The identities of the author and reviewers are hidden from one another, ensuring anonymity and objectivity. Reviewers will make comments and suggestions on your work. Some submissions are immediately accepted for publication, but others may require modification and another round of review.

Authors of accepted articles are asked to sign a standard letter of agreement before the editorial process begins. Click here to see an example of a typical letter.

 

The Editorial Process

Manuscripts may undergo substantial revision and reorganization during editing; authors are included at each step.

During editing, all source citations are verified for accuracy. You can help with this process by providing scanned copies of any documents which are not available online, and links to documents which are online.

Depending on a number of factors, there can be a substantial delay before an accepted article appears in print.

Generally speaking, shorter articles are processed more quickly than longer ones. Articles longer than about twenty pages may have to be broken up into installments. The upper limit for article length is about eighty pages.

 

Style Guidelines

General

  • Remove yourself as much as possible from the text. Record articles do not use the first person.
  • Express uncertainty by using appropriate qualifiers. The scale “possibly,” “probably,” “very probably,” and “almost certainly,” proposed in Robert Charles Anderson’s Elements of Genealogical Analysis, works well. “Likely” is equivalent to “probably.” “Evidently” and “presumably” are also useful for facts which are implied or assumed.
  • When quoting or paraphrasing a source, do not use relationship words or other qualifiers in a way that implies they come from the document. Add them in parentheses (when paraphrasing) or square brackets (when quoting)—for example, “John appears on the tax list with (his eldest son) William.”
  • Abbreviations are acceptable in footnotes, but not in the text; for example, “New York” should be spelled out in the main text, but may be abbreviated as “N.Y.” in footnotes.
  • Footnote numbers follow punctuation. Generation numbers precede punctuation.
  • At the head of each article, authors’ names appear without titles or degrees. At the end of each article is a short biography which can include advanced degrees and accreditation credentials, contact details (usually an email address, potentially a website or postal address), and connection to the subject family, if any (for example, “The author’s husband is a descendant of John3 through son Thomas4”). This section is also the appropriate place to acknowledge work commissioned by another person and to thank others for their assistance—but such thanks should be kept very brief.
  • The Record follows the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style on general stylistic questions.

Citation

  • Every statement of fact that is not common knowledge must include a source citation. Citations are placed in footnotes and generally follow the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, but the Record has developed many conventions of its own that make citation more efficient and less burdensome.
  • Use the most reliable sources. Original sources are always preferred. Avoid citing indexes, abstracts, and transcriptions; go back to the original records or their images whenever possible.
  • Separate multiple citations in the same footnote by using separate sentences.
  • When citing records found online, include URLs in parentheses. The editor will convert these into hyperlinks. For sources at FamilySearch, it is also helpful if you include the IGN and image number. For printed books, HathiTrust offers the most reliable, durable URLs. Do not include access dates for online sources.
  • Use a full citation for the first reference to a source. For subsequent citations to the same source, use short citations, generally made up of the first phrase or two of the full citation, plus a new page number if there is one. The editor will add a clickable cross-reference to the note number of the full citation. To simplify editing, please do not use ibid, supra, op. cit., or infra.
  • Use common abbreviations in footnotes. For states and provinces, use old-style abbreviations (not postal abbreviations). Abbreviate the names of all months except May, June, and July. Abbreviate County as Co., page as p., number as no., and volume as vol. Common abbreviations used in citing census records are dw. (dwelling), fam. (family), ED (Enumeration District), Elect. Dist. (Election District), and fol. (folio, for the 1850 census).

Genealogies and Genealogical Summaries

The Record uses Register format for presenting genealogies. A good reference on Register format is Joan Ferris Curran, Madilyn Coen Crane, and John H. Wray, Numbering Your Genealogy: Basic Systems, Complex Families, and International Kin, revised edition, edited Elizabeth Shown Mills (Arlington, Virginia: National Genealogical Society, 2008).

Articles that are primarily genealogical compilations should include a few introductory paragraphs about the family or progenitor, followed by the genealogy. For articles focusing on solutions to difficult problems, genealogical summaries are suggested but not required.

As mentioned above, in general, The Record uses Register format, but Record style does deviate from Register format in some ways.

  • Include all children, male and female, with equal treatment, even children who died young.
  • Discuss vital events in the order of birth, death, marriage.
  • Indicate place before date, and in the case of a marriage, list place and date before the spouse’s name.
  • Express unknown names using a two-em dash. If the font you’re using doesn’t have the two-em dash, use an em dash.
  • For each child in a children’s list, include given name, generation code, and surname; use semicolons to separate life events for the child and use commas to separate life events for the spouse.
  • In main entries, list the individual’s number, name (including generation number), and (in parentheses) the names and generation numbers (not italicized) of the ancestors in the line under discussion (for example: “18. John4 Smith (Robert3, William2, Richard1, JohnA).”)
  • Report multiple marriages as “married first” and “married second,” not “married (1).”
  • Present exact names without Anglicizing, and present exact places of residence.

Dates

  • List dates in the format day-month-year unless quoting a record.
  • Express double dates using the format 2 February 1747/8.
  • Calculated dates should be flagged as such—for example, list the date followed by “(calculated).”
  • When estimating a date based on a stated age in years, such as on a census, give both possible years and use “about.” If a person was age 49 in the 1850 census, say that they were born about 1800-1801. When estimating dates more approximately, based on life events, use “say.” Include the basis for the estimate in parentheses. For example, “John Smith was born say 1750 (based on his land purchase in 1775).”
  • When estimating a marriage based on a child’s birth, it is best not to assume any interval between the marriage and the birth, as couples sometimes married once pregnant. Express such an estimated date as, for example, “married by 1 October 1834 (when their eldest known child was born).”
  • When appropriate, give a range of dates for events. For example, “She died between 6 July 1650 (when she gave birth to a child) and 9 August 1651 (when her husband remarried).”

Places

  • During the Dutch period, New Amsterdam was a town in New Netherland (singular), which was a colony of the Netherlands (plural). [Dutch historians now call this political jurisdiction the Dutch Republic or the United Provinces, avoiding confusion with modern-day “The Netherlands,” which is not synonymous with “the Netherlands.”] During the English period, use New York City or New York.
  • In New York State, take care to distinguish between towns and villages with the same name.
  • When discussing a geographic area, use “in” (for example, “in the Town of Canisteo,” “in the Mohawk Valley,” and “in New York State”). When discussing a place such as a street or a church, either “at” and “in” may be used, but not always interchangeably.

 

Contact the editor for more information: editor@nygbs.org

Updated 2025