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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
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

Brock, Dan W. 2002. “Human Cloning and Our Sense of Self.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 296 (5566): 314–316.

A journal article with 2 authors

Volkman, Sarah K., and Daniel L. Hartl. 2003. “Parasitology. A Game of Cat and Mouth.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 299 (5605): 353–354.

A journal article with 3 authors

Assefa, Solomon, Fengnian Xia, and Yurii A. Vlasov. 2010. “Reinventing Germanium Avalanche Photodetector for Nanophotonic On-Chip Optical Interconnects.” Nature 464 (7285): 80–84.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Sano, N., H. Wang, M. Chhowalla, I. Alexandrou, and G. A. Amaratunga. 2001. “Synthesis of Carbon ‘onions’ in Water.” Nature 414 (6863): 506–507.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mackevičius, Vigirdas. 2011. Introduction to Stochastic Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ghilardi, Silvio, and Roberto Sebastiani, eds. 2009. Frontiers of Combining Systems: 7th International Symposium, FroCoS 2009, Trento, Italy, September 16-18, 2009. Proceedings. Vol. 5749. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Berghöfer, Uta, and Augustin Berghöfer. 2006. “‚Participation’ in Development Thinking — Coming to Grips with a Truism and Its Critiques.” In Stakeholder Dialogues in Natural Resources Management: Theory and Practice, edited by Susanne Stollkleemann and Martin Welp, 79–116. Environmental Science and Engineering. 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, Danielle. 2016. “If We Ever Came Across Aliens, Would We Be Able To Understand Them?” IFLScience, IFLScience, July 29. https://www.iflscience.com/space/if-we-ever-came-across-aliens-would-we-be-able-to-understand-them/.

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. 1999. Telecommunications: FCC Does Not Know If All Required Fees Are Collected. RCED-99-216. 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

Layer, Brian David. 2012. “Structured Plasma Waveguides and Deep EUV Generation Enabled by Intense Laser-Cluster Interactions.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Gordon, Michael R. 2017. “Pentagon Inquiry Blames ISIS for Civilian Deaths in U.S. Strike on Mosul.” New York Times, May 25, 2017.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Brock 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Brock 2002; Volkman and Hartl 2003).

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

Two authors: (Volkman and Hartl 2003)
Three authors: (Assefa, Xia, and Vlasov 2010)
4 or more authors: (Sano et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Social Semiotics
ISSN (print)	1035-0330
ISSN (online)	1470-1219
Scope	Language and Linguistics Linguistics and Language Communication Cultural Studies