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BMB 443W: Laboratory in Protein Purification and Enzymology

Penn State Berks

CSE Name-Year (N-Y) System

CSE style describes three systems for references; for most BMB courses at Berks you will be using the Name-Year (N-Y) system:

Name-Year (N-Y) system

  • Uses the surname of the author and the year of publication within the text to refer to the end references
  • End references are then listed alphabetically by author and then by year.
  • The general sequence of information in the end reference is author names are followed by the year of publication followed by the title, and additional items.

    In text example: By contrast, the several antisera that have been raised against Sp1, a defined RNA polymerase II transcription factor (Kadonaga 1986), stain exclusively the nucleus...

General Principles

  • In the N-Y system, author names are followed by the year of publication, then the title, then all the other items.
  • Author names with initials are recommended for reference lists that also include references to journal articles, for which names with initials are preferred. When there are 2-10 authors, all should be named; if more than 10 authors, list the first 10 followed by “and others”.
  • Throughout CSE style, no commas are used to offset the author's last name from his or her initials, no space separates the first and middle initial, and periods do not, in general, follow initials.
  • In CSE style, titles of periodicals (newspapers, journals, magazines) are capitalized as they normally are; book titles and article titles have only the first word of the title (and of any subtitles), as well as proper nouns, capitalized. Obvious exceptions are capitalized abbreviations and symbols (e.g., HIV-1, DDAVP, pH).

 

Additional CSE Resources