Documentation
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 »
Q. What should I do if I’m missing certain bits of information for the bibliography? For example, I have many instances where I wrote down the date of a publication, but I can’t find the volume and issue numbers. The same goes for the page numbers of the entire article; for example, I jotted down the number of the page I’m citing from but not the pages of the entire article. This is problematic, as I’m a historian completing my PhD dissertation on materials from the 1930s, and the sources I use are not available online. Answer »
Q. I need to cite a quotation I took from a text which was originally reproduced in a book (“book 1”) that cites the archival source of the text in question. The book I am taking the quotation from cites book 1. How should I cite the quotation? How far should I go in citing, knowing that the original text is an archival document that has been reproduced several times? When citing in footnotes, can I write “Transcribed in . . .”? Answer »
Q. I’m writing a book review and am not sure how I’m supposed to cite quotes from the book I’m reviewing—are they footnoted, and if so, are they traditional footnotes, even though all of the quotes are from the book I’m reviewing? Answer »
Q. Hello. I’ve been charged with editing the illustration credits for a new history textbook, but I’d like to know what you think should be done for crediting montage photographs. This is where two or more photographs have been morphed into one image for printing. Putting all the illustration credits on one line without some sort of distinguishing mark or word would make it difficult for interested persons to tell which part of the montage came from what company or photographer. What solution or alternative do you suggest? Answer »
Q. How should one style the titles of Weblogs (blogs)? Should they be headline capitalized? In quotation marks? Italicized? Some combination of these? Thank you. Answer »
Q. Much of my research is based on semi-structured interviews. How do I reference these in-text so that the reader can distinguish interview refs from book/article refs, for example, if a point has been made by an interviewee as well as in a secondary text? An interview clearly has a different “authority” than a secondary text—how do I best convey this using the Chicago author-date system? Answer »
Q. I notice that in CMOS examples of bibliography entries, when the words “edited by” follow a book’s title, they are sometimes linked to it by a comma and sometimes separated from it by a period. Could you please explain the difference to me? Answer »
Q. Hello. I am seeking to include both the journal year and the publication year for an academic journal that has had delays in its production schedule. The journal provides the year 2003 following its issue number, but was published in 2007 (and the cited article is a review of a book that was itself published in 2004). Please advise on the correct bibliographic entry citation format. Thank you. Answer »
Q. When citing the same work two or more times in a paper do you use the same footnote number without relisting the work or do you use a different footnote number and list the work again? What if you cite the same source on the same page but in different paragraphs? Answer »
Q. I have multiple volumes to cite in my reference list which have (a) different dates per volume, (b) different copyright dates for “translation and editorial matter” and “additional editorial matter,” and (c) a series of dates for each in some cases, e.g., Answer »
Q. I’m puzzled over the correct treatment of the edition number of a title being used in text. Would “second edition” be set off with commas before and after, or just before? Would it be italicized and capped with the title? They were reading The Mysteries of the Cosmos, Second Edition , in class. Answer »
Q. I am using Chicago style for the first time. I am totally confused! Can you explain to me when to use footnotes (which my professor wants at the end of the paper) and when to use a bibliography? I am under the impression that she wants both used for this particular paper, and I can’t figure out how to distinguish when to use each. Help! Answer »
Q. What if two authors with the same surname are cited, and their writings are published in the same year? How can I tell them apart when I am using the author-date citation system? Answer »
Q. I am the copyeditor of my college newspaper. My question concerns incorporating elements of The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, into the college newspaper’s stylebook. To what extent, if any, does the copyright prevent the incorporation of Chicago’s style and usage guidelines into the house rules of individual publications? Answer »
Q. I’m trying to complete a bibliographic entry for a chapter in a multiauthor book. The chapter was translated from Korean into English. (The rest of the chapters have many various other translators.) How would I cite it? Where do I put the translation credit in the Chicago style citation? After the article title or after the book title? Answer »
Q. Hello. How do you document pseudonyms which appear in online discussion groups? In these situations, you only have the nickname or pseudonym as a reference (e.g., “Shelly,” “Peaches”), and no proper name to link it to. Is it sufficient to put the nickname or pseudonym in inverted commas in the body of the work, and in the endnote too? Answer »
Q. I’m applying the author-date system in my Ph.D. dissertation. When I have several references to the same source within the same paragraph, I have been attaching the date only for the first citation. For example: “ . . . was introduced by Nasberg (1985). . . . The basic formulation in Nasberg’s model is . . .” Is this policy okay? A pre-examiner of my work disagrees on this. Answer »
Q. When an author is quoting a source in a foreign language (in this case German), is it permissible to translate the quote into English without making mention of the fact that it has been translated? Or would it be sufficient to simply have a notice at the end of the article that says something to the effect that all quotations have been translated into English from German? Answer »
Q. I am still trying to grasp the whole idea of footnotes using CMOS. Do I put a footnote after everything that I use out of a book even if it’s not a quote? For example, I am writing a paper on Thomas Jefferson and in one of the books I’m using it states that he had six sisters and a younger brother. Do I need to cite that in a footnote? Answer »
Q. How do I introduce a quote in a research paper if I am going to say: Randolph states that “blah-blah-blah (Randolph 2002).” Would this be right, or can I just say: Randolph states that (if I put it in my own words) slavery was unethical (Randolph 2002). With no quotes? With quotes? HELP! Answer »
Q. What is the best way to give a concise citation within a text based on the bibliography at the end? Answer »
Q. I am editing a book of invited papers, where the initials of names are used without periods. In the chapter opening page the author names have the initials before the name and are separated by a space (T C Scott). In the reference list, the initials follow the names and are closed up (Scott, TC). Should the same convention be followed in both places? Answer »
Q. Please help. I need to cite a few lines from a poem, but there are no page numbers in the book of poems. Do I make page numbers up? Do I use poem 1, poem 2? My cites are to be author/date style. For example, after my quote I need to reference it, as in (Grimes 1999, ???). No page numbers! Answer »
Q. Dear CM: I have read everything I could find on text citation and have one remaining question, re section 16.112 (“Author-date citations are usually placed just before a mark of punctuation”). BUT, what if the text ends with a period and quotation marks? “ . . . most of the time (Pynchon 1974, 313).” Is this the correct placement of the period and the quotation marks? Answer »
