Good Style - Writing for Computer Science - page 85

A third common style is to use superscripted ordinal numbers, as in “… is discussed
elsewhere 16 ”. Another style is use of uppercase abbreviations, where references are
denoted by strings such as “[MAR91]”. This is not a good style: the abbreviations
seem to encourage poor writing such as “… is discussed in [WHB72]” and, because
uppercase characters stand out from text, they are rather distracting.
Note, however, that many publishers insist on a particular style. (Some also insist
that bibliographic entries be ordered alphabetically, which is convenient for the
reader, or that they appear by order of citation, which is convenient for traditional
typesetting.) Your writing should be designed to survive a change in the style of
citation.
When discussing a reference with more than two authors, all but the first author's
name can be replaced by “et al.”
Howers, Mann, Thompson, and Wills [9] provide another example.
Howers et al. [9] provide another example.
In a variant of this style, the full list is given at the first citation, and the abbreviated
form thereafter. Note the stop: “et al.” is an abbreviation.
Each entry in the reference list should include enough detail to allow readers to
find the paper. Other than in extreme cases, the names of all authors should usually
be given—don't use “et al.” in the reference list. Be guided by the common practices
in your research area. 2
Format fields of the same type in the same way. For example, don't list one author
as “Heinrich, J.”, the next as “Peter Hurst”, the next as “R. Johnson”, and the next
as “SL Klows”. Capitalization, explained in Chap. 8 , should be consistent. Don't use
unfamiliar abbreviations of journal names. (One that has puzzled me is “ J. Comp. ”)
Journal articles . The journal name should be given in full, and author names, paper
title, year, volume, number, and pages must be provided. Consider also giving the
month. Thus:
T. Wendell, “Completeness of open negation in quasi-inductive programs”,
J. Dd. Lang. , 34.
is inadequate. Revise it to, say:
T. Wendell, “Completeness of open negation in quasi-inductive programs”,
ICSS Journal of Deductive Languages , 34(3):217-222, November 1994.
Conference papers . The conference name should be complete, and authors, title,
year, and pages must be provided. Information such as publisher, conference location,
month, and editors should also be given.
Books . Give title, authors, publisher, year, and, where relevant, edition and volume.
If the reference is to a specific part of the topic, give page numbers; for example,
2 An exception is the rare case in which the authors list themselves as “et al.” I have only seen one
paper with such an author list: “The Story of O 2 ”byO.Deuxetal.