The Basic Citation

There are essentially three citation styles:

FN - Footnote (where the citation is at the bottom of the page)
EN - Endnote (where the citation is found at the end of the paper)
PR - Parenthetical Reference (where the citation is found in the text, surrounded by parentheses)

· For either approach, an alphabetical list of sources used is necessary at the end of the paper. You must ONLY list sources used; it is dishonest to include works that were not cited in the paper just to give the impression that a great deal of books or articles were used.
· There are two styles for listing sources: a reference list and a bibliography. When you use a footnote a bibliography is needed at the end of the paper. If you use parenthetical citations you must provide a reference list at the end of the paper. The two styles are similar but not exact:

B - Bibliography
RL - Reference List

Consider the examples noted below, each for a single authored book:

(FN and EN) 1First Name Last Name of Author, Title (City of Publication: Name of the Press, Year), page of citation.

(**The page is only necessary if the material used is rather specific or is a direct quote.)

(PR) I hate to make things even more complex, but there are two possibilities here. The first is what is dubbed APA style, after the American Psychological Association. It goes like this: (Author's last name, year, page). Notice that there is a comma after the name and year, and that the period goes on the outside of the parenthesis.

The other approach is called APSA style, after the American Political Science Association. It is quite similar, but there is no comma after the name. So it would look like this: (Author's last name year, page). *This is the most common in the discipline.

(B) Last Name, first Name. Title. City of Publication: Name of the Press, Year.

(RL) Author's last name, first name. Year. Title. City of Publication: Press.

* An Additional Use For Footnotes. It is important to note that footnotes and sometimes used to provide additional information for the reader without having to add every detail to the text. Often by putting additional information in a footnote, you can avoid text that seems to ramble or clarify the use of a term or concept. Footnotes are also useful for indicating that there may be alternative views not covered in your text. It is not uncommon for a paper to use parenthetical citations for references, but to occasionally use a footnote to elaborate on a point.

Remember the Basics

Students can easily construct accurate citations from a Turabian Manuel. Here are a few tips to remember:
· Footnotes use commas, bibliographies and reference lists use periods.
· Titles are italicized or underlined (this includes book titles, movie titles, journal titles, or magazine titles), but articles within a book, magazine, or journal are put in quotes.
· Reference lists put the year after the author's name. Bibliographies put the year at the end of the citation.
· Footnotes indent the first line, bibliographies and reference lists use hanging indents (all lines but the first are indented).
· It is advisable to always use the year of publication along with your parenthetical citation even if you only use one publication from the author.
· When you use two sources from the same author and from the same year, you need to dub one "A" and the other "B." For example (Shea 1997A, 234) is distinct from (Shea 1997B). They should be noted in the bibliography this way.
· Footnotes and endnotes put brackets around publishing information. Bibliographies and reference lists do not.
· The author's last name goes first in a bibliography and reference list but is written first name then last name in the footnote.
· If the city of the publisher is large, well known (such as New York or Chicago), than the state can be left out. On the other hand, if it is not a well-known city (such as Westport), than the state is needed. When in doubt, note the state.
· When you use a parenthetical style the page number need only appear in the in-text citation, not in the bibliography.

Hard Cases

Component Parts (Edited Books and the Like)

How should you cite from an edited book where the author of a chapter is different than the editors of the entire book? Your Turabian will refer to this as a "component part by one author in a work by another author." In this case, your bibliography should contain a reference to the specific article as well as the entire edited volume (one single citation). When you are citing the chapter, this is what is considered the component part. Consider the following example:

Your instructor has a chapter in a book called The Impact of Elections on Governing. It is called "The Atomization of American Politics." (Note that the book is in italics and the chapter is in quotation marks.) If you were to cite this chapter using a footnote style, it would look like this:

1. Daniel M. Shea, "The Atomization of American Politics," in Paul E. Scheele, editor, The Impact of Elections on Governing (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 283-297.

If you were to cite this chapter using parenthetical style, here's how it would go:

….Shea suggests that the parties themselves might be to blame for declining voter turnout (Shea, 1999).

Then in the bibliography you would find an alphabetical list of the sources used. For the Shea cite we would find:

Shea, Daniel M. "The Atomization of American Politics." In Sheele, Paul E., editor. The Impact of Elections on Governing. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.

*Your parenthetical citation should use the author of the chapter not the name of the editor of the book.

A Chapter by the Editor?

Quite often the editor of a volume will also have a chapter in the book. Sometimes this is the introduction or the conclusion, but many times it is even more. For example, I have an edited book on Congress and also a chapter in the middle. The solution is quite simple: Do the citation exactly the same way noted above. For example:

Shea, Daniel M. "All Scandal Politics is Local." In Daniel M, Shea, editor. Contemplating the People's Branch. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

Quoting a Quote

Because it is sometimes best to directly quote a short important passage rather than paraphrase, you will likely find where the author of your source uses a quote that you would also like to use. Your Turabian refers to this type of citation issue as a "secondary source of a quotation." Basically, a secondary source of a quotation is when you repeat a quote found somewhere else. Whenever you do this, you must give credit to the original source of the quotation, not just where you found it. That means looking in your source's footnotes and bibliography to find out where the author found this quote. How to cite this is a little tricky.

Let's assume that you found a quote in a book by Susan Tolchin, but it is something that she pulled directly from Alan Ware. Here's how it should look, using parenthetical citation:

"…the left of the Republican Party" (Tolchin, 1996, 234, citing Ware 1987, 34).

This tells us that you got the quote from Tolchin, on page 234, but that she got the quote from Ware, page 34. It would be dishonest to simply cite Ware because you did not get it from his book. In the bibliography you need only list the Tolchin book - the source where you got the quote. The same is true for a footnote or endnote: you should note where Tolchin got the quote, but the full citation should be where you got it - the Tolchin book.

Citations for On-line Sources

The American Political Science Association webpage has the following links recommended for the citing of electronic resources

What to Cite

You must take the issue of citations seriously. Citing the work of others is extremely important. A paper that lacks citations will have little credibility and will raise issues of plagiarism and sloppiness, or slack research. As noted during our first day of class, plagiarism will be taken very seriously.

In general, deciding what needs a citation and what does not is a relatively easy task. There are four times when a citation is necessary:

1. Anytime you include statistics and data that are not considered to be common knowledge. For example, we all know that there are 435 members of the House of Representatives, but it is not common knowledge that only 11 percent are women. You would cite the later.
2. Any direct quotation.
3. When you paraphrase or simply rewrite the words of someone else. This is a big one. Do not assume that only direct quotations need to be cited. Any rewriting of someone else's material, no matter how extensive, needs to be cited.
4. Much related, anytime you pull an argument, thesis, or line of reasoning from someone else, it too deserves a citation. For example, if I pick up on that argument made by Gary Jacobson that coattails do not really exist in elections and spell out his logic for this bold assertion, it's not my brain doing the work. Jacobson thought this through, not me. Accordingly, it deserves a citation.
5. Provide a citation for any conclusions reached by other researchers whether directly quoted or paraphrased.
6. Provide a citation for references to information found in newspapers and magazines so the reader can 1) verify the information, and 2) read the entire article if they wish.
7. If in doubt, provide a citation.

Simply put, any time you use the data, words, or thoughts of someone else it requires a citation. It is unlikely that you will be criticized for too many citations but you could be accused of ethical violations if you fail to give credit where credit is due.