| General Rules about
when to use a citation:
1. Direct quotes, but use as few of
these as possible. Usually, there is no reason to have to
quote material.
2. Using primary source data (numbers,
charts, graphs, census data, letters (personal letters),
pictures (photographs, works of art, drawings), advertising
images and/or copy, oral history. Your
job is to interpret the source, but you must write
down where you found it.
3. Summary of information that supports your
thesis.
a. It is not necessary to document information such as dates
of occurrences (the invasion of Poland, birth/death dates of
well-known people, election dates, etc.) that are easily
obtainable as "fact."
b. Generally, if information is of the "everybody knows"
category, it is not necessary to document your source of
information. My general advice: if it's in your history
textbook, it's probably in the "everybody knows" category.
(Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland and the style of
warfare used there became known as "Blitzkrieg.")
c. You WOULD document your source if
-- you found another historian's summary or description
that is useful as evidence.
For example, Kathy Peiss's description of young
women going in pairs or groups to amusement parks, or Alice
Kessler-Harris' description of the hiring of men rather than
women to operate the more complex machinery in the making of
cloth. In each case, the author has done the research and
documented HER sources, and you can use her ideas but ONLY
IF you give HER the credit!!
d. It is not OK to quote
someone who agrees with you as "evidence" for your thesis.
If your thesis is "Middle-class women of the nineteen-teens
ignored the needs of working class women in their quest for
suffrage," you can't quote a whole string of other authors
who agree with you. You CAN use their supporting
evidence as evidence, though (see item c above.)
It's like someone saying "The War in Iraq is a good
strategy" and then "supporting" that thesis by saying "and
George Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Condoleeza Rice, and my neighbor
Sally say so, too." As you can see, what we would want to
hear is evidence to support why the War in
Iraq is 'good strategy.'
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| How
to make footnotes (Important!)
and the corresponding
Bibliographic entries See
the following sources:
Bridgewater State College Guide or
University
of Georgia Libraries
or
University of California (.pdf)
FOOTNOTES: Note, please, that you MUST learn how to use
"Ibid." That's capital I, b, i, d, period. If you need
to add a page number, it's capital I, b, i, d, period, comma
<page number> period. "Ibid." is an abbreviation for "Ibidem,"
meaning "in the same place."
Also note that when you are documenting a source after the
first time (and not using Ibid.), you use only a PARTIAL
note.
"Once a work has been cited in complete form,
later references to it are shortened. For this,
either short titles or the Latin abbreviation
ibid. (for ibidem, "in the same place")
should be used" (8.84).
Use this form after the first full
reference when there are no
intervening references: |
2. Ibid. |
Use this form when there are no intervening
references and the
reference is to a different page in the same
work: |
3. Ibid., 68. |
Use this form when there are intervening
references between the first full reference
and this one (book and article titles may
be
shortened): |
12. Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, 425. |
| |
13. Ansen, "Spielberg's Obsession," 116. |
(From the University
of Georgia Libraries website. Reading this part does
not excuse you from visiting the "how to"
buttons, above.....)
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Examples
UC Berkeley Library (requires Adobe Acrobat
Reader) An extensive guide with
examples for the footnote and the corresponding bibliography
entry. There is a section for "inline" documenting, but
we're using footnotes.
SEE Ms. Miner's "style
sheet" - examples of multiple-author books, magazines,
newspapers, etc. in both the footnote and in the
Bibliography.
Stylesheet.
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Special Cases
Non-printed Materials - go
to the
Colorado State help guide
PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTATION:
The general rule is to 1. DESCRIBE the item
(for images, it's best to also include a copy
either in the body of the paper or in an appendix.),
then use the "regular format" for where you found it.
For example, Advertisement for soap, The
Ladies' Home Journal, February 1914, 21.
2. If the author or artist is known, then start the
reference with that person's name in the "author" place.
Adams, Steve. Letter to his wife. New York, 2
April 1903. In Collected Letters of New York, ed.
Maya Lawrence Adams, 34. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2003.
3. For an article in a contemporary publication (primary
source) - just go ahead and use the author's name, title of
article, name of magazine or journal, etc., as you would any
other article. (see
Stylesheet, "Magazine
article")
4. For a PRIMARY SOURCE reprinted in a book -- use
the same format as you would any article printed in a book.
Author's name, title of the piece, the name of the book,
etc. (see
Stylesheet, "Essay in a book")
5. For a PRIMARY SOURCE you found on the Web: see the
Turabian Guide (University of Georgia site).
Follow the rules for artist's or author's name or
Description as in items 1-2, then use the Website
information as described in the Guide and/or my Stylesheet.
THE MAIN PURPOSE for all documentation is
this: The reader of your paper must be able to find the
things you found where you said you found them!
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