Style Guide

When preparing contributions, contributors are requested to observe the following conventions:

(1) Submissions should be in English and in Times New Roman font, 12-font size double-spacing. Footnotes and quotations are single-spaced in 10-font size. MSWord is preferred but WordPerfect is acceptable. The name, address and phone number, academic qualifications, professional and academic status held by the author to be included on a separate page.

(2) Absent exceptional circumstances, articles should be no more than 10 000 words in length. Comments and case notes should be no more than 5 000 words in length. Book review lengths depend on the nature of the review.

(3) All articles must be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words in length.

(4) Electronic copy should be in its final form as corrections on proofs will be limited to grammatical and stylistic errors or changes necessitated by legislative developments.

(5) Authors should pay meticulous attention to the accuracy of case names, citations and other references, judges’ names and quotations. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that the house style is adhered to and articles will be returned to authors to correct for failure to observe the house style.

(6) It is assumed that an article submitted to the South African Journal of Criminal Justice has not been submitted to another publisher or journal. It is the policy of Juta and Company Ltd not to publish material that has already been published elsewhere. Please note that, on publication, copyright in all material is vested jointly in Juta and Company Ltd and the contributor.

(7) The following style must be observed for contributions to be accepted for publication:

(a) Levels of headings should be clearly indicated and marked H1, H2, H3 etc (where the number indicates the level of heading).

(b) Gender-neutral language should be used.

(c) As a general rule abbreviations should not be used and names of countries or organisations must be spelled out in full (thus United Nations instead of UN). Note that full stops are not used following any abbreviations.

(d) In articles, references to cases, journals, statutes and books are to appear in footnotes, numbered consecutively throughout and ending with a full stop. In comments and case notes the references are incorporated in the text in round brackets.

(e) References should be cited in the following manner:

(i) Cases

S v De Blom 1977 (3) SA 513 (A).

S v Makwanyane 1995 (2) SACR 1 (CC).

There is no need to refer to ‘and Others’ or ‘and Another’.

(ii) Journals

JM Burchell ‘Wilful blindness and the criminal law’ (1985) 9 SACJ 261.

(Note: the author’s initials precede the surname, no space between initials; the title of the article is in single quotation marks; the year of publication is in brackets; the volume number of the journal must be provided; the officially recognised journal title is italicised; the page on which the article commences and the page on which the citation appears must be included.)

K Askin ‘Sexual violence in decisions and indictments of the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals: Current status’ (1999) 93 AJIL 97 at 98n8.

(iii) Books

CR Snyman Criminal Law 5ed (1990) 555.

(Note: the author’s initials precede the surname, no space between initials and edition number; the word ‘page’ (or ‘p’), the publisher and place of publication of books are not included.)

(iv) Statutes

Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977.

(Note: do not use only the number and year (Act 51 of 1977))

Sections of an Act are referred to by the abbreviation ‘s’ and plural ‘ss’. Subsections by ‘subsec’ and ‘subsecs’, except at the beginning of a sentence where the word is written in full (‘Section’ or ‘Subsection’).

(v) Theses

A Dhlamini Family Violence in South African Criminal Law LLM (Natal) (1960) 30.

(vi) Law Commission

South African Law Commission Discussion Paper 102 (Project 107) ‘Sexual Offences: Process and Procedure’ (2002) at para 2.3.4.

(vii) Internet references/citations

A Dworkin ‘The United States and the International Criminal Court: A briefing’ Crimes of War Project, 15 May 2002, available at http://www.crimesofwar.org/onnews/news-us-icc.html, accessed on 27 February 2003.

(Note: Citation from the official, hard copy compilation is preferred.

Where necessary, internet citations are acceptable but must be meticulously checked for accuracy and must be complete. The actual website is to be written in italics without brackets and the date on which the site was accessed must be reflected. If no page references are available, then the author must locate the citation by means of paragraph and/or section headings.)

(f) Subsequent references:

(i) Cases

S v De Blom supra (n000) at 123B-C.

(Note: supra is not underlined; 000 is the number of the footnote in which the case is first referred to with no spaces between the brackets; the page referred to is indicated by ‘at’ and (if necessary) the inclusion of side letters in upper or lower case, as in the judgment, with no spaces.)

(ii) Journal articles

Burchell op cit (n000) 123.

(iii) Books

Snyman op cit (n000) 234.

Note: only the author’s surname is used; op cit is not italicised; 000 is the number of the footnote in which the work is first referred to.

(iv) Statutes are repeated in full in subsequent references.

Note: In all instances, ‘Ibid’ is used only when repeating the immediately preceding reference exactly; page numbers, authors’ names, section numbers, etc are superfluous and incorrectly used with ibid.

(g) Quotations should be in single quotation marks (‘Breakwater Declaration’). Quotations within quotations are in double quotation marks (‘ “Breakwater Declaration” ’). Quotations longer than three lines are to be indented, singlespaced in 10-font size.

(h) The style of the Journal avoids the use of capital letters. Thus, as a general rule, write ‘a court’, ‘the judge’, ‘the minister’, ‘the government’, ‘the state’. Capitals should be used where referring to individual institutions with given names:

‘the Appellate Division’, ‘the Natal Provincial Division’, ‘the United Nations’, etc.

Examples:

1 CR Snyman Criminal Law 5ed (1990) 555.

2 Ibid.

3 JM Burchell ‘Wilful blindness and the criminal law’ (1985) 9 SACJ 261.

4 S v Makwanyane 1995 (2) SACR 1 (CC).

5 S v Makwanyane supra (n4) at 478I-J.

6 Snyman op cit (n1) 179.

7 Burchell op cit (n3) 262.

8 Section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977. Cf s 29.

9 A Dhlamini Family Violence in South African Criminal Law LLM (Natal) (1960) 30.

10 Dhlamini op cit (n9) 78.