Author: Harvey Deneroff

Categories
Bibliographic management Citations

Citation Styles: Which One Should You Use?

, Purdue University OWL Online Writing Lab's website page on Research and Citation Resources
Like many college libraries, Purdue University OWL Online Writing Lab’s website provides much more than  help in formatting citations.

The selection of a citation style for your term paper, dissertation or journal article is often easy: Use what your professor, academic department or publisher mandates. Sometimes, you may have a choice: I used to allow my students to pick between MLA, APA and Chicago/Turabian; in such a case, select the one you are most comfortable with or perhaps flip a coin. In any case, you need to follow the style as closely as possible, as it otherwise might hurt your grade.

In academic and professional writing, it’s useful to remember, citations are designed to identify the sources of your information and/or ideas, including direct and indirect quotes (i.e., paraphrasing what someone else wrote). As Vickie noted yesterday, “Basically you must cite any time the question arises in the reader’s mind: How do you know that?”

Citation styles can sometimes seem rather arcane and petty. For instance, the APA Style Manual suggests using two spaces after a period, though most professional writers use only one. (Two spaces made sense in the days of typewriters, as it made manuscripts more legible; today’s word processing programs, which generally use proportionally-spaced fonts, made this practice largely obsolete.) For the most part, though, they represent a set of conventions which makes communication easier.

There are several ways to get help doing citations for your paper or book. The approach you use is up to you.

  • College libraries often provide online guides to using the school’s approved citation styles, which can also be illustrated with YouTube videos. A popular one is Purdue OWL, hosted by Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab. They are particularly handy if you are doing citations manually for something like a term paper.
  • Published style manuals, such as Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students & Researchers. These are usually available at library reference desks. Buying one is only necessary is if you’re writing a thesis or dissertation, or doing a lot of scholarly writing.
  • When in doubt, ask your instructor or, better yet, a librarian at your school or public library.

Digital solutions, aka bibliographic management software, are readily available in both commercial and free varieties. Some of the commercial programs, such as Endnote, may be free if you’re a student or professor at some schools. I don’t have time to go over them in detail right now, but here are a few options:

  • The latest versions of such programs as Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Write have the capability of creating citations and lists of works cited (bibliographies). Bibliographic data has to be entered manually and they are somewhat limited in scope, but they can often get the job done.
  • Zotero is a full-featured freebie from George Mason University. It began as a Firefox extension, but is now also available in a standalone version. It excels at easily capturing bibliographic information from websites and library catalogs. Like the next two entries, it can format citations in a host of specialized styles, including those required by journals like ACM Transactions on Computer Systems and Clinical Pediatrics. It’s also one of the two programs we use.
  • Endnote is an oldie but goodie, which has long been a standard for many colleges and scholars. I use it because of its ability to modify citations to suite my needs; I sometimes use it in conjunction Zotero, which has its advantages. Endnote Basic (formerly Endnote Web) is a free  online version of the program, which is somewhat limited (e.g., it only allows 50,000 references, only uses 7 basic citation styles and lacks the ability to edit citation styles). However, this might be good enough for those looking for a free alternative to Zotero.
  • Citavi is a Swiss program that’s fairly new to the American market, but it’s a worthy competitor; however, it’s doesn’t seem as easy to modify as Endnote. If you’re not writing a book or dissertation, you might consider downloading Citavi Free, which allows you to use the full program gratis for up to 100 references.

Post last updated: December 2, 2016.

Categories
Footnotes and endnotes Term papers

Term Paper Tricks: Using Footnotes to Make Your Paper Look More Academic Without Really Trying

A country dance scene from Thomas Vinterberg's 2015 movie version of Far From the Madding Crowd.
A country dance scene from Thomas Vinterberg’s 2015 movie version of Far From the Madding Crowd.

Most students seem to prefer to use MLA, APA or Harvard citation styles, thus avoiding using footnotes or endnotes. However, no matter what citation style you choose, the judicious use of footnotes or endnotes can make even the simplest term paper look more academic and might even impress your professor with your scholarly skills. I’m not talking about footnotes used to cite a source, but rather to embellish your paper with additional information.

For instance, say you’re writing a term paper on Thomas Hardy’s novel, Far from the Madding Crowd. Your aim was to focus on its love story. In the process, you realize he was an English country dance aficionado, including them in many of his stories and was even involved with the English Folk Dance Society. Being something of a dance aficionado yourself, you really want to include some reference to this in your paper, though you don’t want to take your eyes off of your paper’s main thrust.

You try to include one or two paragraphs about the topic in your paper, but no matter how you phrase it, it seems to interrupt your narrative flow. In other words, it seems out of place. Short of changing the topic of your paper to something like “English Country Dance in the Novels of Thomas Hardy”—which you don’t really have time to do—you have three choices: (1) Leave the paragraphs in, (2) take them out, or (3) remove them from the body of the paper and put them in a footnote instead.

Option one might be risky, as it might hurt your grade, since your paper seems to be going off topic. The second approach avoids this problem, but it might be frustrating. The third option, I would argue, might be the best solution. You get to include information you’re really passionate about without interrupting your narrative flow; it also makes you seem scholarly without really trying—just check the endnotes found in the back of practically any university press found in your school library, if you don’t believe me.

P.S. I find many students don’t realize their word processing program contains commands to create and insert footnotes and endnotes. I’ve seen graduates of prestigious Ivy League colleges do footnotes by hand, inserting superscript numbers and trying to guess how much space to allot at the bottom of the page to put the footnote in. That’s a lot of unnecessary work. Give yourself a break, learn the command and save yourself time and aggravation.

Categories
Research tools Search engines

Research Tools: Creating Your Own Google Custom Search Engine

As valuable as individual search engines are, whether Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, they do have their limitations. Some of these include getting inundated with too many results, which can be somewhat alleviated by knowing how to structure your search.

You can modify your search terms to narrow your search. For instance, when looking for material on pioneering film director D.W. Griffith and film editing, I could just enter his name in Google and get “about 466,000 results.” Adding the term “parallel editing,” a film editing technique associated with Griffith, gets me “about 4,200 results.” This is more to the point and a lot less intimidating. However, there is an even better method if you’re willing to put in some time and effort by building your own Google Custom Search Engine.

Like a number of instructors, I created my own Custom Search Engine to help students in my film, television, animation, motion graphics and visual effects classes with their research: “Cinema Studies 101 Search Engine: A Search Engine for the Moving Image Arts.” Though I’m retired from full-time teaching, I still maintain it for my own use and for readers of my blog. I designed it to enable researchers to find articles that would be suitable for use in academic papers of all kinds, from term papers to PhD dissertations; needless to say, it does not include Wikipedia. You can check out my listing of sites searched to give you some idea of what can be done. But there is nothing that says you can’t construct one to fit your individual needs.

I have found that in using the free Google Custom Search Engine, there are some limitations. The main one is that it limits you to 100 search results. This is balanced, however, by the quality of the results. As such, I have usually found it more useful than a standard Google search.

Nancy Minicozzi’s YouTube video embedded above is a good introduction to how to do your own Google Custom Search Engine. However, it has been my experience that you do not necessarily need your own website or blog to make use of it; for instance, I first tested mine out by putting the code on my desktop and launching it with a browser. (If you do plan on using one in a Google Site, then check out Minicozzi’s comments here.)