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

Wadman, Meredith. 2015. Treatment: When less is more. Nature 528: S126-7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tanaka, M., and S. G. Lisberger. 2001. Regulation of the gain of visually guided smooth-pursuit eye movements by frontal cortex. Nature 409: 191–194.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pagel, Mark, Chris Venditti, and Andrew Meade. 2006. Large punctuational contribution of speciation to evolutionary divergence at the molecular level. Science (New York, N.Y.) 314: 119–121.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Öztürk, Başak, Lenny de Jaeger, Hauke Smidt, and Detmer Sipkema. 2013. Culture-dependent and independent approaches for identifying novel halogenases encoded by Crambe crambe (marine sponge) microbiota. Scientific reports 3: 2780.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Li, Yamin. 2015. Computer Principles and Design in Verilog HDL. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Simmons, Ken. 2012. Pro SQL Server 2012 Administration. Edited by Sylvester Carstarphen. Berkeley, CA: Apress.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhang, Feng-Lian, and Jing Zhu. 2013. An Experimental Study of Drilling Small and Deep Blind Holes with an Abrasive Water Jet. In Proceedings of 20th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management: Theory and Apply of Industrial Engineering, ed. Ershi Qi, Jiang Shen, and Runliang Dou, 33–40. 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

Fang, Janet. 2016. Why Should Mammal Dads Care? IFLScience. IFLScience. June 30.

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. 2013. Status of the Department of Education’s Inventory of Its Data Collections. GAO-13-596R. 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

Wahl, Stacy E. 2008. Registered nurse preceptorship orientation: A study of the relationship between burnout rates of new graduates and number of preceptors worked with in the clinical orientation phase. Doctoral dissertation, Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Baker, A. L. 2014. Push to Rid City of Classrooms That Are Anything but Temporary. New York Times, March 31.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wadman 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Tanaka and Lisberger 2001; Wadman 2015).

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

Two authors: (Tanaka and Lisberger 2001)
Three or more authors: (Öztürk 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