Documentation
Q. In a book I’m working on, the author tells stories that go on for several paragraphs and include quotations. When those quotations are all from one source, my author has put a single note callout at the end of the last quotation as a blanket reference for all the quotations in the story. The copy editor is suggesting that he instead put the note callout after the first quotation. I looked in CMOS but haven’t been able to find anything on this subject. What do you recommend? Answer »
Q. Should “ibid.” in citations be italicized? Are block quotes always a smaller font size than the rest of the text? If a publisher specifies that only U.S. and not British spelling should be used in a manuscript, should quoted words be changed as well? Answer »
Q. I am writing a seminar paper of which the majority of references are interviews I have done. How do I reference these within the paper? Should I provide a note each time I reference an interview? What should the note look like if I’m also attaching a full bibliography? Answer »
Q. If I have several unpublished sources in the same endnote and they are all housed at the same location, should I list that location repeatedly throughout the endnote, or can I just place it at the end of the note? Answer »
Q. I don’t believe there is a standard Chicago/Turabian bibliographic citation format for video games yet. Is there? Answer »
Q. What is the correct way to cite Web sites in an appendix or bibliography? Do you include the name of the organization, and then the Web site? Answer »
Q. I’ve been asked to change the author-date style used in a list of works cited to the author-title humanities style. But some of the authors have multiple works, some with the same year of publication. In the author-date style, it was written 1949a, 1949b, and so on, and cited in the text as (author 1949b). When I move the date to follow the publisher’s name, how do I handle that? Can I write “City: Publisher, 1949(b)”? Some of those entries refer to journals, which would mean “Journal Name 2 (1949b): 3–7.” Which looks silly. Please help me out of this awkward spot! Answer »
Q. I have an author listed in the bibliography. Below that entry will be one with the same author plus a second author. Should I use a 3-em dash to represent the repeated name, or should I spell it out? Answer »
Q. We are using the author-date form of citation. One author cited appears in the reference list with four items for a single year (Author 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d). However, in the last entry, the person is the editor, rather than the author, of the work. Thus, the entry is Author, J. Q., ed. 2003d. But this entry currently occurs after entries dated to 2004, 2005, and 2006. This makes the entry difficult to find, though the author clearly is attempting to follow the rule that “edited entries follow those of which the person cited is the author.” What would CMOS do? Answer »
Q. I’m preparing a bibliography for an edited volume, which means merging the bibliographies from ten chapters. One of the authors seems to be a German speaker, and though his writing is in English, the titles in his bibliography are in German. Must I translate these? Is there a difference if he read them in German or English? And if I do not need to translate the titles of the works, should I still translate words like “editor” and “volume?” Answer »
Q. When I reference an author within the body of my text, do I then repeat the author’s name in the footnote? Answer »
Q. Sometimes a work will cite a series of annual publications: The Annual Report on Stuff for 1993–1997, 1999, and 2001–2004, say. Does the bibliography or reference list need a separate entry for each year’s volume, or is there an appropriate way to combine them into one entry? If they can be combined, how can breaks in the sequence be handled? Sometimes I feel silly putting eleven basically identical entries in a reference list, but if eleven volumes of the report were consulted . . . ? Answer »
Q. When using a pseudonym to hide the real name of an organization, how do you cite that organization’s Web site in the references? Answer »
Q. I am writing a paper on Chinese literature in English. I am having a lot of trouble in citing Chinese sources. Since I am familiar with both Chinese and English, I prefer to present pinyin as well as English translations. However, I am confused whether to use ( ) or [ ] and I am confused on the general rules. Answer »
Q. How should I cite a work I’ve already cited in a previous chapter: in full each time I cite it or with formal direction to the previous citation? Answer »
Q. Should I use footnotes to simply list the reference information or are they for adding additional information mainly? Answer »
Q. In a footnote I have a quote that, in the original, itself has a footnote. The latter footnote (i.e., the original author’s footnote) is salient to the discussion, and I’d like to include it in my footnote. What are the mechanics to handle such a situation? Currently I have this: Answer »
Q. I have been asked by my professor to cite in my reference list all newspaper articles that I have used. The articles do not have authors. They do include the date and all other information. What is the correct way to cite this? The manual does not go into detail on this area of citation. Answer »
Q. I have been told it is not a good idea to document every sentence within a paper. But one of my professors does not accept a single footnote at the end of each paragraph as a proper citation. My question is this: If I write a paraphrased paragraph for a paper based on one source only, how many sentences in an average-sized paragraph are cited individually as opposed to being cited only once at the end of the paragraph? Answer »
Q. When an author refers to his own book, how should it be capitalized and/or punctuated? E.g., According to the list in Appendix C . . . ; in the Glossary . . . ; discussed more fully in Chapter 25 . . . Answer »
Q. If you have tables in your manuscript containing six or so columns of tabulations, do you in your text discussion of the table go into detail about what calculation is in each column of the table? For instance, in the text, “Table 1 shows, in column 4, the sphere’s true volume percentage change from the initial 10-unit radius sphere. Column 5 shows . . . Column 6 tabulates the . . .” Or do you do a generic, nondescriptive text statement like “For changes in a sphere’s radius of up to 10%, table 1 details the level of error introduced by . . .” Do you leave it to the reader to figure out the details of each column? Answer »
Q. Sometimes articles in periodicals—particularly in magazines—skip several pages. Typically, most of the article is contained on several adjacent pages, but then it finishes somewhere toward the back of the periodical. When citing such an article, how should the page numbers be listed? Should the very first and the very last pages displaying the article be shown, as in 25–62? Or should only the actual pages be indicated, as in 25–32, 62, 65, 66? Answer »
Q. I am copyediting a short report that makes reference to Wikipedia. In citing this, is it necessary to put the specific date the article was accessed, as the article may later change? Answer »
Q. In my essay, I have referred to a couple of articles passed to me by an interviewee. They are photocopied, and the article titles and dates are either blurred or missing. How should I footnote and biblio the photocopied materials? Answer »
Q. I have a question about the place of publication (country) to be included for a book in a reference list. The Chicago Manual of Style says to use the place that appears on the title page or copyright page of the book cited. My question is, if you need to specify the country but the name of the country has changed, do you use the name as it appears in the book, or do you use the current name? For example, if “Soviet Union” is shown on the title page, do you change it to “Russia” for the reference list entry? Answer »
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