BUCLD Proceedings info for contributors

BUCLD 50: Proceedings of the 50th annual
Boston University Conference on Language Development

Advance information | Letter to authors | Order form

Information for contributors
Submission deadline: January 25, 2026

As someone who presented a talk or poster, you are invited to contribute your paper to the Proceedings of the annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Please contribute so more people can learn about your research! Cascadilla Press will publish the entire proceedings both in print and online with open access.

Guidelines are the same for talks and for posters. Our formatting requirements are below the timeline on this page.

To publish your paper in the proceedings, you will need to upload your paper in PDF format and your abstract in text format by January 25 to the BUCLD Papers and Abstracts dropbox. Do not email your paper or abstract to Cascadilla Press unless specifically requested to do so, and do not send a Word file of your paper.

Sign the publication rights form and upload it by January 25 to the separate BUCLD Rights Forms dropbox.

Thanks for your time, and if you have any questions, please contact bucld@cascadilla.com.

Yours,

Michael Bernstein
Cascadilla Press

Timeline

Step 1: Finish your paper, proofread it, and format it according to the style sheet below. Make a PDF file of your paper. You must proofread your paper carefully before sending it in. At the proof approval stage, you will not be able to fix problems which are in your original file.

Step 2: By January 25, complete the publication rights form and upload it to the BUCLD Rights Forms dropbox. Make sure your coauthors also complete and upload that form. Separately, upload your paper and your abstract to the BUCLD Papers and Abstracts dropbox.

Step 3: We will start publication work on your paper in stages and let you know over the next couple of months if we need any formatting changes. Make formatting changes that we tell you about, and upload a corrected PDF file of your paper.

Step 4: After your PDF file's formatting is approved and we have done some of the publication work here, we will send you a proof of your paper containing a scanned image of each page. That proof is only to ensure that what we see is what you intended without font or image glitches. It is not an opportunity to make other changes. Check that proof very carefully before you approve it, because any problems in that proof are very likely to appear in the published book.

Step 5: We will complete publication work on all papers and let you know when the proceedings is published!

Style Sheet

You should treat this style sheet like a checklist, and make sure you have followed every point before you upload your paper. You must proofread your paper carefully before sending it in. At the proof approval stage, you will not be able to fix problems which are in your original file.

On our web site, there is a one-page example in Acrobat (pdf) format of how your paper should look. Please compare it to how your paper actually looks before you mail in your paper. Important: Don't use the "fit to page" option when printing the pdf file, or the page will print out at a reduced size. The text block must be 4.5 inches across at its widest point.

If you have any questions, please contact bucld@cascadilla.com.

Page limit

The general page limit is 14 pages, including appendices and references. There is no page limit this year for keynote, plenary, and symposium speakers. You aren't obliged to use all the allotted pages, of course.

We are allowing up to 4 extra pages this year for papers, at a cost of $75 per additional page. This gives authors an option for including some extra material without raising the cost of the proceedings. We will send you an invoice for any extra pages.

Margins

For 8.5" x 11" (US Letter) page setup: left, right, and bottom margins must be 2 inches. The top margin must be 1.75 inches. No material may go beyond these margins under any circumstances. Please print out a page of your paper at 100% (not reduced) and measure the width of the text block. It must be 4.5 inches across. If it is not 4.5 inches across, then something is wrong.

For A4 page setup: margins must be 1.884 inches left and right, 1.75 inches on the top, and 2.693 inches on the bottom. No material may go beyond these margins under any circumstances. Please print out a page of your paper at 100% (not reduced) and measure the width of the text block. It must be 4.5 inches (114.3 mm) across. If it is not 4.5 (114.3 mm) inches across, then something is wrong.

Font

The font must be Times or Times New Roman 10-point throughout for text, examples, tables, footnotes, and references. Footnotes and references must be 9-point. Note: Times or fonts that look identical to Times are available for TeX; if you don't know how to get one, ask your local computer expert to help.

Superscripted and subscripted material can be smaller, but must be large enough to read comfortably when printed.

Figures may use other fonts. Serif fonts must be at least 9 point. Sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Helvetica are easier to read at small sizes, so they must be at least 8 point. Keep in mind that if you reduce the size of a figure when you place it, the font size shrinks the same amount.

Title and author

Before the title at the top of the first page, type the following three lines in Times 10-point, single-spaced:

BUCLD 50 Proceedings
To be published in 2026 by Cascadilla Press
Rights forms signed by all authors

These three lines will be removed before publication, but we need these lines on your paper when you send it to us. Do not squeeze them into two lines; there must be three lines of text before your title.

Place your title at the top of the first page immediately after these three lines.

The title must be 12-point bold, centered.

Capitalize the first word and last word of the title and sub-title, and then capitalize all words except prepositions up to 4 letters long, determiners, and coordinating conjunctions. Words cited as linguistic examples in the title or subtitle must be bold italic, and must be lowercase except when they are the first word in the title or subtitle. For hyphenated compounds, capitalize all elements. Capitalize means making the first letter a capital letter. Do not put any words in your title in ALL CAPS (except for acronyms). Here are correct examples:

Seeing the Structure: How Children Describe Grammar in a Non-Spoken Paradigm
When You Want to Use a Question Word, but Are Not Sure About why
The title capitalization rules changed with Chicago Manual of Style 18, which we are following for books we began working on in 2025. You can select Chicago at titlecaseconverter.com to check your title (except for lowercasing linguistic examples).

After the title, skip a line, and list all authors on the following line. Author names must be 10-point bold, centered. Do not use an ampersand; spell out the word 'and'.

Author One
Author One and Author Two
Author One, Author Two, and Author Three

Skip two lines before the start of your text.

Line spacing, indents, and justification

Text must be single-spaced.

Text, footnotes, and references must be fully justified (flush with left and right margins).

Do not skip a line between paragraphs.

The first line of each paragraph must be indented 0.25 inch, including the first paragraph after a section heading.

Examples

Examples should be in the same font and font size as the text of the paper. Use the following layout for examples:

(1)  a. Example example.
        Gloss   gloss
        'Translation.'

Examples should not be indented.

Skip one line before and after examples.

Words from examples referred to in the text or in your title should be in italics.

Headings

Number your section headings, starting with 1.

You do not have to have a heading for the introduction to your paper, but if you do it must be numbered 1 (not 0).

Section headings must be left-justified.

Section numbers and headings must be 10-point bold, not underlined.

Section numbers must be followed by a period and a space, not a tab. Subsection numbers must also be followed by a final period and a space.

Skip one line before and after section headings.

Use the same format for headings and for subheadings, if you decide to use subheadings. Do not skip a line directly between a heading and a subheading. For example, if section 4 presents results for 3 experiments, you could write:

4. Results
4.1. Experiment 1

        In this experiment we found . . .

4.2. Experiment 2

        The results of the second experiment were not as . . .

4.3. Experiment 3

        We were startled to discover that . . .

Tables and figures

Tables and figures must be in their actual positions in the paper. Do not anchor tables and figures to the top or bottom of a page, and do not wrap text around them. Do not place tables and figures at the end or on separate pages. Do not use color in your tables and figures. Make sure that any text in your tables and figures is at a large enough font size to read easily. Tables and figures must be crisp when viewed on screen and when printed. If they are blurry when the text paragraphs are crisp, this indicates that their resolution is too low. Images should be at least 300 dpi at their final size.

Number tables and figures separately.

The label or title for a table must be before the table, left-justified, and bold. The label or caption for a figure must be after the figure, left-justified, and bold.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used to comment on the content of your paper. Do not use footnotes for references.

Footnotes should be at the bottom of the relevant page. Do not use endnotes.

Footnotes should be in 9-point type, rather than the 10-point used in the text.

Do not skip lines between footnotes if you have more than one footnote on a page.

Footnotes must be single-spaced.

Your first footnote should be used for author affiliation, author contact information, and acknowledgments. This footnote must be in paragraph format, so use paragraph indents in the same way as in any other footnote. Author affiliation and contact information should be as follows: Author name, affiliation, contact information (such as email address). Repeat as needed for each author, all in a single paragraph. Please do include an email address for at least one author. Use a * (an asterisk) rather than a number for this author and acknowledgments footnote. Within the text, put the * in the text at the end of the first section heading and make the color of the * white so it won't print.

Appendices

If you have any appendices, they must come after all material except the references. The references must be the last item in the paper, not the appendices.

References

Immediately after your text and any appendices, skip one line and type References (in 10-point bold, left-justified). Do not add a page break before the references section.

Skip one line, and start the references. Do not skip lines between references.

References must be in 9-point type, rather than the 10-point used in the text.

References must be single-spaced.

Second and successive lines for each reference must be indented 0.25 inch. (This is called a hanging indent, and is backwards from how a regular paragraph is indented. Check your word processor's manual or online help for instructions on how to create a hanging indent.)

You may use any common format (LSA, MLA, APA, etc.) for the references, as long as you use that format for all of your references. If your preferred format requires first initials instead of full first names, we require one change to that format: You must include full first names for all authors and editors in your references unless they published the original work using only initials. For example, you must use "Chomsky, Noam" rather than "Chomsky, N."

Printing

Print out your paper before you submit the PDF file to Cascadilla Press. Make sure you print it at 100% (not scaled up or down).

Measure the margins on the printed pages. Margins sometimes change between the version on your screen and the printed version. Also make sure that all of your tables and figures are inside the margins.

A good way to check your margins on the printed version is to cut out a card 4.5 inches wide and 7.25 inches long (or 11.4 x 18.4 cm). Cover the text on your page with the card. If you can see text or figures past any edge of the card, you need to correct your margins to make them larger (and the text block narrower). If you can slide the card from side to side without revealing any text, you need to make your side margins smaller (and the text block wider).

Do not worry if some or all text blocks are a bit shorter than the card -- that is expected. If text blocks are longer than the card, then you need to increase your bottom margin to make the text block shorter.

Look at all of the text in your figures and tables. Is any text small, blurry, or hard to read in any way? If it is small, blurry, or hard to read, you need to redo that figure or table to make the text large enough to read comfortably. You may get a better version by creating a separate PDF file for that figure or table directly from the software you used to create it. In that case, send us that better version as a separate PDF file, but also leave the unwanted version in your paper to hold the place for the better version. We will be able to swap in the better version from one PDF file to another.

Proofread your paper one more time. You may notice different errors on a printed page than you notice on screen. Remember that the paper you give us will be printed as we receive it, including typos. We make occasional corrections when we notice a problem, but we do not proofread your paper.

If you have any questions, please contact bucld@cascadilla.com.

BUCLD Proceedings publication rights form

Go to http://www.cascadilla.com/bucld-rights.html

Future publication in a journal

We sometimes receive questions about whether authors can publish a proceedings paper and later publish a journal article that overlaps with that paper or expands on that paper. It is common and appropriate to publish a proceedings paper on a topic, continue to develop your research and ideas, and then publish a more developed journal article.

Here is a statement from the editors of Language Acquisition: "A paper overlapping with another previously published in conference proceedings can be considered for publication in Language Acquisition, provided that the submitted paper includes substantially more developed arguments, data or discussion."

Language explains in their Notes to Contributors: "If some of the results in a submitted paper have been published elsewhere, the paper you submit should build on those results and should develop the ideas and evidence along new lines or in greater depth."

You do not need to obtain permission from Cascadilla Press to republish any identical or further developed portions from a paper you published in the BUCLD Proceedings, because you retain the copyright to your paper. You must acknowledge the earlier publication appropriately, of course.

Instructions for abstracts

When you send us your paper, please also send us a one-paragraph abstract of your paper in a separate text file. This is not for inclusion in the proceedings, but rather to make it easier for other people to find your paper. The abstract should not be more than 250 words. The abstract must be one single paragraph. Examples must be contained in the single paragraph, not on separate lines. Do not use any phonetic characters, phonetic fonts, or other specialty fonts. Put "abstract" at the beginning, followed by the title and author. If you want to use italics, put <i> at the start of the italics and </i> at the end of the italics. No other formatting is allowed in the abstract.

Instructions for your PDF file

We need a PDF file of your paper. We will only be able to accept PDF files (not Word, WordPerfect, TeX, or anything else).

It is very important that the PDF file be exactly what you want. The best way to ensure this is to create your PDF file, print out that PDF file for yourself, and check the PDF printout carefully to make sure that no fonts are missing or changed, no material goes beyond the margins, and your images all look correct.

When you generate the PDF file for your paper, make sure you embed ALL fonts. If you use a phonetic character font, you must embed that font and check any proofs carefully, or else the published book may contain arbitrary letters or symbols instead of the characters you intended.

After your PDF file's formatting is approved, we will send you a first proof of your paper containing a scanned image of each page. Check that first proof very carefully before you approve it, because any problems in that proof are very likely to appear in the published book.

Information for contributors Submission deadline: January 25, 2026