Citation, Documentation of Sources

A. In most contexts, it’s enough simply to mention the bio in the text. Twitter bios are subject to change without notice, so add a date:

As of August 1, 2022, Mindy Kaling’s Twitter bio (@mindykaling) consisted of just two words: “new money.”

If you are expected (as for a school paper) to include a more formal citation, it may be styled as follows (as in a footnote):

1. Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling), “new money,” Twitter bio, accessed August 1, 2022, https://twitter.com/mindykaling.

Note, however, that a Twitter bio isn’t worth adding to a bibliography; a tweet, however, might be, as some will consist of an extended thread that approaches the level of a news article or blog post. For more details and an example, see CMOS 14.209.

A. In your first example, it seems clear that pages 370 and 381 belong, like pages 354 and 355, to volume 2. Not only is it unlikely that they’d instead be taken to belong to volume 1, but repeating the volume numbers (as in your second example) doesn’t seem to make the citation any easier to read. The same principle would apply to citing consecutive page locations from the same volume in a note. (We’ve made a note to consider adding some examples of these scenarios to a future edition of CMOS.)

A. Not usually. In a work with footnotes or endnotes but no bibliography, for example, you could give the full details for the book the first time it’s cited in a note but shorten them thereafter:

1. Hilton Als, “Homecoming,” in Best American Essays 2021, ed. Kathryn Schulz (Boston: Mariner Books, 2021), 11.

2. Als, “Homecoming,” 15–16.

3. Beth Nguyen, “Apparent,” in Schulz, Best American Essays 2021, 155.

In a work that also has a full bibliography, you could use a shortened citation to refer to the book in the notes even the first time one of its essays is cited. Here’s what the bibliography entry would look like (and note the optional info for the series editor; see also CMOS 14.123):

Schulz, Kathryn, ed. Best American Essays 2021. Series edited by Robert Atwan. Boston: Mariner Books, 2021.

Readers who come across the shortened reference to Schulz, Best American Essays 2021, could consult the bibliography if they needed more details; if there’s no bibliography, they’ll have to track down the initial note (the one with the full details). In either case, the shortened citation gives readers who are in a hurry enough info to locate the source (e.g., via Google or a library).

And though you’re not obligated to cite the individual chapters directly in the bibliography, you could do so using a similar approach. For example, to cite the Als essay—assuming the book is listed in full under Schulz (as shown above)—you could do this:

Als, Hilton. “Homecoming.” In Schulz, Best American Essays 2021, 9–21.

If Schulz is not listed also, you would need to add the full details:

Als, Hilton. “Homecoming.” In Best American Essays 2021, edited by Kathryn Schulz, 9–21. Series edited by Robert Atwan. Boston: Mariner Books, 2021.

A. To cite an article in a journal that assigns article numbers (also known as citation IDs) in lieu of page numbers—a system that allows for continuous publication of articles independent of a numbered and paginated journal issue—use the number in place of the page range:

Jansuwan, Para, and Kerstin K. Zander. 2022. “Multifunctional Farming as Successful Pathway for the Next Generation of Thai Farmers.” PLOS ONE 17(4): e0267351. https://​doi​.org​/10​.1371​/journal​.pone​.0267351.

The number for that article is e0267351. If you need to cite a specific page number in the article, many online-only journals (including PLOS ONE) offer a PDF version in addition to (and sometimes instead of) the full-text HTML. The PDF is typically paginated—but starting over at page 1 for each article. You’d cite something on page 8 like this:

(Jansuwan and Zander 2022, 8)

For more details, see CMOS 1.82 and 14.174.

A. The word folio in the context of book pages refers to the leaf of paper, including both sides, so you’re right that “fol. 1r–v” would make sense. But folio can also mean “page,” so “fols. 1r–v” could also make sense. If we had to side with one, however, it would be the singular. The plural would then be reserved for multiple leaves:

fol. 1r (the recto of folio 1, or one page)

fol. 1r–v (the recto and verso of folio 1, or two pages)

fols. 1r–2v (the recto and verso sides of folios 1 and 2, or four pages)

For an example of this usage, see the annotations for this ninth-century parchment manuscript at the Bodleian Library. And though you’ve found examples out there that depart from this usage, a Google search comparing “fol. 1r–v” with “fols. 1r–v” (and the like, with 2r–v, 3r–v, etc.) suggests that the singular is significantly more common.

A. The parenthetical date signals to readers that they will find more bibliographic details in the reference list. But there is some flexibility in author-date style. If you wish to avoid the awkwardness of appearing to attach a date to a person rather than a source, it’s acceptable to move the date to follow the title: “As philosopher Helen Small argues in The Long Life (2007), . . .” Likewise, a date alone may follow a quotation if the author has been identified in the lead-in to the quoted text. See also CMOS 15.26.

A. Marginalia doesn’t count as a source in the conventional, citable sense any more than the ancient outline of the base of a mug on a page of vellum from a thirteenth-century transcription of a tenth-century Icelandic saga would count as one. You’d cite the saga, not the stain. Quote, discuss, and analyze the marginalia in your text, but cite the auction catalog as its source. If the catalog might be difficult for readers to find from the title and other bibliographical details alone, add information about its location to the end of the citation (e.g., “A copy of the catalog, with marginalia, is in the collection of . . .”).

A. The plural of “trans.” would be “trans.” But because authors or editors rather than translators are generally listed first in citations of translated works, it would almost never come up in a source citation. In a numbered note you would use “trans.”—but standing for the verb form “translated by”:

1. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Books, 1994).

In bibliography format, these words are normally spelled out:

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Demons. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

But if you do happen to come across that rare bird known as an anonymous work in translation—think Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is usually translated from Middle English for modern audiences—and (rarer still) it lists more than one translator, then you would follow those names with “trans.” (translators):

Pevear, Richard, and Larissa Volokhonsky, trans. Title of Anonymous Work. . . .

A. Source citations don’t usually indicate that a particular edition is the first. The main reason for this is that first editions—out of respect for a future that none of us can predict—almost never call themselves that on the title page or anywhere else. If it’s relevant, this information can be mentioned in the text or in a note. But if you want to add it to a formal citation—as in the following bibliography entry—use square brackets to signal that the edition statement is not part of the source:

Fowler, H. W. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. [1st ed.] Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Humphrey Milford, 1926.

A. First, cite the edition that you consulted. For example, a bibliography entry for the fourth edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage, published under different titles for the first three editions, would look like this:

Garner, Bryan A. Garner’s Modern English Usage. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Then, add the info about the other title(s) to the end of the entry:

Garner, Bryan A. Garner’s Modern English Usage. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Earlier editions published as A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (1st ed.) and Garner’s Modern American Usage (2nd and 3rd eds.).