Two citation styles - Bibliography style - General introduction to citation practices - Part II. Source Citation

A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, 7th edition - Kate L. Turabian 2007

Two citation styles - Bibliography style
General introduction to citation practices
Part II. Source Citation

This book covers the two most common forms of citation, called notes-bibliography style, or simply bibliography style (used widely in the humanities and in some social sciences), and parenthetical citations—reference list style, or reference list style (used in most social sciences and in the natural and physical sciences). If you are not certain which style to use in a paper, consult your instructor.

You may be asked to use different styles in different settings (for example, an art history course and a political science course). Within a specific paper, however, always follow a single style consistently.

If you are new to research, read this section for a brief description of how the two citation styles work. Then, if you are using bibliography style, read chapter 16 for an overview of this style, and refer to chapter 17 for detailed guidelines and examples for citing most types of sources you're likely to consult. If you are using reference list style, the overview and detailed chapters are 18 and 19, respectively.

15.3.1 Bibliography style

In bibliography-style citations, you signal that you have used a source by placing a superscript number at the end of the sentence in which you refer to it:

He argues that “in an uncertain world, printed materials can be put to use in ways that make them powerful.”1

You then cite the source of that quotation in a correspondingly numbered note that provides information about the source (author, title, and facts of publication) plus relevant page numbers. Notes are printed at the bottom of the page (called footnotes) or in a list collected at the end of your paper (called endnotes). All notes have the same general form:

N: 1. Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 623.

If you cite the same text again, you can shorten subsequent notes:

N: 5. Johns, Nature of the Book, 384—85.

In most cases, you also list sources at the end of the paper in a bibliography. That list normally includes every source you cited in a note and sometimes others you consulted but did not cite. Each bibliography entry includes the same information contained in a full note, but in a slightly different form:

B: Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.