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Citation Guidelines

Citations are an integral part of your completed manuscript.  Ethics, as well as copyright laws, requires authors to identify their sources. Also obtaining permissions for copyrighted material is often the author's responsibility (see manuscript guidelines and  author permission letter). Using your editor to track down permission letters and edit incomplete, inaccurate, or poorly formatted citations, takes away valuable time he or she could be using to improve your text. In the end the publisher will cut material if the they cannot determine the source of your quotes, notes, etc.  Citation issues and the lack of permission letters can literally stop the presses.

So choose a fail-safe method to identify your source and do this work upfront before you hand your manuscript over to the editor. If you only have a snippet of information, like a partial title or author' name, call your local library.  Most likely they'll supply you with the needed information.  Amazon.com or  PubLink.net are also good resources for finding pertinent information.  For copyrighted material see iCopyright.com.

For those who shy away from using material from an author's work,  don't be. Documentation in all its forms enhances your work, underscores your arguments, and helps the reader understand "where you're coming from."

For those who tend to over document—as is in some academic writing—keep in mind that mainstream publishers are appealing to a commercial audience. So refrain from scholarly indulgence in documentation.  The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition (15.15-15-26) provides several good tactics for paring down documentation.

Finally, be prepared for your editors to suggest different ways of handling your citations to enhance the flow of the text. For example, a content editor may suggest turning footnotes into endnotes, or removing some of your "little darlings" out of the main text and placing them in side bars or boxes.

The citation examples below will ensure that you collect the minimal information for documenting your sources. The style for citations may vary from publisher to publisher so ask for guidelines. The various sources and ways of documenting them are numerous—The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition takes 215 pages to cover them.

There are three basic styles: 1) humanities style, which provides bibliographic citations in notes, footnotes, endnotes, backnotes, etc., with note numbers usually appearing at the end of the sentence. The humanities style may or may not include a bibliography, 2) the author-date system which uses a brief text citation and includes a reference list with full bibliographic information, and 3) related to the author-date system, references cited by a number in the text, which also includes a reference list with full bibliographic information, arranged either alphabetically by authors' last names or in order of the first appearance of each source in the text. There are many subtle differences between the humanities style and the author-date system that will not be discussed here.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS

The bibliography includes all sources—books, articles, papers—and is arranged by the last names of the authors.

1. Books

Compile the following:

• author(s) (or editors)
• title, editor, compiler, or translator, if any
• edition, if not the first
• volumes, total number if multivolume work, volume number of multivolume work, title of individual volume, if applicable
• series title, if applicable, and volume number within series,
• facts of publication: city, publisher, and date,
• page number(s); or volume and page number(s), if applicable. 

Jaboski Jr., Frank W., Millie F. Micfogervich, and George W. Handley, eds. Overcoming the Effects of the Corporate Matrix: How to be Independent Manager in an Age of Digital Conformity , 2nd ed. Westland, MI: Peurasaari Press, 1999.

2. Journals, Magazines, Other Periodicals

Compile the following:

• Author(s), ed(s)
• Title of Article
• Title of Periodical and Volume Number
• Issue number, date and page number(s)

Note: If the information such as month of publication or issue number is not relevant, simply omit it.

3. Unpublished Interviews or Personal Communications

If you wish to list these in a bibliography or note, instead of mentioning them in the text, begin with the name of the person with whom you have conversed.

Gordan, Argie. Interviewed by author at her home, Highland Park, MI., 16 December 1967.

Soontoberich, Jeannie. Telephone conversation with author, 10 October 1999 and 19 December 99.

Schmidt, William. A four page E-mail to author, 10 January 1990.

Jaco, Joey. From a lecture on dissecting a frog, John Glenn High School, approximately October, 1996.

4. Theses, Dissertations, Other Unpublished Papers

The title of an unpublished work is treated like the title of an article or short work.  The examples vary, but this would supply all the necessary information.

Example of a Note Citation

Ellen T Law, "Using Binary Language to Manage the Tower of Babel:  A History of Digital Communication" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1976), 32-37, 129.

King, Marvin P. "How to Please the King and the Masses at the Same Time." (Ph.D. diss., U.C. Berkeley, 1982), abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International 55 (1983): 2366A

5. Papers Printed in Published Proceedings of Meetings

Hound, Jerry, and Bob Bass. "How to Teach a Dog New Tricks." Working paper, Kennel Headquarters, Hillsboro, Tenn., 1973.

6. Citing Secondary Sources

References to the work of one author as quoted in that of another must cite both works.

Handley, George. "Tales of the Espresso King." Poet Prose 68 (February 1996); 222, quoted in Johnny Thoroughbred, Ed Topple: LA Deceptions (Westland: Peurasaari Press, 1994), 88.

7. Public Documents

Like other references, citations to public documents should include elements needed for location in a library catalog. These include:

• Country, state, city, county, or other government division issuing the document.
• Legislative body, executive department, court, bureau, board, commission, or committee.
• Subsidiary division, regional offices, and so forth.
• Title, if any, of the document or collection.
• Individual author (editor, compiler) if given.
• Report number or any other identification necessary or useful in finding the specific document.
• Publisher, if different from the issuing body.
• Date.
• Page, if relevant.

AUTHOR-DATE TEXT CITATIONS (citations in the body of the text)

Author-date citation in running text or at the end of a block quotation.

The advantage of the author-date system of documentation is its brevity and clarity. This consists of the author's last, or family name and the year of publication of the work.  There is no punctuation between the name and date. If you have two last names that are the same, G. Smith, and P. Smith, then include the initial. Abbreviations like ed., or not included in the text, but appear in the full documentation reference list.  The author can be editor, compiler, organization, etc. These short author-date citations are then detailed in a list of references, where you provide full bibliographic information.

• (Peurasaari 1999)
• (P. Smith 1900)
• (Jack and Jill 1900) (two authors)(Jack, Jill, and Smith 1900) (for three authors)
• (Jack et al. 1900) or (Jack, Jill, et. al. 1900) for more than three authors)
• (FHA 2000)
• (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco 1989)

Faced with increasing competition from more agile companies, many large corporations are identifying their core competencies and outsourcing everything else (Jack, Jill, and Smith, 1996).

As Gary Peurasaari pointed out in his book, The 18-Month Society, the only way to keep on top of the changing computer technology was to simply buy a new computer every two years (Peurasaari, 2000, 33-34).

In his excellent newsletter on web content, Dr. Jordan (2001) found the best way to attract more traffic to your web site was to have a quick-loading home page and content that informs and humors the reader.

Jaboski and Micfogervich (1998) reported in a study on aging that your sense of time passes more quickly as you get older.

Jimmy J. DuWayne presents an excellent review of how to eliminate programming bugs before beta testing in his well-regarded work Through the Silicon Glass Smartly (2004).

In Figure 2-12, Handley (1999) presents a hierarchy of talents with their corresponding market value.

USING NUMBERS IN THE TEXT FOR CITATIONS

This style employees a numbered list of references cited in the text by number.  The reference numbers in the text are placed in parentheses (1) or square brackets [1] or in parentheses ⁽¹⁾. The list of references or works cited is arranged either alphabetically by author's last names or in order of the first appearance of each source in the text.  This style works well for a heavily cited manuscript.

 Examples of a Number in the Text Citation

Faced with increasing competition from more agile companies, many large corporations are identifying their core competencies and outsourcing everything else. (1)

Jaboski and Micfogervich reported in a study on aging that your sense of time passes more quickly as you get older. [1]

In Figure 2-12, Handley presents a hierarchy of talents with their corresponding market value. ⁽¹⁾

 8. Citing Content off the World Wide Web

Go to these links for examples.

MLA Style
K ingwood College Library Citing Onling Sources MLA Style
Yahoo Listings for Citings