Adapted by Rendle Williams from the Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, so linguistics papers follow the APA Publication Manual, with a few key adjustments that reflect the priorities of the field. These are guidelines for a references page and technical formatting in a research paper, literature review, or report for linguistics.
Citation style
Goals
The primary citation and style pattern used in this discipline is a specialized form of APA. The Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics from linguisticsociety.org has additional guidelines.
- Concision
- Visual simplicity
- Making writing readable
- Specificity with author and editor names
- Omission of superfluous fonts and punctuation.
- Differentiating specialized symbols and IPA [International Phonetic Alphabet] from the writing itself
Why APA?
As a science, linguistics uses APA to add an element of authority to research. Papers are formatted more like reports or literature reviews than narratives, making note of currency with dates, for the sake of comparison and filling gaps in the research.
Guidelines
Font styles
Distracting font-styles should not be used. Avoid small or all capital letters for author, editor, and article names, since they are not helpful for defining these elements. However, for designating volume, book, journal, and dissertation titles as opposed to article and chapter titles, italics are useful.
Capitalization
Use capitalization to mark categories within references. Capitalize only the first word, in addition to proper names and the first word after a colon, for book, chapter, dissertation, or article titles. Capitalize all content words for journal titles.
This is so that readers can see which titles are recurring and what type of source they are encountering.
Abbreviations
Use edn. as an abbreviation for edition. This distinguishes the edition from the editors within the reference.
For other abbreviations within the paper, write out the full name of the abbreviation or acronym the first time it is used, then abbreviate each instance after that.
- Native American English [NAE]
Punctuation
Ampersands are useful. When listing authors, use the ampersand (&) instead of the word “and” before the last author, without a comma before the “&.” This is helpful for differentiating between authors or ideas that go together and those in comparison or being mentioned at the same time.
- A & B and C & D Ladefoged & Disner and Doe & Marx
Commas, periods, and other punctuation. Separate citation subcomponents, such as multiple authors or editors, with commas and citation components with periods. It is traditionally accepted to use a colon between title and subtitle and between place and publisher.
Dates on the references page do not need parentheses. Using parentheses in a reference entry is also considered superfluous and distracting. It is only necessary to list the four-digit year followed by a period after the author.
- Year. Etc. Angelopoulos, Nikolaos. 2019. Complementizers…
Omit extra punctuation. Any punctuation that adds “visual clutter” should be avoided. With the use of italics and periods to distinguish citation components, signifiers such as quotation marks and parentheses are not necessary. Double quotes and double parentheses should not be used.
Parentheses around ed. are acceptable. While periods and commas are used to separate other citation components, such as authors and editors, “ed.” is a modifier, so it should be distinguished using parentheses and not separated with a comma from the names of the editors.
- Calzolari, Nicoletta et al. (eds.)
Names
Use the full names of authors in references and repeat names if necessary. Use the author’s full name in reference citations to distinguish between authors who may have similar names.
Do not use a line ____ instead of an author’s name on the references page. Even when you have multiple sources by the same author, write out their full name so that each citation can stand on its own.
- Ladefoged, Peter. 2005. A Course in Phonetics, 5th Cengage Learning.
- Ladefoged, Peter. 2005. Features and parameters for different purposes. Linguistics Department, Los Angeles, CA: UCLA. https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/ladefoge/PLfeaturesParameters.pdf
Nobiliaries or patronymics. These are particles denoting place, status, or parentage that are part of some names. Alphabetize authors with “van,” “von,” “de,” “di,” or other particles by the first upper-case element of their last name. Include the nobiliary or patronymic particle after the first name, separated by a space.
- López de Ayala
- Ayala, López de
Suffixes. Elements such as junior, senior, or Roman numeral abbreviations are considered sub elements of names and should be listed after them using a comma.
- Eldridge, Anthony, Jr. Walden, Keith, Sr. Regina, Elizabeth, II.
Types of sources
The following are frequently used sources in linguistics papers which have special guidelines.
Conference proceedings. If the conference proceedings are published with an International Standard Serial Number, or ISSN, treat the proceedings as a journal: include both the full conference name and any commonly used acronym for the conference in the journal title position. If the proceedings are not published with an ISSN, use the full title as listed on the front cover of the proceedings document or title page.
Conference Acronyms. Write out acronyms that are used for conference titles and subtitles after the acronym using parentheses or brackets. If the conference is not commonly referred to with an acronym, note the possible acronym. Be consistent in your use of either parentheses or brackets.
- LREC [International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation]
Chapters. Using “In” to mark chapters of books, similar to other collections or journals, is helpful when separate chapters or components of a collection are referenced. The information for the book or collection in its entirety would be listed as an additional reference.
- Year. Chapter title. In Editor (ed.), Collection title, pagenumbers. Publisher.
Journals. For volume, issue, and page numbers, do not add a space between the numbers or punctuation. Use volumenumber(volumeissue). Startingpage-endingpage. It is not necessary to use the word ‘page,’ p., pp. or any other signifier, since this is an established format for page numbers. Do not use special formatting like bold or italics for this.
Issue numbers are parenthetical modifiers of the volume number. Include the issue number, if you can find it, as it is useful in finding an article later. Using as complete of a citation as possible adds credibility to your writing and aids anyone trying to further your work.
Dissertations and theses. To mark something as a thesis or dissertation, follow the Place: Institution format for APA 6 and only Institution for APA 7. The institution and type of paper then represents the publisher. Use capital letter postal abbreviations for state and country names. Take care to consult sources, institutions, and cultural practices for any distinctions between a thesis and a dissertation and a PhD and a doctoral dissertation.
- APA 6
- Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College MA thesis.
- Reno, NV: UNR dissertation.
- APA 7
- Dartmouth College MA thesis.
- UNR dissertation.
Online sources. The URL of the source replaces the publisher or journal title for reference sources found on the internet, such as dictionaries or PDFs.
Since these types of sources may be frequently updated, include the date the material was accessed in parentheses after the URL. This would be the date that something was downloaded or multiple dates if a dictionary or encyclopedia was consulted on several occasions.
Complete reference examples
The following are examples of complete Reference listings for frequently used types of sources.
Book
Ladefoged, Peter & Disner, Sandra Ferrari. 2012. Vowels and consonants, 3rd edn. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
VandenBos, Gary R. (ed.) 2007. APA dictionary of psychology. Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Retrieved from https://dictionary.apa.org/
Visser, Frederik Theodoor. 1963. An historical syntax of the English language, Part one: Syntactical units with one verb. The Netherlands: E. J. Brill Leiden.
Chapter in a collection or book
Ladefoged, Peter & Disner, Sandra Ferrari. 2012. How we listen to speech. In Vowels and Consonants, 3rd edn., 99-113. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Conference proceedings
Calzolari, Nicoletta et al. (eds.) 2016. Tenth international conference on language resources and evaluation. LREC [International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation], Portorož, Slovenia. Retrieved from http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2016/index.html
Corpus or data set
DiPaolo Healey, Antonette, Wilkin, John Price & Xiang, Xin. 2009. Word count broken down by text, Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project. Retrieved from https://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/ wordcount.html
Pew Hispanic Center. 2004. Changing channels and crisscrossing cultures: A survey of Latinos on the news media [Data file and code book]. Retrieved from http://pewhispanic.org/datasets/
Dissertation/thesis
Angelopoulos, Nikolaos. 2019. Complementizers and prepositions as probes: Insights from Greek. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Doctoral Dissertation. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vf0h5nm#main
Interview, recording and transcript
Winfrey, Oprah. 2012. Interview by Godfrey Mutizwa [Video recording]. Niger Basin Authority. CNBC Africa. Retrieved from www.abndigital.com.
Sculley, John. 2010. John Sculley: The secrets of Steve Jobs’ success [exclusive interview]/Interviewer: Leander Kahney. Cult of Mac. Retrieved from https://www.cultofmac.com/21572/john-sculley-the-secrets-of-steve-jobs-success-exclusive-interview/
Journal article
Levy, Erika S. 2010. Production of French vowels by American-English learners of French: Language experience, consonantal context, and the perception-production relationship. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 128(3). 1290-1305. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3466879
Lecture
Boardman, Phillip. 2018, 09 April . “The meaning of Jesus: The canonical text” The Bible as Literature. University of Nevada, Reno. Lecture.
Online news article
Woolfe, Zachary. 2019. Dying languages cry out in ‘Last Whispers’: Lena Herzog’s mixture of enigmatic film and immersive sound evokes a global crisis of linguistic disappearance. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com /2019 /10/11/arts/music/last-whispers-lena-herzog.html
References
American Psychological Association. (2010.) Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Dubinsky, Stan. (2007.) Unified style sheet for linguistics. Linguistic Journal Editors’ Group (Eds.) Linguistic Society of America. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University. Retrieved from https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/style-sheet_0.pdf (2019).
