How to format your references using the Assessing Writing citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Assessing Writing. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Motani, R. (2010). Paleontology. Warm-blooded “sea dragons”? Science (New York, N.Y.), 328(5984), 1361–1362.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lessard, J., & Sauvageau, G. (2003). Bmi-1 determines the proliferative capacity of normal and leukaemic stem cells. Nature, 423(6937), 255–260.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mashchenko, S., Wadsley, J., & Couchman, H. M. P. (2008). Stellar feedback in dwarf galaxy formation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5860), 174–177.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Murakami, Y., Yoo, J. H., Shindo, D., Atou, T., & Kikuchi, M. (2003). Magnetization distribution in the mixed-phase state of hole-doped manganites. Nature, 423(6943), 965–968.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Stamp, M. (2005). Information Security. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Jorgenson, J. (2008). The Heat Kernel and Theta Inversion on SL2(C) (S. Lang, Ed.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Kapur, P. K., Pham, H., Gupta, A., & Jha, P. C. (2011). Testing-Coverage and Testing-Domain Models. In H. Pham, A. Gupta, & P. C. Jha (Eds.), Software Reliability Assessment with OR Applications (pp. 131–170). Springer.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Assessing Writing.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2016, June 16). We Have Found The Kraken! (According To The Internet). IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/we-have-found-the-kraken-according-to-the-internet-/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. (2012). Department of Homeland Security: Oversight and Coordination of Research and Development Should Be Strengthened (GAO-12-837). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Sulaiman, Y. (2008). The Banteng and the Eagle: Indonesian Foreign Policy and the United States During the Era of Sukarno 1945-1967 [Doctoral dissertation]. Ohio State University.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Feeney, K. (2006, July 16). QUICK BITE/Elizabeth; Warming Up to Sausage and Dogs. New York Times, 14NJ13.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Motani, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Lessard & Sauvageau, 2003; Motani, 2010).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Lessard & Sauvageau, 2003)
Three authors: (Mashchenko et al., 2008)
6 or more authors: (Murakami et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Assessing Writing
ISSN (print)	1075-2935
Scope	Language and Linguistics Education Linguistics and Language