How to format your references using the Green Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Green Letters. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Church, George. 2015. “Perspective: Encourage the Innovators.” Nature 528 (7580): S7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Anderson, Richard G. W., and Ken Jacobson. 2002. “A Role for Lipid Shells in Targeting Proteins to Caveolae, Rafts, and Other Lipid Domains.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 296 (5574): 1821–1825.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nam, Jwa-Min, C. Shad Thaxton, and Chad A. Mirkin. 2003. “Nanoparticle-Based Bio-Bar Codes for the Ultrasensitive Detection of Proteins.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 301 (5641): 1884–1886.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Nair, R. R., P. Blake, A. N. Grigorenko, K. S. Novoselov, T. J. Booth, T. Stauber, N. M. R. Peres, and A. K. Geim. 2008. “Fine Structure Constant Defines Visual Transparency of Graphene.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 320 (5881): 1308.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rachev, Svetlozar T., Young Shin Kim, Michele Leonardo Bianchi, and Frank J. Fabozzi. 2011. Financial Models with Lévy Processes and Volatility Clustering. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lee, Sukhan, Il Hong Suh, and Mun Sang Kim, eds. 2008. Recent Progress in Robotics: Viable Robotic Service to Human: An Edition of the Selected Papers from the 13th International Conference on Advanced Robotics. Vol. 370. Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Walsh, Mary E., Maria D. Theodorakakis, and Sarah Backe. 2016. “Redesigning a Core Function of Schools: A Systemic, Evidence-Based Approach to Student Support.” In Developing Community Schools, Community Learning Centers, Extended-Service Schools and Multi-Service Schools: International Exemplars for Practice, Policy and Research, edited by Hal A. Lawson and Dolf van Veen, 127–147. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Green Letters.

Blog post

Hamilton, Kristy. 2014. “What The Color of Your Urine Says About Your Health.” IFLScience. IFLScience.

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. 1983. Cost Comparison of House of Representatives Page System Versus Regular Messenger Employees. GGD-83-108. Washington, DC: 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

Valdez, Karla. 2015. “Taking a Closer Look at the Mental Health Services Act of 2004: A Policy Analysis.” Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Poniewozik, James. 2016. “A Grievous Homecoming (It’s O.K. to Laugh).” New York Times, September 8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Church 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Church 2015; Anderson and Jacobson 2002).

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

Two authors: (Anderson and Jacobson 2002)
Three authors: (Nam, Thaxton, and Mirkin 2003)
4 or more authors: (Nair et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Green Letters
ISSN (print)	1468-8417
ISSN (online)	2168-1414
Scope	Literature and Literary Theory