Steven P. Darwin
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Tulane University

General Comments

Strive for a scholarly style: a succinct and direct, but formal expression of your ideas. Choose words carefully for accurate meaning and always consider alternative wordings. Avoid colloquial expressions. Avoid reference to yourself as first-person subject; use pronoun "one" or passive voice. Use past tense to describe events or actions that did take place in the past, present tense for states or conditions that have persisted to the present day ("Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands, where several kinds of finches live"). Avoid the "historical present" tense except in reference to written works ("Darwin's Origin of Species proposes a mechanism for evolutionary change").

Instructions

Type the text on 8.5 × 11-inch paper (single-sided) with 1-inch margins all around and the text left-justified only, except for centered title and headings.

Use Courier font (12 pt or 10 pt size), with lines double-spaced throughout. Do not use proportional spacing.

Begin paper with centered title (top line), your name (second line), and course title and date (third line). Use no separate title page or cover pages.

Do not use bold or italic type. Underline words that would be italicized in another font.

Do not underline common Latin words or abbreviations (e.g., i.e., et al., sensu, etc.). Do not underline book titles or names of ships (e.g., H. M. S. Beagle).

Use no footnotes; incorporate all material into the body of the text.

Indent paragraphs; do not add extra line spacing.

Avoid hyphens at ends of lines. Do not divide words at ends of lines. For a dash, use a hyphen set off with spaces ( - ).

Number all pages at top-right margin, except page 1, which is unnumbered.

Use quotations sparingly. Use double quotation marks ("), and single quotation marks (') for quotes within quotes. All punctuation must be enclosed within final quotation marks (American style). Extended quotations may be inserted (without quotation marks) as a fully indented paragraph.

Write out the numbers one through twelve unless they are used in a measurement. For all other numbers use numerals.

Scientific Names

Underline genus names and names of species (binomials). All other names (families, orders, etc.) are capitalized but not underlined. Include the author of a species name the first time the name is used, but omit author citation thereafter; when more than one author, use the ampersand (&) in place of Latin "et."

Spell out genus names the first time they are used in a paragraph, but abbreviate thereafter (e.g., H. sapiens); genus names must be spelled out if they are the first word in a sentence.

The abbreviation sp. may be used for species (singular), spp. for species (plural).

Names of most higher plant and animal taxa (families, orders, etc.) are plural nouns (e.g., The Hominidae are a family of primates).

Genus names are singular. To use them in the plural, treat them as English words. For example: Charles Darwin described six scalpellums (species of Scalpellum, a genus of barnacles).

Literature Citation

Use parenthetical style to cite references in the text. Any of the following styles is acceptable. Do not use the ampersand (&) in literature citations. Write out all authors' names, but use "et al." if there are three or more authors.

(Darwin, 1859); (Darwin 1859); ... Darwin (1859); (Darwin, 1859; Wallace, 1858); (Darwin 1859; Wallace 1858); (Barrett et al., 1987); (Barrett et al. 1987); (Desmond and Moore, 1991); (Darwin, 1859, p. 107); (Darwin 1859: 107); (Darwin, 1859, pp. 107-108); (Darwin 1859: 107-108); (Darwin 1859, cited in Desmond and Moore 1991, p. 598).

All literature citations must be referenced under Literature Cited (a centered heading), following the main text but not on a separate page.

Verify all entries against original sources, especially journal titles and accents, diacritical marks, and spelling in languages other than English.

Under Literature Cited, arrange references in strict alphabetical order by first author's surname. Use initials for given names. List works by the same author chronologically.

Works by a single author precede multiauthored works by the same senior author, regardless of date. For multiauthored works, those by two authors precede those by three or more authors and are listed in alphabetical order. References with three or more authors are listed in the alphabetical order of the authors, regardless of the number of authors.

Write out author names for all references (i.e., "et al." may be used in the text citation, but not in the Literature Cited).

Insert a period and space after each initial of an author's name. In literature references, leave a space between the colon following a volume number and page number(s). Use full titles of all journals (periodicals).

Capitalize all major words in titles of books and titles of journals. For titles of journal articles, capitalize only the first word and any proper nouns. In German-language titles, capitalize all nouns.

In citing a contribution (such as a chapter) to a larger work, use the following style:

Lovejoy, A. O. 1959. Kant and evolution. In: B. Glass, O. Temkin, and W. L. Straus, Jr. (editors). Forerunners of Darwin (pp. 173-206). Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore.

For reprinted materials, use the following style:

Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. In: D. M. Porter and P. W. Graham (editors). 1993. The Portable Darwin (pp. 105-215). Penguin Books, New York.

For facsimile reprinted material use the following style:

Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. John Murray, London. (Facsimile reprint: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1964).

Submission

Proofread the manuscript carefully and staple pages together. Use no paper-clips, thesis covers, or binders.