Professor Rath's
home page.
OK, here are some formatting rules for the papers. This guide should cover 95% of the posibilities. Refer to the guide at the end if you don't find your case here. I want all citations to be in footnotes (preferred) or endnotes. No parenthetical citations.
I strongly recommend that you use Firefox browser and install the Zotero plugin and the zotero word or open office add-ons, as shown in class. I would recommend setting up the sync function so that you can have access to your bibliography database from anywhere as long as you have a net connection. Zotero will save you huge amounts of time and automate one of the most tedious parts of academic writing as well as providing you with an organized, searchable system of note-taking. Do it now!
The goal of a citation is to make the cited resource accessible to the
reader. This has two purposes. First it honors the work of other people
and second it prevents charges of plagiarism.
So what do you cite? Anything that is not yours, whether you quote an
exact quote or borrow an idea. Generally, the working rule is that if it
could be found in a basic textbook or encyclopedia article you don't have
to quote it as its considered common knowledge. Concerning Wikepedia, it is a good place to start your
research, but don't end there. Find out where the article gets its
information from, track down that information, see if it is reliable, and
cite that rather than Wikepedia.
If you are not certain whether to cite, cite! Using other people's ideas
without citing them is plagiarism and grounds for failing the course.
So what do you need to make a good citation?
We will be using the Chicago or Turabian style "note" style (as opposed to "parenthetical" style.
You have to give the author, the title, and the location information -- city, publisher (optional, but either always use it or always don't), volume and issue for journals, volume for multivolume books, and last but not least, don't forget the page numbers! So the first time you cite a particular book, it would look like this (see below for how to treat subsequent citations of the same book):
or, with the publisher,
Note the location and use of the colon and the comma in the second
example.
An article would look like this:
Note that it is just William and Mary Quarterly, not The
William and Mary Quarterly.
An article in an edited volume (a book full of essays by different
authors) would look like this:
If you are quoting a primary or secondary source that appears within a
book:
For web sites, give the author if available, title of the web page, the
name of the larger web site, and the URL. For example:
or
After you have made the first reference to a book or article or web site
you abbreviate the entry to author's last name, short title, and page or
URL. The short title consists of the title up to the colon, skipping the
subtitle, and removing lead "the"s and "a"s. For example:
Note that citations are separated by semi-colons and that where
punctuation occurs with quotation marks the order is for the punctuation
mark to come first (within the quote), followed by the quotation mark. (;"
not ";).
It is better to group your citations together in one big footnote at the
end of a paragraph or at the end of the cited part of the paragraph with
the multiple citations separated by semicolons than it is to have lots of
footnotes in a paragraph with single citations. If your paragraph maps out
several people's ideas, followed by your own analysis, you put the
footnote number right after the other people's ideas and before your own
rather than at the end of the paragraph. That way, your own ideas are
marked by the absence of footnoting...no footnote means you are
claiming the idea as your own. The way I work is to do the individual
footnotes, with everything cited immediately after its appearence in the
text during the first drafts. That way you don't lose track of anything.
Then in the last draft, combine the footnotes to about one per paragraph.
This is not a hard and fast rule, but a style convention that keeps your
paper easier to read. Use your judgment as to what will be easiest to
read. You can freely mix first and subsequent (short) citations. If done
correctly, footnoting means you do not need a bibliography, as all the
information is in the notes. Also, footnotes always use first names first
-- you are not alphabetizing, so there is no need to put last names first.
Finally, in the text, the footnote or endnote reference should come after
all punctuation:
This should answer about 95 % of your formatting questions if you read it carefully. Remember to use short citation (usually just author's last name, abbreviated title, and page number -- author's name is not enough) for second and subsequent references to a source. If you footnote properly, you do not need to include your bibliography. The University of Chicago, from which comes Turabian style, has a short guide to citations that covers more than I do here. You want to use the examples marked with an "n." Also, here is a web page from Georgetown University showing Turabian formatting for footnotes. Here is one from Duke University. These go into more detail. Note a couple of differences between my page and the Duke and Georgetown pages: On mine it is not necessary to name the publisher, or give access dates for web sites while on the other two sites it is. I do not care which way you do it as long as you are consistent.