Style Sheet for Research Papers and Term Projects In History



Style Sheet for Research Papers and Term Projects In History

This style sheet is based primarily on the Chicago Manual of Style. Refer there for detailed discussions of topics presented below.

Using This Style Sheet

This sheet is designed as a guide to proper formatting of all types of historical writing. You will confront different rules and expectations in other disciplines and even slight variations among historians. Unless instructed otherwise, you should use these guidelines for all history papers submitted at Knox College.

I. Overall Layout

Structure of Essays

The structure of longer essays should be much like smaller essays.

- All should consist of an introduction that establishes the main questions under consideration and your argument or answer to these questions. A clear and concise statement of the thesis of your essay should appear here.

- The body of the paper should present the evidence in support of your argument in an organized way. You may use either a chronological or a thematic approach, but in either case your presentation should be consistent throughout.

- The conclusion should restate your argument, draw together the main points in defense of your argument and remind the reader of unusual or original insights. It should not introduce new information or develop the argument in a way that is inconsistent with the earlier parts of the paper.

Headings

Headings breakdown the paper and its argument into smaller sections. They are useful and you are encouraged to use them. They are nearly essential in long essays. Not only do headings assist the reader but they force you to understand the structure of your argument and identify the natural divisions or stages in your discussion. If you use them, do not overuse them. A fifteen-page paper would benefit from no more than five or six headings.

Page Numbers

Page numbers should appear on every page in the upper right hand corner. No page number is required for the title page or the first page. Do not count the title page as the first page.

II. Quotations and Tables

The text of your paper should be double spaced throughout. The only exceptions to this rule are indented quotations, tables, and footnotes.

Quotations

Quotations serve many purposes. They help you convey the atmosphere of the period you are studying and add substance to two-dimensional, lifeless characters. They are also useful in conveying complex ideas concisely. The role of quotations in establishing the credibility of your arguments is by far the most important. Use quotations primarily for this purpose.

Quotations should never constitute more than one third of your paper and should generally be less.

Common quotation notations:

“ ” - Quotation marks. Use for all quotations presented within the text. Indented quotes do not have quotations marks. All punctuation precedes the closed quote (”), even if it is not part of the original passage.

‘ ’ - Partial quotation marks are most commonly used when the original quoted passage contains direct speech or another expression that is itself in quotation marks. Therefore, your quotation marks indicate the limits of the direct quotation and partial quotation marks indicate quotation marks in the original document.

. . . - Ellipsis indicate that unnecessary words have been omitted. They are not necessary at the beginning or end of a quotation, only within a quotation.

(sic) - Latin, meaning “thus.” This is the only Latin you may use. (sic) normally appears to mark errors in the original source that you are reproducing exactly as they appeared. On rare occasion you might use it to indicate intentional misspellings, grammatical or statistical errors that you use for literary effect. The main function of (sic) is to indicate that someone else has blundered, not you.

[ ] - Brackets indicate that you have included material within a quoted passage that either corrects a mistake, clarifies references to person or place or modifies verb tense or number to fit the grammatical pattern of the sentence in which it appears. Note: you do not need brackets to indicate changes in uppercase and lowercase letters.

italics, boldface or underline - These indicate emphasis and are designed to attract the reader’s attention to a particular word or phrase. You may indicate the source of the emphasis with either “Original emphasis” (when the emphasis appears in the original document) or “Emphasis added” (when you have added the emphasis) at the end of the footnote for that quote.

Example: How can we disagree with E.H. Carr’s assertion that “the illusion of a separation between politics and economics . . . had ceased to correspond to any aspect of [late 1930s] reality?”

In the original, the “t” is an uppercase “T,” the sentence is not a question, and reads “current reality.” (Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 117)

Indented Quotations

Quotations of more than forty words or four typed lines should be indented and separated from your main text. The entire quote should be indented 3/8 to 1/2 an inch from the left. Do NOT use quotations marks. Triple-space before and after indented quotations. Indented quotations are single spaced.

Tables, Charts and Maps

Also leave at least a triple space before and after tables, charts and maps. Tables, charts and maps should have titles and if there are many tables in your paper you should number them consecutively.

You do not have to provide a footnote for a table or chart but instead can list your sources for it immediately underneath, using the same format as a footnote.

IV. Footnotes

Footnotes are the accepted method for reporting the source of information presented in your essay. Preferably they will appear at the “foot” (i.e. bottom) of the page on which the reference mark (a superscript number) appears.

Endnotes, a compilation of all references at the end of the text, are also acceptable. The format for endnotes is identical to footnotes.

Parenthetical reference notations are NOT acceptable in historical writing.

You must provide a footnote for the following items:

- all direct quotations

- ideas you present in your paper that are not your own, even if you state them in your own words. You should use quotations and footnotes specifically to distinguish your ideas from those presented in your sources.

- all dates, statistics and other “facts” that are either not widely known in your field of research or are subject to dispute. For example, you would not have to provide a citation for a famous event like the Manchurian Incident, September 18, 1931. If you were to argue that the explosive device actually detonated at 11:58 PM on September 17, then you should provide a citation for this little known fact. (This fact is so “little known” that it is not even true.)

Footnotes are also useful places to put extraneous information that you find interesting or useful for the serious reader but not worth providing in the main text, being disruptive to the flow of your narrative or irrelevant to your main argument.

Footnote templates

The templates provided below provide models for your footnotes. Pay close attention to punctuation, text formatting, and order of information. These features are not random and should be uniform across all of your footnotes.

Your computer software will handle many of the difficult aspects of footnoting. You must, however, “tell” your computer how to handle indentation and font size of the notes.

All footnotes must be written in English or in the original language of the work with an English translation provided in parentheses after the title. Latin footnote abbreviations (ibid., op. cit., loc. cit.) are rapidly falling into disfavor. Do NOT use them.

All personal names in footnotes should appear in the normal word order for that language. For European names this nearly always means given (or first) name, middle name or initial, then surname (or “last” name). In other languages (notably East Asian and south Indian languages), the order may be different. For example, an essay by the Japanese author Fukuzawa Yûkichi would give a citation with that word order even though “Fukuzawa” is his surname. (Exception: Many authors adopt English word order if the publish frequently in English. For example, Mikiso Hane and Akira Iriye are Japanese names, but they have adopted English word order. Thus, “Hane” and “Iriye” are their surnames, respectively.)

Indent the first line of the footnote and then use normal margins for all subsequent lines. Single space within footnotes and double space between footnotes.

10 point fonts usually provide the best balance between visibility and the desire to limit space devoted to footnotes. Have mercy on my eyes.

Books

1Mark R. Peattie, Nanyô: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945 (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1988). 102-23.

Note that the title is either italicized or underlined. There is no “p.” or “pp.” to indicate “page numbers.” These are quite common, but they are not essential.

All subsequent citations to this book should be abbreviated either

2Peattie, 124-5.

or if I have many books by the same author (Mark Peattie)

2Peattie, Nanyô, 124-5.

Use similar abbreviations for other types of sources.

Articles in edited volumes

3Thomas Burkman, “Nitobe Inazô: From World Order to Regional Order” in Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals during the Interwar Years, edited by J. Thomas Rimer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 198-199.

Articles in journals

4Frank Ninkovich, “Interests and Discourse in Diplomatic History,” Diplomatic History 13 (Winter 1989): 135-161.

Format for volume, issue, and page numbers is:

volume # (date of issue): page #’s.

Newspapers

5Author, “Title,” New York Times, date. page.

Published documents

The proper citation of published documents is similar to the citation for books, although you must include additional information that identifies the specific document cited.

6Mayer to Kellogg, March 5, 1928, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS ], 1928, II, 308-309.

In this case, “1928” indicates the volume and “II” is the issue within the volume “1928.”

Unpublished documents

It is difficult to define strict rules for these. Generally you should provide enough information for another researcher to find the document quickly, providing your information in order from the more specific to the more general. Many document collections are cataloged (and thus marked with a index number) or organized into boxes and folders. Provide this information.

Note that additional information in brackets may be provided by the author to clarify the meaning or importance of the footnote.

If you obtained documents from a source other than the current location of those documents or some other unusual source, this should be stated at the end of the footnote.

7William Rainey Harper [President of the University of Chicago] to Paul S. Reinsch, March 4, 1902. Box 1, Fol. 2. Paul S. Reinsch Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Courtesy of Maria Reinsch.

World Wide Web Pages

Web pages are sources of everything from excellent to worthless information. Use the web with extreme caution. Rules for citing web pages are new and fluid. At a minimum, footnote references to web pages should include the title of the page and its address (URL). With the instability of Web pages from day to day, the date that you visited the cite is often a useful addition. Additional descriptive information can be helpful if the title and URL do not provide enough information for a serious reader. On-line journals can be footnoted like printed journals.

8“Gendered Discourse”: A debate on H-Diplo - Humanities On-Line discussion list in diplomatic history.

V. Bibliography

Bibliographies list all items cited in footnotes together in alphabetical order of authors’ or editors’ surnames or title of entry in the case of items without authors or editors. If there are multiple authors or editors, list the first with surname first and all others in normal name order.

Indent ALL but the first line of bibliographic entries. Single space within entries and double space between entries.

Books – Each distinct book should all be listed separately, though a title with many volumes need only have one entry, even if volumes have different subtitles. If you have more than one book by the same author, substitute “_____” for the author’s name in subsequent bibliographic entries.

Articles in edited volumes - You may list either the article and volume or only the edited volume, especially the latter if you have cited additional articles in the same volume.

Articles in journals - These are normally listed separately unless you have used many articles from the same journal.

Newspapers - List only the name of the newspaper and place of publication if it is not obvious.

Published documents - List only the volume or series, not individual documents.

Unpublished documents - List all separate collections individually, even if from the same library or other source.

Bibliography

(sample)

Burkman, Thomas. “Nitobe Inazô: From World Order to Regional Order.” In Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals during the Interwar Years, edited by J. Thomas Rimer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Iriye, Akira and Warren I. Cohen, eds. The United States and Japan. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989.

New York Times

Ninkovich, Frank. “Interests and Discourse in Diplomatic History.” Diplomatic History 13 (Winter 1989): 135-161.

Peattie, Mark R. Nanyô: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1988.

_____. Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Reinsch Papers. State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.

U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download