Citation, Documentation of Sources

Q. I’m working on an edited collection that includes many articles originally published in online sources. These articles often include live links that serve as citations, leading readers to a specific article or resource under discussion. In a traditional print publication, these items would almost certainly be cited in endnotes that we would then include in our volume. Following this logic, it seems that we should incorporate the citations in our print-only volume. Do you have any recommendations on how best to handle them? By creating an endnote structure not native to the original publication? Or through author-date citations, which would likely be even more disruptive but are appropriate for our book’s formatting?

A. It’s important to include the writers’ sources in your collection, and any of your suggestions would work. Book editors usually decide how to handle source citations based on the type of book, expectations and tolerances of the intended reader, production costs (e.g., page count), etc. It is not necessary to follow the endnote structure in the original publication, but be sure to include a note explaining your method.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]