In this book, names of places (Istanbul, Belgrade, Bucharest) are given in their English spellings. English spellings are also used for foreign terms that appear in either the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary or the Oxford English Dictionary (pasha, sultan, ulema), while less familiar words are italicized. Names of people are given in the modern Turkish spelling without diacritics (Mehmed, Abdülhamid, Osman) except in the case of unusual names. Generally, first names and postnominal numbers are used when discussing members of the same dynasty (Mahmud II, Abdülaziz, Napoleon III).
Transcriptions from Ottoman Turkish use the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) system with the additions of ḫ for