Q: When a bulleted list is introduced by a brief comment, eg, “The principal signs and symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis are as follows,” and all of the items in the bulleted list are from the same source, does a citation need to be placed at the end of each bulleted item or is it sufficient to place the citation at the end of the brief introductory comment?
A: We would recommend placing the citation within the text that introduces the bulleted list if all the items in the list came from the same source. If the items came from multiple sources, then placing the appropriate citation at the end of each item would be necessary.
Q: In this example, would you hyphenate “well child”?
- He was taken for a well-child [or well child] checkup.
A: Yes, we would hyphenate in this case.
Q: The Manual says nothing about how to treat reference citations in the abstract. Should such citations simply be deleted from the abstract and from the reference list or should complete bibliographic details about the reference be inserted in the abstract parenthetically?
A: You are quite right that the Manual does not mention how to treat references in the abstract as we never include reference citations (either as superscript numbers or within parentheses in the text) in the abstract (see 2.3, fourth bullet, re not citing references in an abstract). If an author has included references in an abstract, it doesn’t seem advisable to delete the references altogether. Discuss with the author trying to include the references early on in the manuscript itself. It seems unlikely that an author would consider a reference important enough to include in the abstract and then not cite it in the text.
Q: I don’t see anything in the Manual about how to style “e-mail,” ie, with or without a hyphen. Help, please.
A: Although the Manual doesn’t specifically address this point, it does include guidance on capping (see 10.7) and, in that section, it’s clear that the Manual recommends a hyphen in “e-mail.” If you use the Manual online, for questions like this the “quick search” box is invaluable. Just type the term you are looking for into the search box and the results should guide you. If you had begun with “email,” you would have gotten no results, which would—I hope—have tipped you off to try “e-mail,” which produces 3 pages of results.—Cheryl Iverson, MA