37 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality ‘vs.’ and ‘viz.’ If you’re going to use them, do so with complete consistency. Technically speaking, none of these Latin abbreviations needs to be in italics and the full stops should appear where I’ve placed them here, but some guidelines will vary this slightly by using italics or eliminating the full stops, so it’s always worth checking. As a general rule of good style, these Latin abbreviations should be used only in parenthetical material (i.e., inside parentheses): main sentences that use ‘e.g.,’ ‘i.e.’ and ‘cf.’ often become incomprehensible, especially if the writer isn’t entirely sure exactly what the abbreviations mean (‘cf.,’ for instance, which is misused more often than not, means ‘compare,’ not ‘see’). So write out exactly what you mean in your main sentences, and when you do use these Latin abbreviations parenthetically, be sure you know what they mean and use them correctly. The Latin abbreviations ‘et al.,’ ‘ibid.,’ ‘loc. cit.’ and ‘op. cit.’ are generally used in the context of reference lists, footnotes, endnotes and citations. The last two – ‘loc. cit.’ and ‘op. cit.’ – tended to be confusing even when they were widely used, and thankfully have been virtually abandoned in modern scholarship, so you’re most likely to find guidelines warning against their use than instructing authors on how to use them: certainly, they’re best avoided. ‘Ibid.,’ on the other hand, is still used in footnote and endnote references in the humanities. It abbreviates ‘ibidem,’ which means ‘in the same place’ or ‘in that very place,’ so is used instead of repeating bibliographical information when a source is cited immediately after it has been cited in the preceding note (or sentence within a note). Because it means ‘in that very place,’ it must be used with great care: only if everything about the second citation is exactly the same as the first can it be used alone. For example, if the reference in footnote 1 is ‘Smith, Amadeus, p. 4’ and you need to cite the same author, book and page number in footnote 2, then ‘ibid.’ can PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk