Q. My question concerns line spacing in footnotes and endnotes in student papers. The CMS is clear that manuscripts submitted for publication should be double-spaced throughout to allow for copyediting, but I can’t see any specific instructions about how to space notes in papers submitted for coursework. Searching has revealed some academic quick guides (based on Chicago) that say to “single-space footnotes and bibliographies, leaving a blank line between entries,” which is the format that I believe to be correct. Is it?
A. Sort of. It’s important to understand that in matters like this the “correct” style is the one required by your teacher or thesis committee or by whatever style guide you have chosen to follow. That said, the quick guides you found are probably following Kate L. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, which is a standard student reference. (Turabian is based on Chicago style. CMOS is aimed more at scholars who are preparing journal articles and book manuscripts for publication.) Turabian is available in all large bookstores and many school libraries.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Apologies if this is answered somewhere in the Manual; I don’t see it in the section under Place of Publication. My question: when the place of publication no longer exists, because the city has been renamed or has been absorbed into a larger municipality, how should we cite the place of publication? (Similarly, for books that indicate an alternate English version of the city name, should we use the city name as given, or the more modern/contemporary spelling—e.g., Peking vs. Beijing, Canton vs. Guangzhou, Bombay vs. Mumbai)?
A. CMOS recommends citing the city where the work was published (paragraph 14.129); you can usually find it on the title page or copyright page. You are documenting a historical fact of publication; the subsequent history of that city or variations of its name are irrelevant. Of course, it’s always an option to annotate a citation with information you think readers need or would appreciate. Please see figure 14.10 for an annotation to a bibliography entry.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. What is the correct way to write an endnote where the author has used a quote from a letter that appears in a volume of letters by someone else, and it appears as one of the book’s appendixes? The book is Delius: A Life in Letters, 1862–1908. The editor is Lionel Carley. The letter quoted by the author of the essay I’m editing is from Jelka Delius, Frederick’s wife. I’ve looked in chapter 14 of CMOS, but can’t find anything that quite matches this. The author has put this:
“Jelka Delius: Memories of Frederick Delius,” appendix 7 in Lionel Carley, ed., Delius: A Life in Letters, 1862–1908, vol. 1 (London: Scolar Press, 1983), 408–15.
Is this correct? Should it be
Jelka Delius, “Memories of Frederick Delius,” in . . . ?
I hope I don’t get scolded for submitting a silly query.
A. Your query is certainly not silly! A complex citation calls for thoughtful formatting. The author’s version indicates that the book has an appendix titled “Jelka Delius: Memories of Frederick Delius.” Your version would suggest something different: that the book has an appendix titled “Memories of Frederick Delius” that was written by Jelka Delius. Unless you have the book in front of you to confirm that you are right, you should leave this as the author wrote it.
There is danger in forcing citations into a set style regardless of their meaning. The goals are rather to convey the sources accurately and to tidy the punctuation and styling as much as you can without doing any damage. In Chicago style, your citation would look like this:
“Jelka Delius: Memories of Frederick Delius,” appendix 7 in Frederick Delius, Delius: A Life in Letters, 1862–1908, ed. Lionel Carley (London: Scolar Press, 1983), 1:408–15.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. An author wrote the following sentence: “Indeed, there has been extraordinary growth in the field, with the number of publications discussing epigenetics growing from approximately 100 in 1992 to well over 18,000 in the last year.” The citation is to the Google Scholar website. We were unsure what to do with this. Citing the website itself seemed odd, but he did get his information there. How would you handle this?
A. Since Google Scholar is not a definitive or authoritative source for statistics, the author should be asked to qualify the statement considerably in the text or in a note. For instance, he might write, “There has been extraordinary growth in the field: a search using the keyword epigenetics at Google Scholar turned up approximately 100 publications discussing epigenetics in 1992 as compared to well over 18,000 in the last year.”
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Hi—A question about CMOS citations with two examples:
(1) Leigh Wood, “University Learners of Mathematics,” in Research in Mathematics Education in Australasia 2004–2007 (Rotterdam: Sense, 2008), 73–98.
(2) Leigh Wood and Ian Solomonides, “Different Disciplines, Different Transitions,” Mathematics Education Research Journal 20, no. 2 (2008): 117–34.
Why does (1), a book chapter, use a comma before the page numbers, whereas (2), a journal article, use a colon? Is it just for historical reasons? It seems a little idiosyncratic for no apparent reason.
A. I suspect it’s because journal citations are typically more complex: that is, they can have numbers for volumes, issues, series, parts, columns, et cetera, in addition to page numbers. Journal citations are also likely to be read by someone whose first language is different from that of the citation. Thus the use of a colon right before the page number is helpful as a signal to someone trying to navigate a complex citation, perhaps in another language.
Or it might just be one of those things the original writers of CMOS overlooked and no one has ever questioned.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How would you cite Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Question 65, Article 4? Thank you.
A. If you are using Chicago style, follow the form at CMOS 14.243 (“Identifying numbers in classical references”):
Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.65.4.
Note that you need a part number as well as a question and article number.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. We publish books in the water and mining industries. Authors list many references, and we’re finding that in-text citations are becoming more and more excessive. For example, one simple sentence lists seven sources, which seems unreasonable. One chapter is 158 pages long, of which 49 pages are references. Do publishers set some kind of limits on the quantity of citations? Of course it is necessary to avoid plagiarism, but 49 pages of citations seems to be too much! How would you suggest we address this with our authors?
A. It’s the job of the acquiring editor to assess the source citations in a book or article (or send the manuscript out to experts who can assess them), and if they are excessive, it’s his or her job to work with the writer to bring them under control. Our own books vary dramatically, ranging from almost no notes or bibliography entries to tons of them. It wouldn’t be right to set a limit, however, because writers must be free to document their work fully. Unless you’re publishing books with no oversight or development, someone must be in charge of judging the quality of each book, and this person should decide whether the source citations are really necessary.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I found some phone conversations between Richard Nixon and some other people in office, and I’m not sure how to cite them. Should I cite the transcript and include the website that they came from, too? They came from the National Security Archive, George Washington University.
A. Yes, cite the transcript and give the name and URL of the website where you found them. You can find examples to follow at CMOS 14.211 and 14.229.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I am copyediting a lengthy family biography, and the authors are calling for what they call “trailing phrase” notes as a documentation method. Rather than a superscript number in the text with corresponding source information in endnotes, they want to use no notes in text and a “trailing phrase” and page number with each source citation in the endnotes. What do you think?
A. Please see CMOS 14.53, “Notes keyed to text by line or page numbers.” This system is useful to writers who fear that their readers would be intimidated by note numbers or who simply don’t want the flow of text to be interrupted.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. My author is citing biblical scripture references in the text, but using footnotes for all other citations. It is important to him to keep the scripture references in the text. My question: should he also cite them in the footnotes, for consistency? That is, should all citations be either only in the text or only in the notes? This is a scholarly work.
A. There’s no need for all citations to be in the same place. When a source can be easily integrated into the text (“We read in Psalm 42:8 that . . .”), it makes sense to do so for the convenience of the reader. And there is no reason to repeat in a note a source that has just been mentioned in the text. Many scholarly books have endnotes (for full citations), footnotes (for discursive asides and some citations), and in-text citations (for short references). Please have a look at the opening paragraphs of chapter 14 in CMOS.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]