Writing and Citation Guidelines
1. Plagiarism is the use of another person’s words and ideas without proper citation. ANY form of
plagiarism will not be tolerated in this course. It is very easy for your instructor to find out if
plagiarism is an issue in any assignment.
2. Quotations are not an accepted form of writing in science. If you wish to write about other
people’s work and ideas you must paraphrase their work with your own words and cite the
source article at the end of the sentence. This means changing more than just a few words you
must put the findings into your own words.
3. Italicize the genus and species of an organism. Italicize the full Latin name when referring to an
organism but not when the full name is not used (e.g., Staphylococcus aureus but
Staphylococcus infection). A genus name should be spelled out in the title of an article and on
first mention in the text. After that, it can be abbreviated to the initial letter followed by a period
and the species epithet (e.g., S. aureus).
Use the following guidelines for In-text citation formatting:
 Cite references in the text as follows: In their study of acid rain in the Northeast, Mahoney
and Rickey (1993) found… or Acid rain afflicts the Northeast (Mahoney and Rickey 1993).

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If 1 author – (Mahoney 1993)
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If 2 authors – (Mahoney and Rickey 1993)
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If more than 2 authors – (Mahoney et al. 1993)
You may cite a lecture or conversation with someone as follows: (Bulluck, pers comm.) and
then see the Literature cited section below for how to cite it there.

Do not use commas between author and year, but do use a comma between different citations
for the same author and between different authors (e.g., Mahoney 1993, 1994, Rickey 1995).

Multiple citations are listed in chronological order and use lower case letters to indicate
separate papers by the same author in the same year (e.g., Zar 1973, Giles 1994a, 1994b).
The letter “a” indicates that this particular reference was cited first in the text.

For citations with three or more authors, give the first author’s surname followed by “et al.”
and then the date: (Stromberg et al. 1994). Note that there is no comma between the name
and “et al.”

For organizations listed as the author in the Literature cited section, use an acronym for the
in-text citations (NSF 1982), and spell out the organization’s name in the Literature cited
section, preceded by the acronym in brackets: [NSF] National Science Foundation. 1982.
This will often be the case for online citations.

All in-text citations must match the reference section—make sure that each citation has an
entry in the reference section and that all references are cited in the text.
Literature Cited Section
All citations should be listed alphabetically and using the correct citation format shown below.
a. Lecture/personal communication
You will likely want to cite a lecture from this semester in your assignments.
Please use the following format:
Bulluck, L. Lecture on 18 February 2009. Epigentics. Virginia Commonwealth University
b. Journal examples:
Robinson, S.K., F.R. Thompson III, T.M. Donovan, D.R. whitehead, and J. Faaborg.
1995. Regional forest fragmentation and the nesting success of migratory birds.
Science 267: 1987-1990.
With, K.A. and A.W. King. 2001. Analysis of landscape sources and sinks: the effect of
spatial pattern on avian demography. Biological Conservation 100(1):75-88.
c. Books
Ehrlich, P.R., D.S. Dobkin, and D. Wheye. 1988. The birder’s handbook; a field guide
to the natural history of North American birds. Simon and Schuster, Fireside. New
York, USA.
Kier, Lemont B. 2007. Science and Complexity for Life Sciences Students. Kendall
Hunt Publishing Company. Iowa, USA.
d. Websites
Typically websites are not reliable sources of information. At this stage in your science writing
you should be using primary literature as your source material (websites might direct you to
these!). Exceptions are government and some non-profit based websites which state statistics,
policy and position papers.
In parentheses, show the date the site was last accessed—the date you checked to make sure the
site was still online—and the URL, separated by a semicolon. Do not use ending punctuation.
Do not use “http://” in entries with “www”; retain “http://” if the Web page address does
not include “www.”
[CITES] Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora. (7 January 2000; www.cites.org/CITES/eng/append/species.html)
[USFWS] US Fish and Wildlife Service. 2000. Box score, endangered species.
(7 January 2000; www.endangered.fws.gov/boxscore.html)
PLEASE NOTE: Websites, books, and personal communications will not count towards the
reference minimum on your assignments. These must be primary literature.