HIST 310 , Winter 2004
Science and Religion in Historical Perspective

Documentation and Styles

Documentation of sources                             

When writing a paper, all direct quotations, paraphrases, interpretations, opinions, and information taken from another person’s work must be identified. Use quotation marks and footnotes whenever you use someone else’s exact words. Footnotes are also required to give credit for particular claims, ideas, and pieces of information that you borrow, even if you are not using the author’s exact words. You do not need to footnote sources for commonly available information, such as birth dates. Providing footnotes will answer your reader’s questions such as “Where did you get that?” or “Why should this claim be believed?”

Plagiarism

All work submitted for evaluation and course credit must be an original effort. Plagiarism means passing off someone else’s work, for instance that of another student or a published author, as your own. You must use quotation marks and citations to show that you are borrowing another person’s words or ideas.

Quotations

Shorter quotations are integrated into the text and enclosed in quotation marks. If the quoted matter runs for more than 3 or 4 lines, it should be set off from the text, without quotation marks, single-spaced, with all lines indented from the left. These are called block quotations.

Indicate omissions from a passage with ellipses . . . If you need to clarify some word or point in the passage, make insertions enclosed in brackets [ ].

The purpose of quoting a passage from a text is to support a particular point or argument made in the body of your paper. Sometimes it may be sufficient simply to footnote the pages on which the supporting evidence is found, rather than include a lengthy quotation. Make use of paraphrasing, which means putting the author’s ideas into your own words (you must still footnote). Try not to misuse your sources by quoting passages out of context. A brief explanation of the quotation being used can ensure that the reader understands its context and how you interpret its meaning.


Styles for footnotes or endnotes

It does not matter which standard footnote style you use, as long as you apply it consistently and give all the required information (name of author, full title, place of publication, publisher, date, and page numbers referred to). Here is one recommended style (MLA). Notice especially the punctuation and how it differs from the bibliography format, and the fact that the author is cited first name first. (Number of each note should be superscript.)

i. Book by a single author

      1David Cannadine, Class in Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 40.

ii. Chapter in a book

      2Amit Goswami, “Taking the Quantum Leap,” in The Cosmic Dancers: Exploring the Physics of Science Fiction (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 208-9.

iii. Article in an edited volume

      3Jewel Rhodes, “Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness: Androgyny and the Feminist Utopian Vision,” in Women and Utopia, eds. Marleen Barr and Nicholas Smith (New York: University Press of America, 1983), p. 122.

iv. Journal article

      4Lewis Pyenson, “Einstein’s Natural Daughter,” History of Science 28 (1990): 365.

v. Second entry of a work

The second and subsequent footnotes referring to a work ought to be abbreviated, using either a shortened title or Ibid. if the work was cited in the previous note (ibid. is short for “same as before”).

      5Pyenson, “Einstein’s Natural Daughter,” pp. 374-75.

      6Ibid., p. 366.

vi. Sources within sources

If you have used a quotation that was itself quoted in another source, you should identify both the original source and the source you actually consulted.

      7Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972), p. 40, as quoted in John Gribbin, In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984), p. 234.

vii. On-line resources and CD-ROMs

      8“Fascism,” The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn., CD-ROM (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992).

      9Carol Iannone, “The Truth about Inherit the Wind,” First Things: The Journal of Religion and Public Life 70 (Feb. 1997), 6 Nov. 2001, .


Bibliography

Include all of the works cited or consulted in the process of writing your paper. Put them in alphabetical order, last name comes first (but only for the first author if there is more than one). Lines after the first are indented. Give full titles and subtitles, and page numbers for articles. Online sources must be listed like any other source, and you should provide as much information about the text as you can find. The entry for a web site or article found on the web must include an address (URL) and the date you visited it. Also give the author, title of article, title of web page, and date of posting if known. More guidelines for MLA documentation style can be found at .

      Crewe, Ivor. “Has the Electorate become Thatcherite?” In Thatcherism, ed. Robert Skidelsky. Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Pp. 25-49.

      Davies, P. C. W. and J. R. Brown, eds. The Ghost in the Atom: A Discussion of the Mysteries of Quantum Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

      Einstein, Albert. “The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein.” Einstein Papers Project. 6 Nov. 2001. .

      Haywood, Stuart and Andy Alaszewki. Crisis in the Health Service: The Politics of Management. London: Croom Helm, 1980.

      Holton, Gerald. “Of Love, Physics and Other Passions: The Letters of Albert and Mileva.” Physics Today 74 (Aug. and Sept. 1994): 23-29 and 37-43.

      Le Guin, Ursula. “American SF and the Other.” In The Language of the Night. New York: Putnam’s, 1979. Pp. 55-61.

      Salgado, Rob. “Einstein-Minkowski Spacetime.” The Light Cone: An Introduction to Relativity. 27 Nov. 1995. 6 Nov. 2001. .

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Last modified: 1/18/2004 6:11 pm