Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [195]
You have probably already discovered that some professors are more concerned than others that students obey the particulars of a given documentation style. Virtually all faculty across the curriculum agree, however, that the most important rule for writers to follow in documenting sources is formal consistency. That is, all of your in-text citations or footnotes/endnotes should follow the same format, and all of your endof-text citations should follow the same format.
Once you begin doing most of your writing in a particular discipline, you may want to purchase or access on the Internet the more detailed style guide adhered to by that discipline. Because documentation styles differ not only from discipline to discipline but also even from journal to journal within a discipline, you should consult your professor about which documentation format he or she wishes you to use in a given course.
THE FOUR DOCUMENTATION STYLES: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
The various styles differ in the specific ways that they organize the bibliographical information, but they also share some common characteristics.
They place an extended citation for each source, including the author, title, date, and place of publication, at the end of the paper (though in Chicago, this end-of-text list is optional when employing footnotes/endnotes: consult with your professor). These end-of-text citations are organized in a list, usually alphabetically.
All four styles distinguish among different kinds of sources—providing slightly differing formulas for citing books, articles, encyclopedias, government documents, interviews, and so forth.
They all ask for these basic pieces of information to be provided whenever they are known: author, title of larger work along with title of article or chapter as appropriate, date of publication, and publisher or institutional affiliation.
To briefly distinguish the styles:
the APA style employs the author-date format of parenthetical in-text citation and predominates in the social sciences;
the Chicago style, best known for its use of footnotes or endnotes, is employed in history, the fine arts, and some other humanities disciplines;
the CSE (aka CBE) style, which employs alternately the citation-sequence system and the name-year system, is commonly used throughout the sciences, especially the natural sciences; and
the MLA style, which uses the author-page format of parenthetical in-text citation, prevails in the humanities disciplines of language, literature, film, and cultural studies.
Here are a few basic examples of in-text and end-of-text citations in the four most commonly used styles, followed by a brief discussion of the rules that apply.
1. APA STYLE
In-text citation: Studies of students’ changing attitudes toward the small colleges they attend suggest that their loyalty to the institution declines steadily over a four-year period, whereas their loyalty to individual professors or departments increases “markedly, by as much as twenty-five percent over the last two years” (Brown, 1994, p. 41).
For both books and articles, include the author’s last name, followed by a comma, and then the date of publication. If you are quoting or referring to a specific passage, include the page number as well, separated from the date by a comma and the abbreviation “p.” (or “pp.”), followed by a space. If the author’s name has been mentioned in the sentence, include only the date in the parentheses immediately following the author’s name.
In-text citation: Brown (1992) documents the decline in students’ institutional loyalty.
End-of-text book citation: Tannen, D. (1991). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: Ballantine Books.
End-of-text journal article citation: Baumeister, R. (1987). How the self became a problem: A psychological