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

Eldridge, J. J. (2014). Astrophysics: Windy stars that go with a bang. Nature, 509(7501), 431–432.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tsubouchi, T., & Roeder, G. S. (2005). A synaptonemal complex protein promotes homology-independent centromere coupling. Science (New York, N.Y.), 308(5723), 870–873.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shalm, L. K., Adamson, R. B. A., & Steinberg, A. M. (2009). Squeezing and over-squeezing of triphotons. Nature, 457(7225), 67–70.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Skedung, L., Arvidsson, M., Chung, J. Y., Stafford, C. M., Berglund, B., & Rutland, M. W. (2013). Feeling small: exploring the tactile perception limits. Scientific Reports, 3, 2617.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rumelhard, C., Algani, C., & Billabert, A.-L. (2013). Microwave Photonic Links. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Kanosue, K., Kogiso, K., Oshimi, D., & Harada, M. (Eds.). (2015). Sports Management and Sports Humanities. Springer Japan.

A chapter in an edited book

Bain, J. (2010). Relativity and Quantum Field Theory. In V. Petkov (Ed.), Space, Time, and Spacetime: Physical and Philosophical Implications of Minkowski’s Unification of Space and Time (pp. 129–146). 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

Hamilton, K. (2017, February 23). Explainer: Why Do We Get Butterflies In Our Stomachs? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/explainer-why-do-we-get-butterflies-in-our-stomachs/

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. (2000). Slotting Fees: Effort to Study the Use of These Payments in the Grocery Industry (T-RCED-00-295). 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

Holloway, C. M. (2015). Evaluating five leadership traits in the rising stars succession planning program [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Phoenix.

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

Kenigsberg, B. (2017, August 17). Whitney: Can I Be Me. New York Times, C9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Eldridge, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Eldridge, 2014; Tsubouchi & Roeder, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Tsubouchi & Roeder, 2005)
Three authors: (Shalm et al., 2009)
6 or more authors: (Skedung et al., 2013)

About the journal

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