The Test of Time

References, citations and related issues (Word version).

When writing a paper or report you must attribute specific facts and ideas to the person or persons from whom you obtained the information. It is bad form to "lift text from another source and put it in quotation marks," even if you attribute it to the correct source. At this point in your studies you should be able to digest the material and express it in you own words. Two exceptions are when another has expressed and idea with "precisely the correct words" - generally a uniquely elegant phrase - or if the other fellow "got it wrong" and you are attacking his position which is quoted verbatim to insure accuracy. It is unlikely that either of these situations will apply to your report for this course.

I wish you to cite appropriate information with superscripts that refer to endnotes (not footnotes that go at the bottom of each page). I suggest further that you use the "endnote" feature in Word. Put your cursor where you want the citation (superscripted number) to be: I will place it here. To do this I clicked Insert/Reference/footnote.... Then click "endnote" and be sure the number format is 1,2,3 (arabic). Then click "insert" button at the bottom. After you do this, a superscript "1" will appear in the text body as well as below a line at the end of the document. Type the source of the information at the end. I cite a book in one of many acceptable formats. I had to enter the word "References" myself, and increase font size to 12 (Bill Gates thinks everything about endnotes should be in font size 10. More about that later). The purpose of a reference to a book is to let the reader find the information. Authors (all), title, publisher and copyright date are all required. While a specific page number might seem better, a chapter reference - in this case covering pages 115-156 - is adequate. The reader can find what he/she needs within the 40 pages.

Sometime later I will add my second endnote, say at this position. This went a little faster, and I add the format for a magazine. There is no author, but I give the title of the article. In this case I cite pages (chapters don't apply). Again, the reason is to help the reader find the facts and figures. Also, the title gives the reader a hint about what is covered in the source (the same applies to the book title in reference 1). What about an article from an encyclopedia or a book with chapters written by different people? In this case there is an author and a title for the article in question. One more example is for an article in a research journal. Here the article title is optional, but I suggest that you include it to convey the topic. The journal title (Journal of Macromolecular Science - Physics) is usually abbreviated. Finally, my favorite, the web site. Include the URL and date visited. Give the author's name if there is one.

There are two advantages to using the "endnote" feature. The first becomes apparent if you want to change things. Say you want to add a citation between numbers 2 and 3. It's easy: just do it, and old 3-5 become 4-6. Changes are made simultaneously to the superscripts in your text body and in the endnote list at the end of your document. The second advantage comes when you want to cite the same source a second (or third ...) time later on in the text. Say you wanted to cite my paper (ref. #3) a second time at this point.3 Do the following: Insert/References/Cross-reference. Choose "endnote" for reference type, select "3. B. Crist ...." and hit insert/close. What you get is the gray "3" above that is a link to the original place where you cited my work. You should select it and make it a