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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Cassman, Marvin. 2005. “Barriers to Progress in Systems Biology.” Nature 438 (7071): 1079.

A journal article with 2 authors

Strong, Michael, and George Church. 2007. “Gem of an Idea for a Unique Machine.” Nature 447 (7140): 112.

A journal article with 3 authors

Vasudevan, Shobha, Yingchun Tong, and Joan A. Steitz. 2007. “Switching from Repression to Activation: microRNAs Can up-Regulate Translation.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 318 (5858): 1931–1934.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Sun, Dong, Andrew E. Riley, Ashley J. Cadby, Erik K. Richman, Scott D. Korlann, and Sarah H. Tolbert. 2006. “Hexagonal Nanoporous Germanium through Surfactant-Driven Self-Assembly of Zintl Clusters.” Nature 441 (7097): 1126–1130.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chatterji, Subhrendu, and Paul Hedges. 2005. Loan Workouts and Debt for Equity Swaps. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Chau, Kam-Tim, and Jidong Zhao, eds. 2015. Bifurcation and Degradation of Geomaterials in the New Millennium: Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Bifurcation and Degradation in Geomaterials. Springer Series in Geomechanics and Geoengineering. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Stankiewicz, James M., and Guy J. Buckle. 2011. “MS: Clinical Features, Symptom Management, and Diagnosis.” In Clinical Neuroimmunology: Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders, edited by Syed A. Rizvi and Patricia K. Coyle, 89–110. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

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

Taub, Ben. 2016. “Why You Probably Don’t Have More Than Five Close Friends.” IFLScience, IFLScience, May 3. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/humans-only-have-four-or-five-close-friends-according-study/.

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. 1998. Air Force Aircraft: Reorganizing Mobility Aircraft Units Could Reduce Costs. NSIAD-98-55. 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

Andrus, Avery Kay. 2017. “Cellular and Proteomic Characterization of the Innate Immune Response in Wasting Bat Stars (Patiria Miniata).” Doctoral dissertation, 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

Kanter, James. 2017. “E.U. Lawmakers Approve Canada Trade Deal, in Message to Trump.” New York Times, February 15, 2017.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cassman 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Cassman 2005; Strong and Church 2007).

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

Two authors: (Strong and Church 2007)
Three authors: (Vasudevan, Tong, and Steitz 2007)
4 or more authors: (Sun et al. 2006)

About the journal

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