Style Guide

Table of Contents 

Jump To:

I. Citations

Items to be Cited In-text (Author-Date)

Books
Journal Articles
Magazine and Newspaper Articles
Theses and Dissertations
Conference Papers
Personal Communications
Website Sources
Audio-visual Material

Items to be Cited in Footnotes

Interviews
Field Notes
Manuscript Collections

II. Language

Spelling and Preferred Usage
Abbreviations

III. Punctuation

Periods and Quotation Marks
Comma
Dashes – see CMS 2.14
Ellipses
Colons – see CMS 6.61

IV. Hyphenation

Prefixes – see CMS 7.40
Suffixes – see CMS 7.40 & 5.93

V. Numbers

VI. Capitalization

Geographical Areas
Government Offices, Organizations, Judicial Bodies, Wars, Political Parties
Official documents and legal cases
Text Elements

VII. Dates

VIII. Romanization / Foreign Language Fonts

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I.  Citations

Pacific Affairs follows the author-date (also known as in-text) citation system of The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (CMS). This means manuscripts should come with a reference list titled “References.” There are a few exceptions to the use of author-date format, mainly for the sake of retaining succinctness in the in-text citation. These exceptions are for interviews, field notes, and citations of documents within manuscript collections. These are detailed further below.

We ask our authors to limit themselves to a reasonable number of cited sources, and to keep any supplemental footnoted material as concise as possible.

Use superscript Arabic numbers for footnotes, with the end quote mark following the period and the superscript number after the end quote:

“The Chicago Manual of Style is an excellent resource.”¹

For foreign-language titles, a bracketed translation into English is required for the titles of all books, book chapters, films, dissertations, and articles. Titles of foreign-language journals or newspapers need not be translated. The inclusion of different writing systems (Chinese, Thai, etc.) in the reference list is optional, but should be applied consistently.

Below is first, a list of how to cite works in the “References” (i.e., Bibliography) and then in-text following the author-date system according to Chicago Style. This is followed by a list of exceptions to the author-date citation and examples of how to cite such works.

This list is by no means comprehensive. For further information, consult CMS.

Items to be Cited In-text (Author-Date)

Books

One to two authors

Roberts, Kenneth. 1983. Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru. Stanford University Press.

In-text citation: (Roberts 1983, 246)

Unwin, Liam P., and Joseph Galloway. 1990. Peace in Ireland. Stronghope Press.

In-text citation: (Unwin and Galloway 1990, 11)

Foreign-language title

Rao, Shuguang. 2009. Zhongguo dianying shichang fazhanshi [Development history of the Chinese film market]. Zhongguo dianying chubanshe.

Takahashi, Hiroshi. 2009. Innovation to seijigaku–Jōhō tūshin kakumei <Nihon no okure> no seijikatei [Innovation and political science–the political processes of ICT Revolution “Japan’s delay”]. Keisō shobō.

In-text citation: (Rao 2009, 148) (Takahashi 2009, 251­–54)

Three to six authors

Note: In the reference list, include up to six authors. In the in-text citation, only list the first, followed by “et al.”

Lubis, Firman, Anke Niehof, and Puji Astuti. 1973. The Traditional Midwife in Kecamatan Serpong: The Dukun Bayi Survey. Serpong Paper 15. Instituut voor Culturele Antropologie, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden.

(Lubis et al. 1973, 43–44).

Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, Jeffrey Roth, and Christy Visher, eds. 1986. Criminal Careers and Career Criminals. National Academy Press.

(Blumstein et al. 1986)

Seven or more authors

Note: In the reference list, include only the first three authors, followed by “et al.” In-text, only list the first, followed by “et al.”

Kane, Daniel, Carolyn Grant, and Carina Bläfield, et al. 2024. Style Guides for Dummies. Not-A-Real Press.

In-text citation: (Kane et al. 2024, 276)

Edited book

• It is strongly encouraged that citations from edited volumes cite the relevant specific chapter (see “Chapter in edited volume” below). Only cite the entire edited book if the point being supported is about the edited volume as a whole.

Tortelli, Anthony B., ed. 1991. Sociology Approaching the Twenty-first Century. Peter and Sons.

In-text citation: (Tortelli 1991)

Chapter in edited volume

Kitschelt, Herbert. 2001. “Partisan Competition and Welfare State Retrenchment.” In The New Politics of the Welfare State, edited by Paul Pierson, 111–30. Oxford University Press.

Thompson, Eric, and Zhang Juan. 2009. “Navigating Transnationalism: Immigration and Reconfigured Ethnicity.” In Impressions of the Goh Chok Tong Years in Singapore, edited by Bridget Welsh, James Chin, Arun Mahizhnan, and Tan Tarn How, 305–16. Institute of Policy Studies.

In-text citation: (Kitschelt 2001, 119) (Thompson and Juan 2009, 314)

Foreign-language title

Kohl, Ines. 2016. “Flucht und Migration durch die Sahara: Tareg, Akteure eines Transnationalen Netzwerks” [Flight and migration across the Sahara: Tuareg, agents of transnational networks]. In Schleppen, Schleusen, Helfen: Flucht Zwischen Rettung und Ausbeutung [Human trafficking or assisted escape?], edited by Gabriele Anderl and Simon Usaty, 431–66. Mandelbaum Verlag.

Okamoto, Masataka. 2004. “Ijūsha no kenri wo mamoru nettowāku undō no kiseki to kaidai” [Track and challenge of a network-movement protecting the rights of immigrants]. In Imin wo meguru jichitai no seisaku to shakai undō [Local government politics and social movements directed at immigrants], edited by Hiroshi Komai, 195–210. Akashi shoten.

In-text citation: (Kohl 2016, 459) (Okamoto 2004, 201)

Journal Article

General journal articles

Note: Journal articles with two authors, both names appear in the in-text citation. For three or more authors, list up to six in the reference list; for more than six authors, list the first three, followed by “et al.” In the text, list only the first, followed by “et al.”

MacDermott, Therese, and Brian Opeskin. 2010. “Regulating Pacific Seasonal Labour in Australia.” Pacific Affairs 83 (2): 283–305.

Novak, William J. 2008. “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State.” American Historical Review 113 (3): 748–72. doi:10.1086/ahr.113.3.752.

Brame, Robert, Michael G. Turner, Raymond Paternoster, and Shawn Bushway. 2012. “Cumulative Prevalence of Arrest from Ages 8 to 23 in a National Sample.” Pediatrics 129: 21–27.

In-text citation: (MacDermott and Opeskin 2010, 292) (Novak 2008, 750) (Brame et al. 2012)

Foreign-language title

Shen, Yu-chung. 2004. “Deng Xiaoping yu zhongguo zhengzhi tizhi gaige” [Deng Xiaoping and China’s political reform]. Zhanwang yu tansuo 2 (5): 78–94.

Chŏng, Ŭn-ch’an. 2014. “Pukhan ŭi hwan’gyŏng poho hyŏnhwang kwa kaesŏn pangan” [Status of environmental protection in North Korea and improvement plans]. Nambuk munhwa yesul yǒn’gu 24 (14): 290–309.

In-text citation: (Shen 2004, 82) (Chŏng 2014, 299)

E-journal article (online ONLY)

Breuker, Remco. 2014. “Korea’s Forgotten War: Appropriating and Subverting the Vietnam War in Korean Popular Imaginings.” Korean Histories 1 (1). http://goo.gl/ZmgBdb.

Bu, Liping. 2014. “Anti-malaria Campaigns and the Socialist Reconstruction of China, 1950–80.” East Asian History 39. http://eastasianhistory.net/39/bu.

In-text citation: (Breuker 2014, 2) (Bu 2014, 44)

Magazine and Newspaper Articles

Magazine article

Berss, Marcia. 1994. “Protein Man.” Forbes, 24 October: 64–66.

In-text citation: (Berss 1994, 65)

Foreign-language title

Aam, Hatijah. 2011. “Global Ikhwan di tengah-tengah Bangsa Arab” [Global Ikhwan in the midst of the Arab nation]. Buletin Rakyat, 15 May: 10–12.

In-text citation: (Aam 2011, 11)

Newspaper article (author)

Royko, Mike. 1992. “Next Time, Dan, Take Aim at Arnold.” Chicago Tribune, 23 September.

In-text citation: (Royko 1992)

Newspaper article (no author)

New York Times. 2011. “North Korea’s Nuclear Path under Kim Jong-il.” New York Times, 19 December.

Associated Press. 2008. “Afraid of Laundry? You Will Be after Reading This.” USA Today, 17 July. http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-07-17-861610133_x.htm.

In-text citation: (New York Times, 19 December 2011) (Associated Press, 17 July 2008)

Foreign-language title (author)

Yoo, Jae-soon. 2016. “Jukeum-eul gongporo badadeuliji anneun jase” [Attitude of not accepting death as fear]. Seoul&, 26 May. http://www.seouland.com/arti/culture/culture_general/493.html

In-text citation: (Yoo 2016)

Foreign-language title (no author)

Berita Harian. 2002. “Penduduk rayu penempatan Asa’ari dikaji semula” [Residents plead for a reassessment of Asa’ari’s settlement]. Berita Harian, 5 September.

In-text citation: (Berita Harian, 5 September 2002)

Theses and Dissertations

Ross, Dorothy. 2003. “The Irish-Catholic Immigrant, 1880–1900: A Study in Social Mobility.” Master’s thesis, Columbia University.

Sasaki, Yutaka. 2005. “The Struggle for Scholarly Objectivity: Unofficial Diplomacy and the Institute of Pacific Relations from the Sino-Japanese War to the McCarthy Era.” PhD dissertation, Rutgers University.

In-text citation: (Ross 2003, 121) (Sasaki 2005, 19–21)

Conference Papers

Angst, Ima Fuller. 1978. “With Peers Like These Who Needs Enemies?” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Society of Revisers and Resubmitters, Milwaukee, WI, 17–19 April.

• A paper included in the published proceedings of a meeting may be treated like a chapter in a book. If published in a journal, treat it like an article.

In-text citations: (Angst 1978, 17)

Personal Communications (unpublished)

For personal communications that are unpublished, as per CMS, these can be cited parenthetically using the abbreviations “pers. comm.” or “unpublished data” following the name of the person or organization involved, following a comma. The addition of a date is preferred. These need not be included in the “References” but must be fully identified elsewhere in the text.

In-text citation: (Gregory N. Park, pers. comm., 14 April 2023)

Website Sources

• Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for empirical information.
• PA encourages authors to create “tiny URLs” for long URLs. This not only makes for neater references, but could make the difference between live and dead links in your paper once it is published online (a “wrap around” URL will often cause it not to work). There are a number of sites that will do this for free, three of the notable being TinyURL (https://tinyURL.com/), Google URL shortener (https://goo.gl/), and bitly (https://bitly.com/).

Web citations must include as much of the following as can be determined:

• name of the host organization
• author of the page’s content
• title (or a brief description) of the page
• date of publication
• URL (or tiny URL)
• NOTE: access date need only be included if the source has no publication date or there is reason to believe the source may move or its contents change.

Webpage (general)

Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability. 2016. “Dangerous Waters: Examining the South China Sea Conflict (2014) [workshop summary].” http://nautilus.org/projects/by-name/dangerous-waters-examining-the-south-china-sea-conflict/.

OR

NISS (Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability). 2016. “Dangerous Waters: Examining the South China Sea Conflict (2014) [workshop summary].” http://nautilus.org/projects/by-name/dangerous-waters-examining-the-south-china-sea-conflict/.

In-text citation: (Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability 2016) OR (NISS 2016)

Blogs

• Generally, citation of blogs as sources is discouraged in an academic article, but they are at times unavoidable depending on the subject of the article and nature of the blog.

Hardy-Chartrand, Benoit. 2015. “Has China Altered its Course on Regional Policy?” Asia-Pacific Security (blog), 3 February. http://tinyurl.com/z43c9z3.

In-text citation: (Hardy-Chartrand 2015)

Foreign-language title

Falkman, Kaj. 2015. “Rencontre avec une grande résistante vietnamienne” [Meeting with a great figure of the Vietnamese resistance]. Le Monde diplomatique (blog), 22 January. http://goo.gl/YeMvRn.

In-text citation: (Falkman 2015)

Audio-visual Material

Kim, Taeyoung, and Jinhee Josephine Lee, directors. 2024. 1923 Kanto Massacre. Seoul: Indecom. 1 hr., 43 min. 

In-text citation: (Kim and Lee 2024, 1:03:45)

Audio-visual material (online)

de Blasio, Bill. 2019. “Mayor de Blasio Delivers State of the City Address.” NYC Mayor’s Office. Streamed live on January 10. YouTube video. https://youtu.be/aZZYlpfZ-iA.

In-text citation: (de Blasio 2019, 1:22:40)

Items to be Cited in Footnotes

Interview

• Interview notes should include at a minimum the interviewee’s identity (or position, see below), interviewer’s identity, location of interview (or if done remotely, then a description of the medium), and interview date:

Tanaka Kakuei, interview by author, Tokyo, 26 July 2013.

Daniel Ridgeway, interview by author, via Zoom, 30 April 2016.

• An interview with a person who prefers to remain anonymous or whose name the author does not wish to reveal may be cited in whatever form is appropriate in context. The absence of a name should be explained in the first instance of use. (“All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement”):

Interview with health care worker, Jakarta, 23 March 2010.

Field Notes

• Field notes need not be listed in the references. They can be footnoted at the appropriate place in the main text. They should include at a minimum the author’s name, a description (“field notes” suffices but more detail is also acceptable), and a date. Beyond this, the primary rule of thumb is consistency:

Footnote: Owen Lattimore, field notes, 14 August 1932.

Manuscript Collections

• The specific manuscript collection consulted should be listed in the references at the end of the manuscript. If possible, consult the holder of the collection for the preferred citation. However, individual items cited therefrom should be footnoted in the main text in lieu of an in-text citation.

Reference citation: Institute of Pacific Relations Records, 1925–1943, the Burke Library Archives, Columbia University Archives, Union Theological Seminary, New York.

Footnote: Bill Holland to Owen Lattimore, 21 June 1949, Institute of Pacific Relations Records, box 2, folder 1.

II. Language

Spelling and Preferred Usage

Pacific Affairs uses Canadian spelling and follows The Canadian Oxford Dictionary and The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition.

Please see our Preferred Spelling for specific examples.

• Canadian usage adopts the “-ize” ending, rather than “-ise” (capitalize, economize, organize).
• Pacific Affairs prefers the following usage:
  • “-re” rather than “-er” (theatre, kilometre, centre)
  • “-our” rather than “-or” (colour, labour, neighbourhood)
• Verbs with single “l”/double “l” and their derivatives: use the single “l” (fulfil and fulfilment or enrol and enrolment).
• Double “l”/single “l” in the past tense of verbs: use the double “ll” (travelled, modelled and labelled rather than traveled, modeled and labeled).
• For hyphenation, please see below.
• For numbers, please see below.

Abbreviations

• Spell out acronyms and initialisms on first reference, thereafter, use large caps, and no periods: Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
• Avoid excessive use of initialisms, see CMS 10.3 for further details.
• Do not use periods in geographical initialisms (USA, US, UK, DMZ).
• Use i.e. and e.g. punctuated with periods and followed by a comma (the style of that dress, i.e., bias cut).
• For the use of articles (the, an) before an initialism see CMS 7.33 and 10.9.

III. Punctuation

Periods and Quotation Marks

• Periods and commas sit inside quotation marks; colons and semicolons sit outside. Question and exclamation marks should sit outside unless they are part of the quotation.

Many people feel that these days, there is an overemphasis on “political correctness.”

He asked, “Why are you so upset?”

• Punctuation should be followed by a single space.

Case studies are a widely used method of research in India. Leela Gulati has strong views on the topic.

• Use double quotation marks for quoted material; use single quotation marks for quotations within quotations.

The report states that, “free trade will imperil formerly ‘protected markets.’”

(Note: There should be no space between ‘ and “.)

• Per CMS, refrain from using scare quotes (single or double quotation marks) around single words “unless it is essential to the author’s argument and not confusing to readers” CMS 7.55.

Comma

• Pacific Affairs employs the serial comma. (The staff at Pacific Affairs are talented, efficient, and courteous.)

Ellipses

• Dots should be set tight with letter spaces preceding and following the ellipses. For ellipses that occur at the end of a sentence, the period should be set at even spacing from the first dot.

… according to the … report.

Separating criminals from their profits eliminates their chief motive and breaks the crime cycle. … Bill C-61 will give courts …

• See CMS 13.50-13.58 for further details.

IV.  Hyphenation

• In keeping with contemporary spelling practices, we follow a closed (no-hyphen) style as a general rule. Pacific Affairs does not hyphenate intergovernmental, nongovernmental, multinational, subsystem, subgroup, subsample, prewar, postwar, turnout, postindustrial, semiskilled.
• Pacific Affairs does not hyphenate policy maker, policy making, decision maker and decision making when used as nouns. It does hyphenate adjectival forms such as “policy-making [decision-making] process.”
• When prefixes are attached to numerals, the compounds are hyphenated.

pre-1995 models, post-1945 economy

• See our Preferred Spelling for more examples.

 V.  Numbers

• Spell out numbers from one through nine, unless doing so would clutter a sentence unduly.

The winning lottery numbers were 2, 3, 13, 36, 41, and 49.

• Use numerals to express numbers above 9
• Use numerals to express numbers nine or under when: they refer to scores, age, percentages, and decades

  7–3 victory, 6 years old, 89 percent, 1960s

               they are used with unit symbols

  $1 million, $5 rebate, 9 cm wide, ¥500, ￦50 million, RMB500,000

• Spell out ordinals in text; the numeral version is acceptable in tabular material and bibliographies (twenty-first, not 21st).
• Spell out percent in text; the % symbol is acceptable in tabular material.
• Inclusive numbers should not be contracted within text, use an en-dash with no space before or after

5–9, 65–67, 102–107, 1204–1293, the War of 1861–1865).

• See CMS 9.1 for further details.

VI.  Capitalization

Geographical areas

• Capitalize topographical names commonly accepted as proper names (Korean Peninsula, Taiwan Strait) and politically or culturally significant areas (Northeast Asia, the Western world, the Great Wall).
• Do not capitalize geographical terms that are simply descriptive or climatic, such as northwestern Vietnam, southern China, etc.

See Preferred Spelling for a comprehensive list

Government Offices, Organizations, Judicial Bodies, Wars, Political Parties

• Capitalize titles and offices only when preceding a name and not modified:

President Aquino

but: Aquino, the president

or: The president spoke to the assembly…

• Capitalize full titles of government or judicial bodies, but lowercase partial forms:

Department of Foreign Affairs; the foreign affairs department

Human Rights Watch

The Asia Society; the society

• In most countries, Parliament, Congress, Diet, and Senate are capitalized.
• Full titles of wars are capitalized. The words war and battle are lowercased when used alone:

Vietnam War

World War II

the Second World War

• Political parties are capitalized; political movements are not:

the Liberal Party, the Chinese Communist Party; communism, capitalism

Please see our Preferred Spelling for specific examples.

Official documents and legal cases

• Full titles of acts, treaties, policies, agreements, plans, and similar documents should be capitalized and set in roman type:

China-Mexico Free Trade Agreement (but China-Mexico FTA, or the agreement)

Occupational Health Act (but the health act, the act)

Text elements

Do not capitalize text elements, either as titles or text references

appendix A, chapter 5, part 7, figure 2

• Do not abbreviate text elements (ch. 5, f. 10); they should always be spelled out in full.

VII. Dates

• Maintain a consistent style throughout the text. Within text dates should appear as follows:

June 3, 1993 (…on June 3, 1993, we…)

• However use DAY MONTH YEAR in references.

Marcia Berss, “Protein Man,” Forbes, 24 October 1994, 64–66.

VIII. Romanization / Foreign Language Fonts

For citations in all languages other than English, please provide the title in the original language, romanized in accordance with one of the following systems:

• McCune-Reischauer OR Revised Romanization System (Korean)
• Hepburn (Japanese)
• Pinyin (Chinese)

See section I for examples

If the original script is used in the text of the article (i.e., to clarify a translation issue) then the following fonts must be used:

• Korean – PC Myungjo
• Japanese – MS Mincho
• Chinese – P Ming LiU

For languages not listed above please select a standard, commonly available font.