Guide for Authors

BDACE entries focus on those who have made a significant contribution to Australian Catholic education or who are representative on all or a particular aspect of Catholic education or Catholic educators.

We value entries that are well-researched, fresh and independent, and offer differing viewpoints about the subject. The BDACE will include realistic rather than glossy biographies; it is a dictionary of lives, not saints.

The most eminent Catholic educators are given entries of between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Other significant entries range in length from 750 to 1,500 words. Entries on more representative educators are usually 500 to 750 words long.

Entries in the BDACE are deliberately modelled on those in the Australian Dictionary of Biography to facilitate research across both repositories. The entries for the BDACE generally begin with an introductory statement of the subject’s significance: a “hook” that will entice readers to read further.

Entries normally follow this format:

• full name (given names followed by family name; for members of religious institutes, religious names will be placed in parentheses)
• years of life (in parenthesis)
• occupational description
• birth (place – giving town and state, or country – and date)
• parentage (including mother’s maiden name and parents’ occupations), with a brief comment if either parent had some historical importance
• education
• chronological sketch of career, including distinctions gained
• assessment of work and personal character
• family details including marriage and children (with a short account if either spouse or child deserves historical comment)
• death (place and date)
• religious denomination if not Catholic
• publications
• physical appearance, portraits and where those portraits are located
• select bibliography used for preparation of the article.

All BDACE articles will be edited to meet the limitations of space and to conform to BDACE style. Word allocations may be adjusted when the editorial team edits.

Please note: When you submit an article to the BDACE and it is accepted for publication after the established editorial processes, ACU requires that authors assign copyright of the article to the university.

Style Guide

The BDACE observes most of the punctuation and spelling rubrics outlined in the Australian Government Style Manual.

Particular usage for the BDACE is as follows:
• Title of articles: Use the birth name first (Christian name followed by family name) and, where appropriate, the religious name after this in parenthesis. For example, Edna Dent (Sr Mary St Bernard fdnsc).
• Subtitles: Use a subtitle that summarises the person’s unique contribution or character.
• Religious congregations: The first mention in an article should give the full name of the religious congregation; post-nominals: use all lower case, no full stops, such as, fsp, op, olsh).
• Names: Use the birth name and name used in religious life at the time of death in the title; where a previous/different religious name has been used, this can be referred to in the article itself.
• Titles: Bishop (always in full), Father (in full at first use, thereafter Fr), Sister (in full at first use, thereafter Sr), Brother (in full at first use, thereafter Br), Monsignor (in full at first use, thereafter Mgsr – not Msg.)
• Saint (as in name of a school), use St (no full-stop).
• Capitals: Follow normal protocols when referring to a specific institution (eg “the Congregation commenced…”); use lower case when referring to the general term (eg “religious congregations at that time…”. For Eucharist and Mass, always use capitals.
• Quotations: Use double quotation marks, “….”.
• Write numbers one to ten in full; 11 and above in numerals.
• Write dates in the form: 1 July 2020; if adding a day: Thursday, 1 July 2019.