Different fields have different styles or formats of documentation. Two of the most used documentation formats are:
DOCUMENTATION FORMATS
(from: Hacker, Diana. A Writer's Reference. 3rd ed. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1995.)
BIOLOGY
Council of Biology Editors. CBE Style Manual: A Guide for Authors,
Editors, and Publishers in the Biological Sciences. 5th ed. Bethesda:
CBE, 1983.
CHEMISTRY
Dodd, Janet S., ed. The ACS Style Guide: A Manual for Authors and
Editors. Washington: American Chemical Society, 1986.
GEOLOGY
Cochran, Wendell, Peter Fenner, and Mary Hills, eds. Geowriting: A
Guide to Writing, Editing, and Printing in Earth Science. Alexandria,
VA: American Geological Institute, 1984.
GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
Garner, Diane L. The Complete Guide to Citing Government
Information Resources: A Manual for Writers and Librarians.
Rev. ed. Bethesda:Congressional Information Service, 1993.
United States Government Printing Office Style Manual.
Washington: GPO, 1984.
JOURNALISM
Associated Press Staff. Associated Press Stylebook and Libel
Manual. Reading, MA: Addison, 1992.
LAW
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. Comp. Editors of
Columbia Law Review et al, 15th ed. Cambridge: Harvard Law
Review, 1991.
LINGUISTICS
Linguistic Society of America. LSA Style Sheet. Published
annually in the December issue of the LSA Bulletin.
MATHEMATICS
American Mathematical Society. A Manual for Authors of
Mathematical Papers. Rev.ed. Providence: AMS, 1990.
MEDICINE
Iverson, Cheryl, et al. American Medical Association Manual of
Style. 8th ed. Baltimore:Williams and Wilkins, 1989.
MUSIC
Holoman, D. Kern, ed. Writing about Music: A Style Sheet from the
Editors of 19th Century Music. Berkley: U of California P,
1988.
PHYSICS
American Institute of Physics. AIP Style Manual. 4th ed. New York:
AIP, 1990.
SCIENCE AND TECHNICAL WRITING
Rubens, Philip, ed. Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of
Style. New York: Holt 1992.
Additional information on documentation can be found at http://www.bedfordbooks.com click here to link to this site.
If you use a direct quotation, the reader can identify where it begins and ends by the quotation marks. Immediately following the end quotation mark, and before the period at the end of the sentence, include parentheses with the author's last name and exact page number of the quote. For example, if you quoted from page 10 of a work by Mary Smith, your citation would read like this:
". . .the final decision must be made by the constituents" (Smith 10).If you used two books by Mary Smith and want to quote from one entitled Education After 30, you must add an abbreviated title of the work in the parentheses after the author's name to let the reader know which of her books you used. In this case, separate name and title with a comma:
". . .the final decision must be made by the constituents" (Smith, Education 10).Most of the time, you will not use direct quotations, but will SUMMARIZE and PARAPHRASE ideas from the source. Let your reader know the beginnning of the summary or paraphrase by identifying the author. For example, start the summary by saying " Smith states," or "According to Jones." Since you already identified the author at the beginning of the summary or paraphrase, you only need to include the page number in the parentheses at the end of the summary or paraphrase:
According to Philip Jones, Head of the State Education Board, summer school should be mandated for any student who fails to maintain a C average (16).If you are using a source that has no author, such as a newspaper article, you must use a shortened form of the title in the parentheses if you do not mention it in your text:
According to a New York Times editorial, there is something deeply troubling about the way we are avoiding the plight of Bosnians ("See no Evil" B16).
Here is the format for other kinds of sources you will encounter most often.
Diana Hacker's A Writer's ReferenceIt is available from the ESC Distribution Center (518-587-2100). It includes both the MLA and APA formats.
MLA Guidelines for Electronic
Sources
EXERCISE 11: DOCUMENTATION WITHIN THE PAPER - MLA
". . . the final decision must be made by the consituents" (Smith, 1994, 10).Most of the time, you will not use direct quotations, but will SUMMARIZE and PARAPHRASE ideas from the source. Let your reader know the beginning of the summary or paraphrase by identifying the author. For example, start the summary by saying " Smith states," or "According to Jones." Since you already identified the author at the beginning of the summary or paraphrase, you only need to include the publication date right after the author's name in the text:
According to Philip Jones (1995) summer school should be mandated for any student who fails to maintain a C average.If you are using a source that has no author, such as a newspaper article, you must use a shortened form of the title in the parentheses, along with the date and the page number:
According to a New York Times editorial, there is something deeply troubling about the way we are avoiding the plight of Bosnians. ("See No Evil" 1995, p. B16).Here is the format for some of the other kinds of sources you will most often need to document.
It is available from the ESC Distribution Center (518-587-2100). It includes both the MLA and APA formats.
EXERCISE 12: DOCUMENTATION WITHIN THE PAPER - APA
Footnotes have the advantage of allowing the reader to see complete reference notes for each page of text without flipping to the end of the paper to search through a list of endnotes or through an MLA-style Works Cited list. Partly for this reason, the reference note style is still the approach preferred by many faculty members, despite the fact that MLA style is used far more widely in the humanities.
The Turabian reference note format requires you to put basic information about your source in footnotes at the bottom of each page, beneath the text. Within the text, above the list of footnotes, the place where a reference is introduced is shown by an Arabic numeral raised slightly above the line of text. These reference numbers are placed just after the quoted or paraphrased material, and they appear in numerical order throughout the text. Footnotes for all of the references which appear in a page of text must be placed at the bottom of the same page, divided from the text by an eight spaced line. [For exceptions to this rule see pp. 118-119 of A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Sixth Ed., by Kate Turabian.]
If your first reference is for a quotation, it will look like this:
"......the final decision must be made by the constituents."¹However, if your first reference is for a paraphrase, it will look like this:
According to Smith, only constituents can pass a final decision.¹A quotation is identified by quotation marks placed where it begins and where it ends, followed by the raised number. The beginning of a paraphrase or summary may be identified by mentioning the author. For example, the above paraphrase can be introduced by saying "According to Smith," or "Smith states." Although such introductions may be useful for clarification, in Turabian style it is not absolutely necessary to mention the author, since your reader can immediately find the source of your paraphrase or summary in the reference note at the bottom of your page of text. The raised number should immediately follow the paraphrase or summary.
For either the quoted or paraphrased examples above, the single-spaced note which is placed at the bottom of the page of text will look like this:
¹John Smith, Democratic Procedure (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.), 14.Indent all footnote entries five spaces, then type the number which corresponds to the number in the text for that reference. For a book with one author, as shown above, proceed to type the author's first, middle (if given), and last names in usual order, and follow them with a comma. Then type the title and underline it. Open parentheses, type the place of publication, follow it with a colon and two spaces, and type the publisher. Close parentheses, followed by a comma, then type the page number where the reference was found, and end with a period. For further information, see "Other Reference Note Formats."
When the next reference refers to the exact same source and the same page number as a preceding note, and there are no other references in-between the two, use "Ibid." Instead of repeating the note. For example, if your second note still refers to page fourteen of Smith's Democratic Procedure, write:
²Ibid.[See Turabian PP.138-139 for further information on the use of "Ibid."]
The bibliography at the end of a research paper lists, in complete detail, all of the sources used in researching and writing the paper. Strictly speaking, in the Turabian style a list of sources entitled "Bibliography" may include material which has not been quoted, paraphrased, or summarized in the paper along with sources for which reference notes are available. In other words, a bibliography may attempt to be comprehensive. For most college papers, it is appropriate to include only the sources which have actually been quoted, paraphrased, or summarized in the paper. For further information, see "Heading" and "Classification" of bibliographies in Turabian, pp.167-168.
Why list your sources? Providing a bibliography completes the documentation process by giving full credit to the authors who have originated the ideas and information provided in your research paper. This is important both for ethical and (if the paper is published) for legal reasons. Beyond this, offering complete bibliographical information allows your reader to consult your sources for more information or for the purpose of evaluating the quality of your research by assessing the reliability of your sources.
Note: Titles have been italicized. When writing your papers, either underline or italicize titles.1. a book with one author
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bougereau, Esme F. Realism in Literature (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979)[database on-line]; available from gopher.cic.net.Gardner, Helen, ed. John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962.
Lewes, George Henry. "Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction." Westminster Review 70 (1858): 493.
Novak, Barbara. American Painting of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969.
Weisberg, Gabriel S., and William S. Talbot. Chardin and the Still-Life Tradition in France. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1979.
SAMPLE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ENTRY FORMATS
Here are five of the most commonly used types of entries:Note: Titles have been italicized. When writing your papers, either underline or italicize titles.
Uehling, Karen S. Starting Out or Starting Over: a Guide for Writers.
New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
2. a book with more than one author
Weisberg, Gabriel S., and William S. Talbot. Chardin and the
Still-Life Tradition in France. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland
Museum of Art, 1979.
3. a book with an editor
Gardner, Helen, ed. John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962.
4. an article from a professional journal
Wolff, Maria Tai. "Listening and Living: Reading and Experience
in Their Eyes." Black American Literature Forum 16, no. 1
(1982): 29-33.
5. online material from the internet