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Writing a research paper is hard enough, without the complications of formatting it! Style guides, however, are important for ensuring your findings are presented consistently and clearly. They are also adapted to the unique needs of each field. For example, the AMA style guide, popular in medicine, has an exhaustive section on using non-discriminatory language. The IEEE style guide, popular in engineering, explains in detail how to format equations. Today, we’re going to look at some of the questions our readers have asked most frequently about IEEE style, especially in-text citations. An IEEE in-text citation is relatively easy to format, if you keep a few basics in mind.
How Do I Format an IEEE In-Text Citation?
Use Arabic numbers enclosed in square brackets, inline and not superscripted. Like this:
Davidson [7] proposed a novel method of poaching eggs in whisky and serving them on a bed of shredded Japanese yams.
Citations are numbered according to their order of appearance in the main text.
What About Citations with Multiple Authors?
If you’ve two authors, use “and” between their names. If you’ve 3 or more authors, use the last name of the first author and “et al.”
Kakura and Dakura [9] experimented with throwing oranges at the sun while dancing around an oak tree.
Popsypins et al. [15] attributed the rise in temperature of rice while cooking to the influence of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Do I Use an En Dash?
Nope! You don’t use a hyphen or an en dash for a range of citations. Instead, you’ve to write each one out: [5], [6], [7], [8].
Are Abstracts Allowed to Have In-Text Citations in IEEE Style?
No, abstracts generally shouldn’t contain citations as per the IEEE style manual. But you should reconfirm this against the guidelines or sample papers from your target journal.
How to Punctuate IEEE In-Text Citations?
The IEEE style guide advises treating citations as if they are footnote numbers. Footnote numbers are placed after periods, commas, and parentheses, but before colons, dashes, quotation marks, and semicolons.
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