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?
A. The idea is to provide a citation every time it’s needed, not to follow arbitrary rules about numbers of note callouts or their location in a paragraph. You need a new note every time the source changes, and the callout should be located where it makes the most sense—at the end of a clause or sentence, if possible. Each time you use a different source (or a different page number in the same source), a new note is appropriate. If the contents of an entire paragraph can be attributed to a single source, then a single note at the end of the paragraph is sufficient.