Updated May 16, 2013
GOOD
STUFF TO KNOW ABOUT FOOTNOTES
WHEN
to footnote
Direct
quotations.
Anytime you use somebody else's words, you must put them
in quotation
marks and footnote your source.
A
long quote of several lines should be indented and single-spaced.
That takes the place of quotation marks, but you still
have to footnote
your source.
Paraphrase.
When you put somebody else's ideas into your own words,
you don't use
quotation marks, but you still must footnote your source.
Otherwise, you are stealing his ideas and claiming them as
your own.
That's cheating.
Facts.
It is very much to your advantage to bring in the experts
to back up what
you say, and prove that you are not making this stuff up.
The ideas should be yours, but your supporting facts
should be traceable
to an expert in the field.
Illustrations,
charts, etc.
If it didn't come out of your clever little brain, you
must acknowledge
your source.
Informational
footnote.
This is to slip in extra tidbits of information that don't
quite belong
in the main flow of your argument.
You
probably won't use this technique much at first.
WHERE
to put your notes
In most cases, the number goes at the end of the sentence
or paragraph.
Text
notes.
In some specialized scientific fields, it is OK to
indicate your source
in parentheses right in the text.
(Often
this is just author's last name and date or page number—with
the full details
given in a bibliography at the end.)
Most other fields will not allow this lazy method, so you
may
as well learn to do it right.
Footnotes.
These go at the bottom of the page.
Back in the days of typewriters, allowing enough space for
the footnotes
used to be a pain in the you-know-where.
But
with computers, footnotes are a breeze.
Endnotes.
These go at the end of the article or chapter.
Back when type was all set
by hand, printers of scholarly
journals liked to bunch the notes at the end, so they could put them
all in
smaller type. It is
much harder for
the reader to flip back and forth, and there is no reason for endnotes
any more.
(With Microsoft Word, endnotes are now harder to do than
footnotes,
because that program uses Roman numerals.)
Stay away from them unless required.
Bibliography.
(Some watered-down programs call it a Works Cited List.)
This is something quite different, and goes at the end of
your paper.
It is a list of all your sources, arranged alphabetically
by the last
names of the authors. You
might
even have something in your bibliography that you consulted but decided
not to
use. In notes, give
the author's
name in its normal order; the order is reversed for alphabetizing the
bibliography.
HOW
to footnote
There
are
several methods, but this one will work most of the
time. Watch very
carefully where
the commas and periods go. Underlining
is the same as italicizing. For
each type of source, the note format is shown first, followed by the
bibliography format.
Book
Author, Title, (City: Publisher,
Date), page cited.
Author. Title.
City:
Publisher, Date.
Article,
story, or poem from a collection
Article
from a newspaper or magazine
Author,
"Article Title," Magazine Title
volume: number (Date), page cited.
Author. "Article
Title." Magazine Title, volume:
number (Date), pages of whole article.
Formats
for
electronic sources are still evolving.
Generally, do all of the above that you can, and then
follow with the
electronic information. Use
page numbers only if they appear on the screen--not
printout numbers which can vary. If
the information is on a CD, state
that just before the sponsoring organization name.
Electronic
encyclopedia
"Article Title," Database Title,
Version, Latest date,
Sponsoring Organization, Date seen <url>.
"Article Title." Database
Title. Version.
Latest date. Sponsoring
Organization. Date
seen <url>.
Professional
or scholarly web page
Author,
"Page Title," Site Title,
Latest date, Sponsoring Organization,
Date seen <url>.
Author. "Page Title." Site
Title.
Latest
date. Sponsoring
Organization.
Date seen <url>.
Magazine
article found in a periodical database
Author, "Article Title," Magazine Title
volume: number
(Date), Database Title, Sponsoring Organization,
Date seen <url>.
Author. "Article Title. Magazine Title volume: number (Date). Database Title. Sponsoring Organization. Date seen <url>.
SHORTCUTS
You
only
need
to list all of these details once in your
notes. For second
or third
citations of the same source, writers once used lots of Latin terms
like Ibid. and
Op. cit.
Today, just use the short form of author's last name and
page number each
additional time.
One
Latin
term
that you may find useful is et. al.
when you are dealing with many authors.
(Example: David Jones et. al.) In
all cases, use only the first city listed.
Omit "Inc." or "Ltd." in publishers' names.
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