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/ehrstyle

Applies the Economic History Review house style (Feb 2026 Notes for Contributors) to a LaTeX manuscript, bibliography, title page, and cover letter, with a bespoke biblatex style (echr.bbx/echr.cbx) for EHR-specific footnote and bibliography conventions.

Pack: EconTools
Category: submission
Field: economics
License: MIT
Updated: 2026-09
Stages: dissemination

/ehrstyle — Economic History Review submission style

Use this skill when preparing a LaTeX manuscript for submission to the Economic History Review. The skill encodes EHR's Notes for Contributors (Feb 2026 v1), provides a bespoke biblatex style, and templates for the separate title page and cover letter required by Research Exchange.

When to trigger

  • User mentions Economic History Review, EHR, or EcHR and LaTeX.
  • User says /ehrstyle, /ehrstyle paper, /ehrstyle check, etc.
  • User asks to "format for EHR", "apply EHR style", "convert to EHR".
  • User is preparing or editing a file in a folder named EHR_submission/ or similar.

Sub-commands

The skill dispatches on the first argument:

Command What it does
/ehrstyle paper [file] Install preamble + echr.bbx/echr.cbx in the paper folder; switch \usepackage{biblatex} to EHR style; walk through anonymisation, double-spacing, section-title CAPS, subsection flattening.
/ehrstyle bib [file] Audit references.bib: add options = {skipbib=true} to @techreport/@unpublished/@misc; add shorttitle fields where title > 5 words; check EHR journal entries for year/volume compatibility with the 2nd-ser./roman rule (§3.1.8).
/ehrstyle titlepage Copy assets/title-page-template.tex into the current folder; fill in author, affiliation, acknowledgements, corresponding author.
/ehrstyle coverletter Copy assets/cover-letter-template.tex into the current folder; fill in title, authors, EHS membership.
/ehrstyle check [file] Run style audit against references/style-rules.md (spelling, Oxford commas, capitalisation, numbers, dates); report deviations with line numbers; do NOT auto-edit.

No arg: run paper then bib in sequence.

Installation on first use

Copy the LaTeX assets into the paper's folder:

Bash
SKILL_DIR="C:/Users/johanf/.claude/skills/ehrstyle"
cp "$SKILL_DIR/assets/echr.bbx" ./
cp "$SKILL_DIR/assets/echr.cbx" ./

Both files must sit next to the main .tex so biber can find them.

1. Paper setup (/ehrstyle paper)

1.1 Preamble

Replace any existing \usepackage{...}{biblatex} line with the block in assets/preamble-snippet.tex. Key elements:

TeX
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[margin=1.25in]{geometry}
\usepackage{setspace}
\doublespacing
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{csquotes}       % required by biblatex
\usepackage[backend=biber,
            bibstyle=echr,
            citestyle=echr,
            maxcitenames=3,
            mincitenames=1,
            isbn=false, doi=false, url=false, eprint=false]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references.bib}

1.2 Anonymisation (rule 1.2)

See references/submission-checklist.md, §2. Checklist:

  • Remove \thanks{...} from title and author lines.
  • Set \author{} to empty.
  • Strip all "we thank", "we are grateful", acknowledgement paragraphs.
  • Rewrite any "one of us", "our earlier work", "in [authored] work" phrasing.
  • Remove or anonymise website URLs that would identify authors.
  • Self-citations may remain as normal references (referees don't know the author), but the TEXT must not flag them as self-citations.

1.3 Layout (rule 1.1)

  • \doublespacing (setspace package).
  • margin=1.25in.

1.4 Section titles (rule 1.4)

All section titles in CAPITAL LETTERS:

TeX
\section{INTRODUCTION}
\section{NARRATIVE ECONOMICS}

Flatten \subsection*{} blocks — EHR discourages subdivisions. Convert each to a paragraph transition in the prose.

1.5 Citation commands

Replace natbib-style commands:

Old New
\citet{key} \cite{key}
\citep{key} \cite{key}
\citet[p.~X]{key} \cite[p.~X]{key}
style{...} + {...} \printbibliography[title={FOOTNOTE REFERENCES (BIBLIOGRAPHY)}]

1.6 Compile

Bash
pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode main.tex
biber main
pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode main.tex
pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode main.tex

2. Bibliography (/ehrstyle bib)

See references/bibliography-rules.md for the full EHR rules; audit references.bib against it.

2.1 Exclude working papers (rule 3.1.1)

For every @techreport, @unpublished, @misc, @online, or similar non-published source, add:

BibTeX
@techreport{Key2024,
  author    = {...},
  title     = {...},
  institution = {...},
  year      = {2024},
  options   = {skipbib=true}
}

This keeps the entry citable in footnotes but excludes it from the printed bibliography.

2.2 Sentence-case titles (rule 3.1.2)

EHR bibliography uses sentence case for book and article titles. In references.bib, write:

BibTeX
title = {Hall of mirrors: the {Great Depression}, the {Great Recession},
         and the uses and misuses of history}

Not "Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression..." (title case).

Use brace-wrapped {Great Depression} and {Great Recession} to preserve capitals on proper names that biber would otherwise lower-case.

2.3 Short titles (rule 3.2)

Every entry whose title is >5 words should have a shorttitle field. The echr.cbx footnote style uses shorttitle (via biblatex's labeltitle) if present:

BibTeX
@book{Eichengreen2015,
  author     = {Barry Eichengreen},
  title      = {Hall of mirrors: the {Great Depression}, ...},
  shorttitle = {Hall of mirrors},
  year       = {2015},
  ...
}

2.4 Economic History Review special casing (rule 3.1.8)

No author action needed. echr.bbx automatically:

  • Prepends , 2nd ser. to entries with journaltitle = {Economic History Review} and year < 1992.
  • Outputs volumes as roman numerals for journaltitle = {Economic History Review} and year < 2007.

For this to work, the journaltitle field must match exactly Economic History Review (not The Economic History Review or Econ. Hist. Rev.).

2.5 Place of publication (rule 3.1.9)

  • Set location or address field for books.
  • EHR omits London as place; the style file auto-suppresses it.
  • Brace-wrap "London" is not needed — a biber source map in echr.bbx deletes it at parse time.

2.6 Editors, theses, official papers

See references/bibliography-rules.md, §3.1.9–§3.1.14 for worked examples. echr.bbx handles all @book-with-editor, @incollection, @thesis cases automatically.

3. Title page (/ehrstyle titlepage)

Copy assets/title-page-template.tex into the paper folder; fill in: - Title - Author name(s) and institutional affiliations - Acknowledgements (from the original \thanks{}) - Corresponding author contact details (full postal address + email)

4. Cover letter (/ehrstyle coverletter)

Copy assets/cover-letter-template.tex; fill in: - Title - Short summary paragraph - Fit with the Review (e.g., Surveys and Speculations section) - Word count note (flag if >10,000) - EHS membership number

5. Style check (/ehrstyle check)

Audit the main .tex against references/style-rules.md:

  • -ize/-ise: scan for -ise, -ised, -ising, -isation endings; list occurrences that should be converted to -ize (excluding the exceptions: analyse, comprise, expertise, likewise, otherwise, practise, promise, revise, surprise, etc.)
  • Oxford comma: flag X, Y and Z patterns (three-or-more item lists without serial comma).
  • Capitalisation: flag Global Financial Crisis, Middle Ages, Old Poor Law, New Poor Law — EHR wants lower case.
  • Numbers: flag single-digit numerals in text (e.g. 3 women should be three women).
  • Years: flag YYYY–YYYY full-year ranges that should be abbreviated (e.g. 1852–1872 should be 1852–72).
  • Dates: flag January 30, 1938 (US style) — EHR uses 30 January 1938.
  • Abbreviations: flag op. cit. and loc. cit. (forbidden in footnotes).
  • Anonymity: flag "we thank", "we are grateful", "one of us", "our earlier work" in the main .tex; these belong in the separate title page, not the anonymised text.

Report with line numbers. Do NOT auto-edit — let the author approve each change.

Reference files

  • references/style-rules.md — verbatim §2 of EHR Notes.
  • references/bibliography-rules.md — verbatim §3 of EHR Notes.
  • references/submission-checklist.md — §A and §1.

Asset files

  • assets/echr.bbx — bespoke biblatex bibliography style.
  • assets/echr.cbx — bespoke biblatex citation style.
  • assets/preamble-snippet.tex — drop-in preamble block.
  • assets/title-page-template.tex — anonymous-submission title page.
  • assets/cover-letter-template.tex — cover letter for Research Exchange.

Design rationale

  • biblatex, not BibTeX. BibTeX + natbib cannot produce short-title footnote citations with ibid. handling; biblatex can.
  • Base authortitle-ibid, override drivers. Writing drivers from scratch risks missing edge cases (multi-volume works, series, editors). Basing on the standard style and overriding only what EHR diverges on minimises bugs.
  • Source map for London suppression. biblatex's \iflistequalstr and \DeclareListFormat options are fragile; a biber source map that deletes location = {London} at parse time is cleaner.
  • Roman volumes via \mkehrroman. Conditional on year < 2007 AND journaltitle = "Economic History Review".
  • Working papers excluded via options = {skipbib=true}. The rule 3.1.1 says they "should not be listed"; biblatex's native option is the right mechanism.

Notes on initial-submission vs pre-acceptance

Per the EHR Notes (Section B intro):

Initial submissions of papers for publication must at least comply with rules 1.1 to 1.3 in Section B on length, layout and anonymity. Other elements of the style guide can be applied later where a paper is close to acceptance for publication.

This skill produces full-conformance output from the initial submission because Johan prefers a clean draft. The style is overridable: if a rule here conflicts with editor feedback on a revision, the echr.bbx/cbx files can be edited in place and the skill updated to match.