How to format your references using the Social Semiotics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Social Semiotics. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
McGraw, Robert. 2004. “Humidity, Ice, and Nitric Acid.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 304 (5673): 961–963; author reply 961-3.
A journal article with 2 authors
Youle, Richard J., and Alexander M. van der Bliek. 2012. “Mitochondrial Fission, Fusion, and Stress.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 337 (6098): 1062–1065.
A journal article with 3 authors
Depue, Brendan E., Tim Curran, and Marie T. Banich. 2007. “Prefrontal Regions Orchestrate Suppression of Emotional Memories via a Two-Phase Process.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 317 (5835): 215–219.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Hajiyev, Parviz, Chunxiao Cong, Caiyu Qiu, and Ting Yu. 2013. “Contrast and Raman Spectroscopy Study of Single- and Few-Layered Charge Density Wave Material: 2H-TaSe₂.” Scientific Reports 3: 2593.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Nahar, Lutfun, and Satyajit D. Sarker. 2012. Steroid Dimers. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Lundbye, Justin B., ed. 2012. Therapeutic Hypothermia After Cardiac Arrest: Clinical Application and Management. London: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Schleicher, Dierk. 2010. “Dynamics of Entire Functions.” In Holomorphic Dynamical Systems: Cetraro, Italy, July 7-12, 2008, edited by Eric Bedford, Marco Brunella, Tien-Cuong Dinh, Dierk Schleicher, Nessim Sibony, Graziano Gentili, Jacques Guenot, and Giorgio Patrizio, 295–339. Lecture Notes in Mathematics. 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 Social Semiotics.

Blog post
Andrew, Elise. 2015. “When It Comes To Nature’s Public Enemy Number One, The Mosquito Is A Modern Monster.” 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. 2013. Health Care Workforce: Federally Funded Training Programs in Fiscal Year 2012. GAO-13-709R. 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
Francis, Toshi M. 2017. “The Lived Experience of Caribbean Women and Their Experiences as Senior-Level Leaders: A Phenomenological Study.” 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
Chapman, Mary M., and Bill Vlasic. 2012. “Strong Domestic Sales Help Lift Chrysler’s Results.” New York Times, July 31.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McGraw 2004).
This sentence cites two references (McGraw 2004; Youle and van der Bliek 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Youle and van der Bliek 2012)
  • Three authors: (Depue, Curran, and Banich 2007)
  • 4 or more authors: (Hajiyev et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleSocial Semiotics
ISSN (print)1035-0330
ISSN (online)1470-1219
ScopeLanguage and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language
Communication
Cultural Studies

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