Every journal seems to have its own format for citing references, mostly a variant of one or other of the Big 5. They are all, to a greater or lesser extent, a pain to conform to and every publication has one or more conventions that seem to me to be unnecessarily fussy and inappropriate for the digital age. Here I’ve extracted from Google Scholar the citation recommendations for one of my papers and listed what I see are the good and bad points. I haven’t considered typeface conventions such as bolding or italic (both of which I incline to think should be made redundant). Finally I give my preferred version which I think is neater and much easier on the eyes and keyboard.
Vancouver
Armstead I, Donnison I, Aubry S, Harper J, Hörtensteiner S, James C, Mani J, Moffet M, Ougham H, Roberts L, Thomas A. From crop to model to crop: identifying the genetic basis of the staygreen mutation in the Lolium/Festuca forage and amenity grasses. New Phytologist. 2006 Dec 1;172(4):592-7.
- Things I like: minimal punctuation in the author list. No ‘and’ or ampersand. Full title of journal. Page numbers preceded by colon.
- Things I don’t like: year of publication after journal title. Unnecessary inclusion of month and date of publication. Part number. Final page number not in full.
Harvard
Armstead, I., Donnison, I., Aubry, S., Harper, J., Hörtensteiner, S., James, C., Mani, J., Moffet, M., Ougham, H., Roberts, L. and Thomas, A., 2006. From crop to model to crop: identifying the genetic basis of the staygreen mutation in the Lolium/Festuca forage and amenity grasses. New Phytologist, 172(4), pp.592-597.
- Things I like: year of publication immediately after author list, and not bracketed. Full name of journal. No month and date of publication. Final page number in full.
- Things I don’t like: grossly excessive punctuation of author names. Last author preceded by ‘and’. Journal name followed by comma. Part number. Page numbers preceded by comma. Pages identified as pp.
Chicago
Armstead, Ian, Iain Donnison, Sylvain Aubry, John Harper, Stefan Hörtensteiner, Caron James, Jan Mani et al. “From crop to model to crop: identifying the genetic basis of the staygreen mutation in the Lolium/Festuca forage and amenity grasses.” New Phytologist 172, no. 4 (2006): 592-597.
- Things I like: Journal name in full. Page numbers in full and preceded by colon
- Things I don’t like: author given names (I know this tends to be the rule in humanities publications, but not in science papers). Incomplete author list, ending ‘et al’. Title in quotes. Part number. Date of publication near the end.
APA
Armstead, I., Donnison, I., Aubry, S., Harper, J., Hörtensteiner, S., James, C., … & Thomas, A. (2006). From crop to model to crop: identifying the genetic basis of the staygreen mutation in the Lolium/Festuca forage and amenity grasses. New Phytologist, 172(4), 592-597.
- Things I like: Date after author list. Journal title in full, page numbers in full.
- Things I don’t like: Too much punctuation of author list. List incomplete (…). Ampersand. Date in parentheses. Journal title followed by comma.
MLA
Armstead, Ian, et al. “From crop to model to crop: identifying the genetic basis of the staygreen mutation in the Lolium/Festuca forage and amenity grasses.” New Phytologist 172.4 (2006): 592-597.
- Things I like: Journal name in full. Colon before page numbers. Page numbers in full.
- Things I don’t like: Author given name, et al. Title in quotes. Part number. Year at end.
Thomas (?)
Here’s my preferred style, incorporating what I believe to be the best elements of the above and avoiding the annoyances. This also gives me the opportunity to correct the Scholar entry, which has an incomplete title and omits the three final co-authors (including me).
Armstead I, Donnison I, Aubry S, Harper J, Hörtensteiner S, James C, Mani J, Moffet M, Ougham H, Roberts L, Thomas A, Weeden N, Thomas H, King I. 2006. From crop to model to crop: identifying the genetic basis of the staygreen mutation in the forage grass Festuca pratensis (Huds.) New Phytologist 172: 592-597.
I should add that the list of my publications on this site breaks my own rules, by putting author name initials before surnames. This is because the list has been growing for a long time (48 years to be exact, gulp!) and it’s too big to go back and re-format it now. I take refuge behind Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wisdom ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’.