A bibliography is a list of sources consulted when writing a paper, preparing a presentation, research project etc. A Bibliography is also called a reference list or a works cited list.
It often seems like citations are incomprehensible masses of information with an insane use of punctuation. This is only partially true. All citation styles use the same basic pattern, they just mix it up a bit.
Why do you need to learn citation patterns? Once you know citation patterns, you will:
- Be able to understand citations even in styles you don’t know.
- Be able to put the right information into the right box when using Word’s reference feature or a program like Zotero, eTurabian, or EasyBib.
- Be able to determine if the citation is for a book or a journal article or a web page.
ANOTHER WORD about Chicago/Turabian: Chicago/Turabian consists of two styles. The first is the notes/bibliography/style, often referred to as Chicago/Turabian Humanities. This style uses footnotes or endnotes plus a bibliography at the end.
The second style is the author/date style, sometimes referred to as the parenthetical reference style. Notes take the form of short references in parentheses in the body of the paper, plus a reference list.
In this class, we will use the notes/bibliography style as it’s the one used by most history faculty.
FOR THIS CLASS, you will need to understand how citations are formatted for a bibliography or reference list. You will not be asked to do footnotes, endnotes or parenthetical references.
Italics, capitalization, punctuation, etc. in the examples below are identical to what you would expect to find in an actual citation.
APA citations are easily spotted because the date follows the author’s name. If there is no author, APA citations start with the title followed by the date.
NOTE: Chicago/Turabian parenthetical style also has the date after the author’s name.
Chicago/Turabian author/date is very similar to APA. Remember, for this class, you will only need to learn Chicago/Turabian Humanities. Chicago/Turabian Humanities is similar to MLA.
NOTE: MLA no longer requires a medium of publication (for example: print or web).
BOOKS:
Chicago 16th/Turabian 8th (Humanities)
Author. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication.
MLA 8th
Author. Title of Book. Publisher location: Publisher name, year of publication.
APA 6th
Author. (Date of publication). Title of book.Publisher location: Publisher name.
JOURNAL ARTICLES:
Chicago 16th/Turabian 8th (Humanities)
Author. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal. volume number, issue number (year): page numbers accessed Month day, year, URL (if DOI* is available, use the DOI in place of the URL)
MLA 8th
Author. “Title of Article.”Title of Journal volume, issue, (date): page numbers. Database publisher or URL if no database. Day Mon. year.
APA 6th
Author. (Year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), page numbers. doi:0000/00000 (or URL for journal’s home page if no DOI*.)
WHAT’S A DOI? DOI stands for digital object identifier. It’s like a social security number for articles and other similar pieces of information. You can use the DOI to search for an article, but the system is still developing. Right now, it’s still better to search for an author and title.
BASIC WEB PAGE
(Cite a single web page. Don’t cite the whole website unless you’re using it as an example.)
Chicago 16th/Turabian 8th (Humanities)
Author. “Title of Web Page.”Title of Website. Publication date if known. Accessed Month day, year, URL
MLA 8th
Author. “Title of Article.”Title of the Website.Publisher Name, Day Mon. Year. Day Mon. Year retrieved.
APA 6th
Author. (Year, Month day). Title of article. Title of the Website. Retrieved from URL of specific article
