Style Guidelines

Citations and References 

Catalyst uses The Chicago Manual of Style’s author-date system for citations, following the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. Consult Chicago’s Citation Quick Guide, Author-Date: Sample Citations for examples.

Below are some examples of common types of citations:

Book:
Puar, Jasbir K. 2017. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Duke University Press. 

(Puar 2017)

Journal Article:
Lee, Rachel. 2020. “A Lattice of Chemicalized Kinship: Toxicant Reckoning in a Depressive-Reparative Mode.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 6 (1): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v6i1.33904.

(Lee 2020) 

Chapter in Edited Book:
Pollock, Anne. 2016. “Queering Endocrine Disruption.” In Object-Oriented Feminism, edited by Katherine Behar, 183–99. University of Minnesota Press.

(Pollock 2016)

Website (without publication date):
SisterSong: Women of Reproductive Justice Collective. “Our Mission.” n.d. Accessed August 11, 2020. https://www.sistersong.net/.

(SisterSong, n.d.)

News Article:
Love, Juliette, Matt Stevens, and Lazaro Gamino. 2020. “A Record 76% of Americans Can Vote by Mail in 2020.” New York Times, August 11. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/11/us/politics/vote-by-mail-us-states.html.

(Love et al. 2020) 

Style Notes

Original articles use standard American English. However, the journal allows for translations of published materials. The journal follows the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and most stylistic conventions follow The Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.).

Below are some notes regarding Catalyst’s in-house style, as well as common issues we encounter in copyediting. Please review your manuscript carefully prior to submission and copyediting to ensure that it is in accordance with these guidelines.

Abbreviations

  • Names of countries, institutions, groups, and political parties (e.g., European Union, National Science Foundation) should be spelled out on their first use and abbreviated thereafter (e.g., EU, NSF), except when used as an adjective (e.g., US correspondent). 
  • Use i.e. and e.g. only in parenthesis; instead, spell out “that is,” and “for example” in sentences.

Abstracts

  • Abstracts for Original Research articles (including for special sections) should be no longer than 200 words.
  • Abstracts for all other submission formats—except book reviews—should be no longer than 75 words.
  • Abstracts for book reviews should simply include “Review of [book title], by [author] ([press], [year]),” for example:
    • Review of Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and the Possibilities of Biology, by Angela Willey (Duke University Press, 2016)

Authors and Academic Titles

  • Upon first mention of an author’s name, use the first and last name; for subsequent uses, use last name only.
  • Use lowercase for job titles, fields of study, academic positions, etc. (e.g., “She is an associate professor of women’s studies at…”), except in cases in which you are using a formal title (e.g., “She is the Canada Research Chair of Gender Studies at…”).

Author Bios

Author bios should be 1 to 2 sentences long and appear at the bottom of all articles, below all references.

Dates and Numbers

  • Dates format Month day, year: (e.g., December 2, 1964).
  • Decades should not include apostrophes (e.g., 1970s, 1980s).
  • Do not use hyphens between dates in a sentence (e.g., “from 1940 to 1945,” “between 1980 and 1981”).
  • When noting centuries, use ordinal numbers (e.g., nineteenth century, twentieth century, twenty-first century). Include a hyphen when dates are used as adjectives (e.g., “nineteenth-century manuscript”).
  • Whole numbers from one to ninety-nine should be spelled out except when in series of quantities.
  • Percentages should be expressed as numerals (e.g., 11 percent, 20 percent), except when starting a sentence.
  • Numbers preceding abbreviations should be in figures (e.g., 51 kg, 4 lb), except when starting a sentence.
  • Use an en-dash between page numbers and date ranges (e.g., pp. 1–100, 1990–1999). Page numbers are elided to two digits (e.g., 234–38). 

Figures and Tables

Figures and tables should include captions at the bottom in italics. Captions should be flushed left, with titles and numbers (e.g. “Figure 1: Caption” or “Table 1: Caption”).

Headings

Please use Microsoft Word’s heading tags to indicate the level of heading (this helps to format correctly for publication):

  • Article titles should be in headline-style (title case) capitalization; prepositions of five letters or more are also capitalized; bold, centered.
  • Heading 1 should also use headline-style capitalization, bold, left-aligned.
  • Heading 2 should use sentence-style capitalization (and capitalize first word following a colon), left-aligned, italicized.

Indigenous & Identity Terms

  • Capitalize Indigenous and Black. Catalyst generally follows the advice of the Elements of Indigenous Style (2nd ed., Younging and Cariou, Brush Education, 2025), or if the article is written by an Indigenous author, follows their lead on capitalization.
  • Please refer to specific Indigenous nations rather than the blanket category whenever possible. Catalyst uses Indigenous over Indian or Native, unless these terms are used in original source material, or the author is following the lead of an Indigenous author or publication.

Non-English Words

  • Non-English words used in a text should generally be italicized. However, proper nouns (including places, institutions, companies, brand names, etc.) from other languages are generally not italicized, even on first mention (with an exception of titles of books or other formats that would otherwise be italicized). For example:
    • According to scholars, the concept of mestizaje is a complex.... 
    • The exhibition, held at the Galería de la Raza in San Francisco, opened…

Punctuation

  • Use serial comma (x, y, and z).
  • Do not use a comma after short adverbial phrases (e.g., “In 2019 there was no comma…”).
  • For parenthetical dash, use a closed em dash with no spaces (e.g., “The project—an extension on my earlier work—consists of...”).
  • An ellipsis is not necessary at beginning or end of quotations to demonstrate omission. Similarly, square brackets are not necessary around an ellipsis in a quotation. 
  • Use an apostrophe for names that end in “s” (e.g., “Ewers’s text”).
  • Single quotation marks are used only for quotations within quotations (following American conventions). 
  • Scare quotes—which are used to signal an unconventional or ironic use of a term or phrase (and use double quotation marks)—should be kept to a minimum. 

 

Quotations

  • Short quotations should include author name, date, and page or paragraph number, for example: “Quotation…” (Davis 2020, 123).
  • Quotations of ~100 words or longer should be placed in block quotes.
  • For quotations introduced with a phrase, use a comma before the quotation; for quotations introduced with a complete sentence, use a colon before the quotation. For example:
    • As Murphy writes, “Quotation….” (2018, 6).
    • Murphy suggests that x, y, and z are possible: “Quotation…” (2018, 200).
  • For quotations with emphasis (italics) added: add “emphasis added” in square brackets after the emphasized phrase or term. If emphasis is in the original, no annotation is required. 

Titles

Within the text of an article, titles use headline-style (title case) capitalization. Please use the following styling conventions for different forms of text:

  • Italics: Book, journal, and film titles should be italicized. This convention is also used for government reports, names of television programs, works of art, exhibitions, dissertations, and other works that are considered to stand alone (rather than contribute to a greater whole). 
  • Quotation Marks: Article titles, book chapters, blog posts, song titles, episode titles, and other works that are considered part of a greater whole are placed in quotation marks.
  • No Styling: Project names (e.g., The Laundromat Project) and names of websites (e.g., Wikipedia) do not require any styling.

Image & Media Guidelines

For all submissions, including original research and Image & Text works, authors should either: a) hold copyrights for all images or media included; b) have obtained written permissions for publication (this is the author’s responsibility); or c) have obtained documentation demonstrating that a work is in the public domain. Please note that “fair use” does not necessarily allow the publication of media for academic purposes.

For Submission and Publication:

  • Images: Visual images (including photographs, diagrams, visualizations, etc.) should be uploaded individually as .jpg or .tif files in the "supplementary files” section of OJS. Images should also be included as figures within the Word manuscript, alongside the text that references them (please do not put all images at the end). Image files must be provided at a minimum size of 5” wide at a resolution of 150dpi. Please ensure that all images are properly scanned, rotated, cropped, and edited to ensure clarity. For images containing text, please confirm that it is legible, and if not, consider removing or clarifying via caption. 
  • Video: Our website cannot support videos directly for submission or publication. Video should be submitted without author or artist name, if possible, and sent by emailing a secure file service sharing link to editor@catalystjournal.org. For publication, all videos will be uploaded to Catalyst’s Vimeo account. 
  • Audio: Audio submissions should be uploaded in the "supplementary files" section as .mp3 files.

Media Accessibility: In accordance with Catalyst’s commitment to accessibility, authors must provide alternative text for images, transcripts for audio, and closed captions or transcripts for video:

    • Alt text for images should be included in the body of the submission. Alternative text is designed to be read by screen readers during the peer review process and upon publication (consult WebAIM for best practices).
    • Transcripts for audio or video should be provided as a separate text file and also uploaded to the "supplementary files" section.
    • Closed captions are highly recommended for video. However, in some cases, authors may submit a separate text file instead in consultation with lead editors.

Further guidelines regarding the publication of multimedia may be provided during review or production. Please contact editor@catalystjournal.org with questions.