How to format your references using the Natural Language Semantics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Natural Language Semantics. 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

Holt, Rush. 2012. US election: Politicians should think like scientists. Nature 489: 493–494.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dawson, Ted M., and Valina L. Dawson. 2003. Molecular pathways of neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease. Science (New York, N.Y.) 302: 819–822.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zenkin, Nikolay, Yulia Yuzenkova, and Konstantin Severinov. 2006. Transcript-assisted transcriptional proofreading. Science (New York, N.Y.) 313: 518–520.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Sun, Liguang, Xin Zhou, Wen Huang, Xiaodong Liu, Hong Yan, Zhouqing Xie, Zijun Wu, Sanping Zhao, Da Shao, and Wenqing Yang. 2013. Preliminary evidence for a 1000-year-old tsunami in the South China Sea. Scientific reports 3: 1655.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Peterson, Richard L., and Frank F. Murtha. 2010. MarketPsych. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Clément, Gilles, and Angie Bukley, ed. 2007. Artificial Gravity. Vol. 20. The Space Technology Library. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Horn, L-C. 2006. Pathogenesis of Histological Types of Endometrial Cancer. In Biology und Epidemiology of Hormone Replacement Therapy: Discussions on Post-Menopausal Health, ed. M. A. Lewis, M. Dietel, P. C. Scriba, and W. K. Raff, 55–62. Ernst Schering Research Foundation Workshop Supplement 13. Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Natural Language Semantics.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2015. Battery Costs Drop Even Faster As Electric Car Sales Continue To Rise. IFLScience. IFLScience. April 14.

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. 1975. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Program Could Be Improved. FPCD-75-107. 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

Thornsberry, Jana Lea. 2010. Freshman transition and its effectiveness on student success as measured by improved attendance, improved grades, decreased discipline referrals, and decreased dropout rate. Doctoral dissertation, St. Charles, MO: Lindenwood 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

Kelly, Jacqueline. 2015. A Girl Wants to Know. New York Times, October 11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Holt 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Dawson and Dawson 2003; Holt 2012).

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

Two authors: (Dawson and Dawson 2003)
Three or more authors: (Sun et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Natural Language Semantics
Abbreviation	Nat. Lang. Semant.
ISSN (print)	0925-854X
ISSN (online)	1572-865X
Scope	Philosophy Linguistics and Language