38 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality be used alone, but if you’re citing the same author and book in footnote 2 with a different page number, then the page number should be added: ‘ibid., p. 7.’ Never use ‘ibid.’ if its meaning is potentially unclear: if, for instance, you’ve cited two sources in footnote 1 and you use ‘ibid.’ in footnote 2, your readers will not be able to tell which source you mean by ‘ibid.’ In such cases more detail must be provided – ‘Smith, ibid.,’ for example – or the use of ‘ibid.’ should be avoided altogether. The meaning of ‘idem’ and ‘eadem’ is similar, so although they’re not abbreviations, they should be considered along with these referencing abbreviations. They both mean ‘the same,’ with ‘idem’ being the masculine form and ‘eadem’ the feminine, and although they tend to appear in English dictionaries (especially ‘idem’) so don’t need to be in italic font, they are often italicised. They are used predominantly in footnotes and endnotes when an author who has just been cited is immediately cited a second time. For example, if you’ve just cited ‘Smith, Amadeus, p. 4’ and you’re now citing ‘Smith, Beethoven, p. 8,’ you can use ‘idem, Beethoven, p. 8’ if Smith is a man or ‘eadem, Beethoven, p. 8’ if Smith is a woman. As with ‘ibid.,’ however, these Latin terms need to be used only when it’s absolutely clear which author is being cited, and if there is any potential for confusion, don’t use them. Since many journals don’t encourage the use of such Latin shortcuts, it’s also a good idea to check the journal guidelines and only use them if their use is specified as acceptable. The Latin abbreviation ‘et al.’ is used in virtually all academic and scientific journals when referring to authors of a multi-author work. It abbreviates ‘et alii’ (masculine), ‘et aliae’ (feminine) or ‘et alia’ (neuter, although this meaning isn’t really relevant for authors, who are necessarily men or women rather than objects without gender). PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk