Copyeditors, given their passion for exactness, like to go by the book and feel uneasy if they have to improvise. In copyediting scholarly works, citations, and references are relatively straightforward matters, and all style guides explain in excruciating detail the recommended form for citing sources. If you look up the successive editions of any style guide, you will see that the number of examples it uses to illustrate the format of presenting the full details of a given source — a journal article, a chapter in a book, a web page, an audio recording, and so on — has been steadily rising to keep pace with newer digital forms in which the content is packaged: emails, Facebook posts, WhatsApp posts, Instagram posts and messages, YouTube videos. . . .

The fact that NAIWE’s executive director, April Michelle Davis, suggested that I contribute an article on how to cite blogs, press releases, and newsletters is proof enough that editors need a template for every form of packaging. And that, to my mind, is a demand unlikely to be met no matter how comprehensive a style guide. I will of course dispense some advice on dealing with blogs, press releases, and newsletters as dictated by a couple of style guides, mainly APA (the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed.) and Chicago (the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed.), but I also intend to share with my fellow editors how, once you know the four basic elements of a reference, namely the author, the date, the title, and the source, it is easy to deal with every new kind of source that information technology can throw at us.

As the following examples show, these basic elements continue to make up any reference and continue to retain the sequence in which they are given in a reference. For example, here is how to format the reference, APA style, when the source in question is a blog post:

• Charlesworth Author Services. (2022, April 16). Understanding author affiliation and accurately mentioning it in different scenarios. https://www.cwauthors.com/article/understanding-and-accurately-mentioning-author-affiliation

 

Chicago differs in that it adds the word “blog,” in parenthesis, after the title of the blog post, moves the date farther from the author’s name, and places the title of the blog post within quotation marks:

• Yateendra Joshi, “Using “et al.” for in-text citations in research paper,” Editage Insights (blog), January 16, 2014, https://www.editage.com/insights/using-et-al-for-in-text-citations-in-research-papers?refer-type=article.

 

For press releases, however, APA makes it a point to identify the genre by inserting the phrase “Press release,” within square brackets, at the end of the title or heading of the press release, as shown in the following made-up example:

• Institute of Typographic Research. (2021, July 18). Unambiguous characters for captcha texts [Press release]. https://www.ITR.org/Newsroom/announce/glyphs34.htm

 

Chicago differs in that it uses “news release” and does not enclose it within square brackets:

• Institute of Typographic Research, “Unambiguous characters for captcha texts,” news release no. ITR07182021, July 18, 2021, https://www.ITR.org/Newsroom/announce/glyphs34.htm

 

Formatting the reference to an item in a newsletter is straightforward because newsletters are serial publications, usually with volume numbers, issues numbers, and a date (typically the month and the year). Therefore, the reference follows the standard format for an article in a journal. However, items in newsletters are rarely attributed to named authors, and the entity that publishes the newsletter is taken as the author.

However, what is really important — far more than following the stipulated format by using square brackets instead of round brackets (or vice versa, as the case may be) — is that as copyeditors we ensure that readers are given all the necessary information so that

• the exact source is pinpointed
• enough information is given (especially the author, the title, and the year) to help readers decide whether they should consult the original article
• relevant details are supplied to help readers obtain the article in question.

In turn, the necessary information comprises the four basic elements mentioned above, basic because they answer the following questions:

• Who is the entity responsible for the content (the author)?
• How recent or dated is the information (the date)?
• What is the content all about (the title)?
• How to locate it (the source)?

So long as you keep these basic elements in mind, you will be less worried about not having the exact template for each kind of source — be it a blog, a press release, or a story in a newsletter.

 

 

Yateendra Joshi, has been copyediting scientific and technical documents for more than 30 years and helps researchers and academics get published in high-impact-factor journals. Certified as a master editor by the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences — only 30 editors worldwide have been thus recognized so far — and a former researcher himself, Yateen has taught full-semester courses on technical writing, has conducted more than 30 shorter training programs, and as many webinars from March 2020 to December 2021 on successful submissions to high-impact-factor journals. Yateen is a member of the editorial board of Information Design Journal, was elected for the second term (2021–2023) as a member of the council of the European Association of Science Editors, and is a professional member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. His book, Communicating in Style, was favorably reviewed by a dozen international journals and newsletters, and the late John le Carré called it “A gem. Courteous, unfrightening and essential. A perfect companion to Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage for today’s communicators.”