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

Parenthetical notes
Notes-bibliography style: the basic form
Part II. Source Citation

PARENTHETICAL NOTES VERSUS FOOTNOTES OR ENDNOTES. In some situations, you may cite a source within parentheses in the text instead of in a footnote or an endnote. Parenthetical notes give readers a cleaner, more readable text, especially if you have many references to just a few sources.

According to one scholar, “The railroads had made Chicago the most important meeting place between East and West” (Cronon, Nature's Metropolis, 92—93).

You may routinely use parenthetical notes for certain types of sources that readers can identify with only a few elements, such as a newspaper article (see 17.4), a legal case (17.9.7), an older literary work (17.5.1), a biblical or other sacred work (17.5.2), or a source in the visual and performing arts (17.8). For most such sources, you should provide a full citation in the bibliography.

In many fields, you may use parenthetical notes if you are discussing a particular work at length and need to cite it frequently. The first time you cite the work, provide full bibliographical data in a footnote or endnote; for subsequent references, use parenthetical notes instead of shortened notes (see 16.4.1). Since this is a new practice in some fields, check with your instructor or advisor before citing sources in this way.

In fields that study language and literature, parenthetical notes have generally replaced footnotes or endnotes for most source citations, including the first reference to each work.

FORMATTING PARENTHETICAL NOTES. Insert a parenthetical note where you would place a reference number for a note: at the end of a quotation, sentence, or clause. The note comes before rather than after any comma, period, or other punctuation mark when the quotation is run into the text. With a block quotation, however, the note follows the terminal punctuation mark (see 25.2.2 for an example).

The fullest parenthetical note includes the same information as the author-title form of a shortened note, with the elements separated by commas. (Note that both the elements and the punctuation are slightly different from those used in parenthetical citations with reference list style, described in chapters 18 and 19; do not confuse or combine the two styles.)

“What on introspection seems to happen immediately and without effort is often a complex symphony of processes that take time to complete” (LeDoux, Synaptic Self, 116).

According to an expert, the norms of friendship are different in the workplace (Little, “Norms of Collegiality,” 330).

In some fields, writers are expected to use this full form for all parenthetical notes; in others, they are allowed to shorten them, since such notes interrupt the flow of a text. If your field allows shortening, you have three options for most types of sources:

Page numbers only. You may include in the parentheses only the page number(s) or other locator if readers can readily identify the specific source from your text, either because it is a main object of your study (as in the first example below referring to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin) or because you mention the author or title in your text.

Poor John!” interposes Stowe's narrative voice. “It was rather natural; and the tears that fell, as he spoke, came as naturally as if he had been a white man” (169).

Ernst Cassirer notes this in Language and Myth (59—60).

Author and page number. You should include the author and page number(s) or other locator if readers cannot readily identify the source from your text and you cite only one work by that author.

While one school claims that “material culture may be the most objective source of information we have concerning America's past” (Deetz, 259), others disagree.

Title and page number. You should include a shortened title and page number(s) or other locator if readers can readily identify the author from your text and you cite more than one work by that author.

According to Furet, “the Second World War completed what the First had begun—the domination of the great political religions over European public opinion” (Passing, 360).

If you cite a work often, you can abbreviate the title. If the abbreviation is not obvious, you may specify it in the note for its first citation. (If you use more than five such abbreviations in your citations, list them in a separate section of your paper; see A.2.1.)

N: 2. François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century, trans. Deborah Furet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 368 (cited in text as PI).

According to Furet, “the Second World War completed what the First had begun—the domination of the great political religions over European public opinion” (PI, 360).

For newspaper articles and other types of sources in which author, title, and page number are not the key identifying elements (see the relevant sections of chapter 17), modify the parenthetical note style as needed.

In a New York Times article on the transitions within the Supreme Court (September 30, 2005), Linda Greenhouse discusses these trends.