Handbook of Style

Documentation of Sources
Plurals Index   Forms of Address

Authors and editors use various methods to indicate the source of a given quotation or piece of information. In works related to the humanities, the footnote form traditionally has been preferred. In this form, full bibliographical information including author, title, publisher, date, and page is keyed to specific text passages through notes set aside from the rest of the text. In works related to the social and natural sciences, a system relying on parenthetical notes that appear in the text and that refer the reader to a list of sources elsewhere in the work has been used. Details relating to both these systems of documentation, as well as to a modified system utilizing elements of each, are explained in the following pages. For more detailed information, The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th edition, and the MLA Style Sheet may be consulted.

Footnotes

Footnotes to a text are indicated by superscript Arabic numerals placed immediately after the material to be footnoted, with no intervening space. The numbering may be consecutive throughout a paper, article, or book, or, especially in longer works, may start over with each new chapter or other section of the text. The footnotes may appear at the end of the complete text, at the end of each chapter, or at the bottom of each page. Notes appearing at the end of the chapter or the work are often called endnotes, and they are generally preferred over notes appearing at the bottom of the page because they are easier to handle when preparing manuscript or printed pages. Authors and editors should be aware that statements in The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th edition, and in PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association] 97 (1982): 318-24 encourage the use of parenthetical references even for texts related to the humanities. The following samples exemplify the basic types of footnotes.

Sample Footnotes

Books
one author
1Albert H. Marckwardt, American English (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 94.

multiple authors
2De Witt T. Starnes and Gertrude E. Noyes, The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson
1604-1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946), 119.

translation and/or edition
3Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. and ed. H. M. Parshley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 600.
4William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. George Lyman Kittredge (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1936), 801.

second or later edition
5Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957), 300.

a work in a festschrift or collection
6Kemp Malone, ``The Phonemes of Current English,'' Studies for William A. Read, ed. Nathaniel M. Caffee and Thomas A. Kirby (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1940), 133-65.

corporate author
7President's Commission on Higher Education, Higher Education for American Democracy (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1947), I:26.

book without publisher, date, or pagination
8Photographic View Album of Cambridge [England], n.d., n.p., n. pag.



Articles
from a journal with pagination throughout the annual volume
9James M. Kusack and John S. Bowers, ``Public Microcomputers in Public Libraries,'' Library Journal 107 (1982): 2137-41.

from a journal paging each issue separately
10Roseann Duenas Gonzalez, ``Teaching Mexican American Students to Write: Capitalizing on the Culture,'' English Journal 71.7 (November 1982): 22-24.

from a monthly magazine
11Shirley Abbott, ``Southern Women,'' Harper's, July 1982, 44-47.

from a weekly magazine
12Walter Clemons, ``Cheever's Triumph,'' Newsweek, 14 March 1977, 61-67.

from a newspaper
13Nancy Bauer, ``Housing and the Native: A Sore Spot on Nantucket,'' Boston Globe, 20 June 1982, News section, p. 29, col. 2-4.

letter to the editor
14Charles H. Percy, ``Letters to the Editor,'' The Wall Street Journal, 4 November 1982, 31.

a signed review
15Jane H. Hill, rev. of Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, ed. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Language 57 (1981): 948-53.



Parenthetical References

Parenthetical references are highly abbreviated bibliographical citations that are set off from the rest of the text by parentheses. Such references direct readers to a bibliography or list of references with full information that is usually placed at the end of the work. The parenthetical references usually include the name of the author, the date of the work, and a page reference. If an entire work in the list of references is being cited, the page reference may be omitted. To distinguish among works published by the same author in a single year, an additional designation in the form of a lowercase letter (as 1980a or 1980b) is used. The following parenthetical references are keyed to the list of references that follows them and refer to some of the same sources used in the Footnotes section. The two different versions of the list of references show how such a list might be styled, respectively, in the humanities and in the social and natural sciences; however, numerous variations of these basic forms are in use throughout the academic disciplines and professional specialty fields.

Sample References
one author (Chapman 1969)
multiple authors (Starnes and Noyes 1946, 119)
translation and/or edition (Beauvoir 1953, 600)
second or later edition (Baugh 1957, 300)
a work in festschrift or collection (Malone 1940) [entire article being cited]
corporate author (President's Commission on Higher Education
1947, I:26)
journal article (Webb 1977) [entire article being cited]
signed review (Hill 1981) [entire review being cited]

Sample Lists of References
representative style for the humanities
Baugh, Albert C. A History of the English Language, 2nd ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated and edited by H. M. Parshley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.
Chapman, R. F. The Insects. New York: American Elsevier, 1969.
Hill, Jane H. Review of Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, ed. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. Language 57 (December 1981): 948-53.
Malone, Kemp. ``The Phonemes of Current English.'' In Studies for William A. Read, edited by Nathaniel M. Caffee and Thomas A. Kirby, 133-65. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1940.
President's Commission on Higher Education. Higher Education for American Democracy. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1947.
Starnes, De Witt T., and Gertrude E. Noyes. The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson 1604-1775. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946.
Webb, Karen E. ``An Evolutionary Aspect of Social Structure and a Verb `Have.' '' American Anthropologist 79 (1977): 42-49.

representative style for the social and natural sciences
Baugh, Albert C. 1957. A history of the English language. 2nd ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1953. The second sex. Trans and ed. H. M. Parshley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Chapman, R. F. 1969. The insects. New York: American Elsevier.
Hill, Jane H. 1981. Review of Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, ed. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. Language 57: 948-53.
Malone, Kemp. 1940. The phonemes of current English. In Studies for William A. Read, ed. Nathaniel M. Caffee and Thomas A. Kirby, 133-65. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
President's Commission on Higher Education. 1947. Higher education for American democracy. Washington, D.C.: GPO.
Starnes, De Witt T., and Gertrude E. Noyes. 1946. The English dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson
1604-1775. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Webb, Karen E. 1977. An evolutionary aspect of social structure and a verb ``have.'' American Anthropologist 79: 42-49.




A Modified System

There are many modifications and combinations of the two basic documentation methods outlined above that are followed by various publishing houses and professional journals and societies. The modified system described here is fairly common among scholarly publications. The first reference to a work gives complete bibliographical information in the form of a footnote either at the bottom of the page or in a notes section. Such a note can also include an author's comment on the work cited and may indicate a shortened form by which the work will be cited elsewhere in the text. Subsequent references to that work are given in the form of parenthetical references which may rely on the shortened form indicated in the first note or may include the name of the author, a shortened form of the title, and a page reference. Even if no shortened form is indicated in the first note, subsequent parenthetical references need not repeat any element of the reference that is clear from the context.

first reference
1Albert H. Marckwardt, American English (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 94.
2De Witt T. Starnes and Gertrude E. Noyes, The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson 1604-1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946), 119; hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as English Dictionary.

subsequent references
(Marckwardt 101) [appropriate if only one of Marckwardt's works will be cited in text]
(American English 101) [appropriate if more than one of Marckwardt's works will be cited and if the author's name is clear from the context]
(101) [appropriate if both author and title can be easily established]
(English Dictionary 201)