A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018
The requirements of citation
General introduction to citation practices
Source citation
To fulfill the requirements of citation, you need to know when to include a source citation in your paper and what information about the source to include.
15.2.1 Situations Requiring Citations
Chapter 7, particularly 7.9, discusses in depth when you should cite materials from other sources. Briefly, you should always provide a citation in the following situations:
✵ ▪ when you quote exact words from a source (see also chapter 25 on quotations)
✵ ▪ when you paraphrase ideas that are associated with a specific source, even if you don’t quote exact words from it
✵ ▪ when you use any ideas, data, or methods attributable to any source you consulted
As noted in 15.1, you may also use citations to point readers to sources that are relevant to a particular portion of your argument but not quoted or paraphrased. Such citations demonstrate that you are familiar with these sources, even if they present claims at odds with your own.
15.2.2 Information Required in Citations
Over the long tradition of citing sources, as researchers in different fields began to write in different ways, they also developed distinctive ways of citing and documenting their sources. When citation methods became standardized, researchers had to choose from not just one or two standards but many.
Citation styles differ in the elements included and in the format of these elements, but they have the same aim: to give readers the information they need to identify and find a source. For most sources, including books, articles, and other written material, that information must answer these questions:
✵ ▪ Who wrote, edited, or translated the text (sometimes all three)? In other words, who created it?
✵ ▪ What data identify the text? This includes the title and subtitle of the work; volume number, edition number, or other identifying information; and page numbers or other locating information if the reference is to a specific part of a larger text.
✵ ▪ Who published the text and in what context? This includes the name of the publisher, journal, or other entity responsible for making the text available and, in some cases, the title of any collection or series in which the work appears.
✵ ▪ When was the text published? This will consist of a year of publication and sometimes a season, month, or specific day (and sometimes a time).
✵ ▪ Where can the text be found? Most printed sources can be found in a library or bookstore, information that does not need to be mentioned in a citation. For a source consulted online, a link to the work (in the form of a URL) or the name of a commercial database will help readers find it. For a physical document from a one-of-a-kind collection, data will include the place where the collection is housed.
Details vary for other types of sources, such as sound and video recordings, but they answer the same five questions: Who was responsible for creating the source? What title or other data identify it? Who published it? When? Where can it be found?
Your readers will expect you to use the citation style appropriate to their particular field, not just because they are familiar with this style but because when you use it, you show them that you understand their values and practices. The details may seem trivial: Quotation marks or italics? Capitals or lowercase? Periods or commas (or parentheses and colons)? But if you do not get these small matters right, at least some of your readers will question whether they can trust you on the bigger ones. Fortunately, you don’t have to memorize all these details. Instead, you can learn the forms of the citations you use most so that you do not need to look them up repeatedly. The latest citation management tools can help, especially for more common source types. For sources that are less common or have unusual elements, and for double-checking your final draft, you can consult a book like this one.