Articles should be submitted in the house style of LDD. General rules and guidelines appear below. To the extent that the guidelines are not complete, authors may refer to the most recent online volume of LDD.
1. An article should normally not exceed 10 000 words, and may not be accepted if it exceeds this length. An abstract of approximately 200—250 words must accompany the article.
2. The article is headed by (a) the title (b) the author’s name and (c) the author’s current position on three separate lines, as follows:
Monitoring the implementation of socio-economic rights in South Africa:
Some lessons from the international community
NOMTHANDAZO NTLAMA
Researcher, South African Human Rights Commission
Note: academic qualifications are not stated.
3. Subheadings are in bold capitals and numbered, thus:
1 INTRODUCTION
4. Second-tier subheadings are in bold lower case and numbered as follows:
1.2 Theories of state sovereignty
5. Third-tier and further subheadings are lower-case italics and numbered as follows:
1.2.1 The normative debate
6. The first line of each new paragraph (except the first new paragraph following any subheading) is indented.
7. Quotations are placed in double quotation marks. Quotations within quotations are in single quotation marks.
8. Italics (NOT underlining) are used for emphasis and for foreign words in the text. “Foreign words” refers to words or phrases NOT listed in a standard English dictionary (a free version of the Oxford Dictionary is available online at http://www.askoxford.com/?view=uk). A phrase such as “ad hoc”, which is listed in the dictionary, is therefore not italicised.
9. Abbreviations of words (for example, “s” instead of “section”) are used in footnotes, but NOT in the text. Abbreviations of terms are given in brackets the first time the term is used (either in the text or in a footnote); thereafter the abbreviation should be used. For example:
The Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (“PAIA”).
10. Extended quotations of more than three lines are reproduced as separate paragraphs and indented.
References and citations
11. A bibliography must be appended, containing full details of authorities cited.
12. As a rule, lower case is used for title of books, chapters and articles except for proper names, titles and other words that are normally capitalised.
13. Titles of statutes are NOT in italics (e.g. Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995).
14. Books are cited as follows: author’s surname and initial, title of book (in italics); edition, place of publication, publisher and year of publication (in brackets) – for example:
Brown C Principles of private international law: An introduction 7th ed Oxford: Oxford University Press (2008)
If there are more authors than one, or one or more editors, the same style is followed with the necessary adjustments:
Brown C & Green B Principles of private international law: An instroduction 8th ed Oxford: Oxford University Press (2011)
Wilmhurst E & Breau S (eds) Perspectives on the ICRC Study on Customary International Humanitarian Law Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007)
15. Chapters in books: Titles of chapters should be in quotation marks. For example:
McQuoid-Mason D “The role of human rights Institutions in South Africa” in Hossain K, Besselink L, Selassie H & Völker E (eds) Human Rights Commissions and Ombudsman Offices The Hague: Kluwer (2000) 618.
16. Articles are cited as follows: author’s surname and initial, title of article (in double quotation marks), year of publication (in brackets), volume and issue number (where applicable), title of journal (in italics) and page on which the article begins – for example:
Zarate J “The emergence of the new dogs of war: private international security companies, international law, and the new world disorder” (1998) 34 Stanford Journal of International Law 75 at 77.
17. Cases are cited with the parties’ names in italics – e.g. Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA & another v Premier of KwaZulu-Natal & others 2010 (2) BCLR 99 (CC).
18. Electronic sources: citations should include the date when the source was last visited – for example:
Harvey D “Neo-Liberalism as Creative Destruction” (2007) 2 (4) Interfacehs at http://www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br/images/artigos/79_pdf.pdf (accessed 17 April 2011).
19. If there is a substantial number of sources of different categories, they should be classified under sub-headings; for example
Books and chapters in books
Journal articles
Statutes
Cases
Electronic sources
20. Footnotes (NOT endnotes) are used in the text for references to publications or authorities cited. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively and inserted using the automatic “Insert footnote” function in MS Word (or equivalent in other word-processing programmes).
a. When citing a book in a footnote, only the author, title and year of publication should be mentioned; for example:
Brown C Principles of private international law (2008)
b. Articles, electronic sources and cases should similarly be referred to in an abbreviated format. For articles only the author, title (which may be abbreviated), journal and year of publication should be stated. For cases only the names of the principal parties and law report citation should be given. Thus:
Zarate “The emergence of the new dogs of war” (1998) at 77
Harvey “Neo-Liberalism as Creative Destruction” (2007)
Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA v Premier of KwaZulu-Natal 2010 (2) BCLR 99 (CC).
c. If a book or article is cited more than once, the second and subsequent citations should give only the surname of the author(s) and year of publication. If more than one publication by the same author from the same year is cited, an abbreviated version of the title may be used to distinguish them:
See Zarate (1998) at 77
See Zarate “The emergence of the new dogs of war” (1998) at 77
In conclusion…
21. United States English is not used. All articles should be spell-checked using “English (South Africa)” or “English (United Kingdom)” as dictionary language.
22. For practical reasons, all articles should be submitted in MS Word or in a word-processing programme (such as OpenOffice) that is compatible with MS Word.