Open Access Archives - The Nature of Writing

Introduction

The final bibliography in an APA paper is called a reference list. The reference list includes only those sources that have been cited in the text and that support the argument. Background studies and works of general interest are not included.

In addition, sources cited in the reference list should be recoverable. The reader should be able to locate and access them. For that reason, personal documents (e.g., emails, letters) that are not publicly accessible should be cited only in the body of your essay, and not in the reference list.

Component Parts

Every entry in the reference list has four parts:

Author | Year of Publication | Title | Source

Each section usually ends with a period. However, don’t put any punctuation after a URL or DOI. Otherwise the link might not work.

Check out the rest of our APA guide to learn more about each individual element.

Reading Critical Sources Effectively

Introduction

Many of us are lazy readers. We avoid reading things that clash with our own beliefs, and we skip material that seems difficult. That’s why we often have a hard time mastering new information. When the going gets tough, our eyes simply glaze over.

Don’t believe me? See if you can read this entire page carefully, without once opening a new tab or visiting Facebook.

If you manage to do so, you’ll learn a few tips about how to read articles and books critically and effectively.

Tips

Don’t Cherry Pick

A lot of students skim through articles (books are too long), hoping to find just one or two quotations that prove that they’ve done research. That’s why so many quotations come from the opening one or two pages of an article (or worse, from the abstract!).

Cherry picking quotations leads to confirmation bias: the ideas of others are referenced only if they conform to one’s own perspective. In addition, the original author’s general argument is ignored in favour of a selective engagement with a specific point.

Do your best, then, to understand and discuss the author’s main thesis.

Look it Up

Don’t know a difficult word or concept? Look it up. Google it, use a reference work—do whatever it takes to get to the same level as the author.

What’s the Main Argument?

Find the thesis quickly. Skim through the abstract and opening paragraphs and underline the main point(s). Then make sure you read everything else in relation to the central claim. Does the author make a convincing case?

Read Selectively

Skimming is an art. A lot of critical work will be irrelevant to your research, and you don’t want to get bogged down in material that may be interesting, but slows you down.

So learn to read paragraphs as units. Determine quickly what the main point of the paragraph is, and then decide whether it’s immediately relevant. Don’t worry—you can always come back to it once you’ve mastered the more essential parts of the argument.

Watch out especially for paragraphs that summarize the current critical debate on the topic (the state of the field). Just like you, critics fill up space by quoting each other. Get a sense of the key issues and move on to the author’s own argument. You can always read the other people later.

Who Cares?

It’s easy to get sucked into reading articles just because they’re on your topic, but if the argument is weak or uninteresting, don’t waste your time. You do not have to quote from every source you find!

In addition, ask yourself why the author is interested in this issue. Check out the author’s credentials and background, and try to understand what motivated him or her to write on this topic.

Spot the Methodology

Scholars love theories and frameworks that help them make sense of information. They may even spend a lot of time explaining their methodology. It’s your job to see if the facts fit the theory, or if a different approach might be more productive.

Over time you will become more aware of different methodologies, and you’ll be able to spot quite quickly the school of thought that influenced the author.

What Do Others Think?

While you should first pay attention to the author’s own argument, you can gradually zoom out and see how he or she engages with other critics. Does the author accurately represent the ideas of others? Is the tone constructive or antagonistic? Does the author quote only supporting views or is there some acknowledgment of opposing views?

As you expand your research, follow the chain of citations and read the author’s sources. Then come back to the text and re-evaluate it.

Check the Evidence

Don’t accept a single thing you read without skepticism. Even if the author cites sources in support, with a bit of research you might be able to find a study that disputes those findings.

So look for inconsistencies and weak arguments, and try to spell out the author’s implicit assumptions. Nevertheless, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. Showing some charity in a critical debate demonstrates maturity and poise.

Take Notes

Master the text by taking notes. Underline, write in the margin, draw pictures, keep a notebook, make an outline—do whatever it takes to make sense of your reading. This will also help you write your essay, as finding the right quotation or reference will be much easier.

One useful strategy is to summarize the text in one or two sentences. This forces you to think about the entire argument. As a bonus, you might even incorporate the summary in your own essay in order to quickly capture the author’s thesis.

Conclusion

Reading strategically can save a lot of time and make writing the essay a more enjoyable experience. If you’ve already summed up the argument and underlined the most quotable passages, incorporating those ideas in your own writing will be a less daunting task.

Above all, think of reading secondary sources as participating in a conversation with others. As we listen attentively, and treat each other with respect, we can all grow and learn together.

Roman Numerals

The Rules

If you have no clue how roman numerals work, here is a quick overview. Let’s start with some basic numbers:

i = 1
ii = 2
iii = 3
v = 5
x = 10
l = 50
c = 100
d = 500
m = 1000

You’ll see these in uppercase or lowercase form.

By combining the numbers you can make other numbers. One way to do so is by placing a smaller number in front of a larger number. The effect is similar to subtraction:

iv = 4 (think 5-1)
xl = 40 (think 50-10)

On the other hand, if you place the smaller number after the larger number then you’re adding the two:

vii = 7 (think 5+2)
lxxxii = 82 (think 50+30+2)

You can also combine these two methods:

xcii = 92 (100-10+2)

There are a few more rules for adding and subtracting, but hopefully this clarifies the basic principles.

Common Mistakes

There are a few adverbs and adjectives that cause a lot of trouble. Let’s focus on the chief troublemakers:

Adjective	Adverb
bad	badly
good	well

To see which one you’re dealing with, you have to look at the rest of the sentence. Take the following examples:

He treated me badly.
That was a bad idea.

He treated me well.
That was a good idea.

So far so good: the adverb modifies the verb and the adjective describes the noun. The difficulty comes when we use a linking verb:

She felt bad about our breakup.

A linking verb is usually followed by a noun or adjective that describes the subject. That’s why we have to use bad rather than badly. You can see why this is so if you compare a similar sentence:

The weather forecast looked bleak.

The linking verb itself is not being modified—it’s the forecast that’s bleak.

But there is one more thing to watch out for: the adverb well can also be an adjective, in which case it refers to one’s health. Compare these sentences:

After her fever subsided, Belinda was well enough to go to class.

After her fever subsided, Belinda felt good enough to go to class.

In each case we’ve used an adjective to describe Belinda’s health.

Comparison of Adverbs

Comparative Forms of Adverbs

Just as with adjectives, adverbs come in three forms: positive (the basic form), comparative (showing a greater or lesser degree) and superlative (showing the greatest or least degree).

There are two ways to form the comparative:

Use –er when the adverb is just one syllable long: nearer, later, sooner, slower, straighter.
If the adverb is longer than one syllable, add more: more closely, more fully, more incessantly, more jealously.

Similarly, there are two standard ways to form the superlative:

Use –est when the adverb is just one syllable long: nearest, quickest, slowest, straightest.
If the adverb is longer than one syllable, add most: most impressively, most gleefully.

The only exception to these rules is early, which follows the rules for one syllable adverbs (earlier, earliest).

Irregular adverbs

Some irregular adverbs don’t follow the normal rules for comparative and superlative forms:

Positive	Comparative	Superlative
well	better	best
badly	worse	worst
much	more	most
little	less	least
far	farther/further	farther/furthest

Many of these forms are the same as for irregular adjectives.

Adverbs with Two Endings

If you’ve read the previous section, you may have noticed that some adverbs that end in –ly also have a shorter form. Here are some examples:

close, closely
loud, loudly
quick, quickly
slow, slowly

Sometimes the two forms are used in different ways:

He came close and gave me a hug.

I watched her closely.

At other times, the shorter form is simply a more casual way of phrasing something:

Janet laughs so loud that her mom gets embarrassed.

Let’s go slow this time.

In a more formal context you should think about using the –ly ending, but it depends somewhat on preference. You might find that you would readily substitute slowly, but still prefer loud over loudly.

Introduction to Adverbs

Introduction

The adverb is the Swiss Army knife of parts of speech. It not only modifies verbs, but also adjectives, verbals, other adverbs, and entire clauses or sentences. Because adverbs are so versatile, we’ll cover each function separately.

Regular and Irregular Adverbs

Many adverbs are formed by adding -ly to an adjective:

nice/nicely
warm/warmly

We call these regular adverbs. Adverbs that don’t follow this rule are called irregular adverbs.

Sometimes adverbs look exactly the same as the adjective form:

The early bird gets the worm.

I came early.

Sometimes they are quite different:

Good shot!

Are you feeling well?

And sometimes they have no corresponding adjective form (often, not).

In fact, even when a word ends in -ly, you can’t assume that it’s an adverb. There are also adjectives that end in -ly (lonely, friendly).

Asking the right question.

To find an adverb in a sentence, you can ask the following questions:

How?
When?
Where?
Why?
To what degree?

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

In the winter, the bus from Abbotsford was often late.

When? In the winter

To what degree? Often

Be careful, however! By themselves such questions don’t tell us why these words are adverbs. For example, we might ask the question where? and answer from Abbotsford, not realizing that from Abbotsford acts like an adjective to describe what kind of bus (a noun) we’re dealing with.

That’s why in the following sections we’ve broken down the specific uses of adverbs. If you learn these, you will understand exactly why some words are adverbial.

The uses of adverbs

Modifying the Verb

The word adverb literally means “something that is added to the verb” (in Latin ad = to and verbum = word, verb). It’s not surprising, then, that adverbs often modify verbs:

Jennifer bugged Mike relentlessly.

If we ask bugged how? the answer would be relentlessly.

Even prepositional phrases can act like an adverb and modify the verb:

I saw you through the window.

Here the prepositional phrase through the window tells us where I saw you. Prepositional phrases always act like adjectives or adverbs, so context is everything.

Modifying an Adjective

Adverbs also allow us to refine the meaning of an adjective:

Myron drives an extremely old Volkswagen bus.

The adverb extremely answer the question To what degree? Myron’s vehicle is not just old; it is extremely old.

Here are a few more examples:

Her baby is so adorable!

That’s the most flimsy excuse ever.

The children were surprisingly curious.

Modifying Verbals

You’ll recall that verbals look like verbs but often take on a different role in the sentence. If you want to modify a verbal, you would use an adverb:

Salana, swinging her bat wildly, somehow hit a home run.

Let’s look at some more examples:

Walking regularly is great for your health.

Left alone, Cindy sat on a bench and read a book.

To ski properly takes practice.

As you can see, to check if a word is an adverb you need to know what other part of speech it’s modifying.

Modifying Other Adverbs

Adverbs can even modify each other:

He broke the news too suddenly.

Here the adverb too answers the question to what degree? and so tells us how suddenly he broke the news.

Here are a few more examples for good measure:

He appeared to accept his award almost reluctantly.

Annette checked her Fitbit very often.

I love your necklace so much.

Modifying Entire Clauses.

Sometimes an adverb modifies not just a specific word but an entire clause or sentence:

Oddly, no one had thought of that solution.

Fortunately, the check was in the mail.

Interestingly, in Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiment the cat is simultaneously alive and dead.

As you can see from these examples, the adverb is not specific enough to modify one word, but provides a comment on the entire sentence.

Comparison of Adjectives

Adjectives (and adverbs) come in three forms: positive, comparative, and superlative.

The positive is the basic form. The comparative, as the name implies, shows a greater or lesser degree. The superlative shows the greatest or least degree. Here are some examples:

Positive	Comparative	Superlative
blue	bluer	bluest
funny	funnier	funniest
remarkable	more/less remarkable	most/least remarkable

Clearly not all adjectives follow the same pattern. That’s why it’s helpful to know the basic rules.

1. If an adjective consists of a single syllable, add -er for the comparative and –est for the superlative.

2. If an adjective has three or more syllables, add most or least.

3. If an adjective has two syllables, you’ll have to choose between adding -er/-est and most/least. It depends on what sounds better:

Zealous, more zealous, most zealous.

Tiny, tinier, tiniest

If you’re not sure which form to use, consult a dictionary.

Let’s finish with a few exceptions and additional rules.

Irregular Adjectives

Some adjectives don’t follow the normal rules for showing comparison. These are considered irregular adjectives:

Positive	Comparative	Superlative
bad	worse	worst
good	better	best
little	less	least
much/many/some	more	most
far	farther/further	farthest/furthest

Adjectives Without a Comparative Form

Other adjectives simply don’t have a comparative form. These words describe an absolute condition, in which case comparison does not work:

final
impossible
perfect
unique
whole
…

It would be illogical to say that something is the most perfect or more unique since perfection and uniqueness do not allow for degrees of comparison.

Using the Comparative and Superlative

Grammar books will tell you that the comparative is used to compare two things, whereas the superlative is meant for three or more things:

Your grandmother is older than mine.

Which is the longest of the six Oksa Pollock books?

This is a somewhat tricky rule. Take the following example:

Her huskies are more resilient than his.

There are likely more than two huskies involved, but we still use the comparative. One way to make sense of this is to consider that a “thing” (e.g., huskies) might be plural. In other words, we are still comparing just two things (her huskies and his huskies).

Another approach is to understand what is really at issue with this rule. The main thing to watch out for is that you don’t use the superlative to compare two things:

Incorrect: Of these two brands of coffee, which do you like best?

Instead, use the comparative form (better).

Introduction to Adjectives

Introduction

Adjectives are descriptive words that modify nouns or pronouns:

The blue ribbon
That black cat
A better me
An educational speech

In each case, the adjective tells you something about the noun. The adjective answers one of the following questions:

What kind of?

Which? Whose?

How many? How much?

The best way to ask these questions is to combine them with the noun in the sentence:

Twenty-two mice danced in the circus.

Question: how many mice?

Adjective: twenty-two.

As you can see, adjectives usually come before the noun or pronoun. The most common exception is with a linking verb:

The weather is sunny.

The days are long.

He became embittered.

In these cases, the adjective comes after the subject it describes.

Tricky adjectives

There are quite few words that at first glance don’t look like adjectives. Often the function of a word depends on how it’s used in the sentence. Let’s review these tricky forms.

Articles

In English, we have two articles: the and a(n). Because they come before a noun, they can be considered adjectives:

The soother
A tree
An ability

Pronouns

If a pronoun modifies a noun, then it functions like an adjective:

My friend
Any complaints
Those cousins
Which room

Nouns

At times nouns can take on the role of an adjective:

Student council
Coffee machine
Almond milk
Barber shop quartet

You can categorize these as nouns too, but it’s important to understand how they function.

Participles

Present and past participles can also act like adjectives:

Torn shirt
Ranked player
Captivating show
Streaming media

These examples demonstrate the versatility of language. Participles are derived from verbs, but they can describe nouns.

Clauses and Phrases

Even clauses and phrases can function like adjectives:

The tiger that escaped yesterday…

The fountain in the front garden…

However, don’t worry too much for now about these larger units. They will be explained in our course on sentence structure.

Common Prepositions

Common prepositions

Most prepositions have to do with time or place. There is no need to memorize every preposition (in fact, there are many more prepositions than those listed), but it will help you to read through the following list once or twice.

Spatial	Abstract	Temporal
above	about	after
across (from)	according to	around
against	as (for)	at
ahead of	besides	by
along/alongside	concerning	during
among	considering	past
apart from	contrary to	since
around	despite	till
at	except (for)	to
below	in order to	until
beneath	in relation to
beside	in spite of
between	like
beyond	notwithstanding
by	of
down	off
in front of	on account of
in place of	regarding
inside	regardless of
into	such as
near	throughout
next to	unlike
on	upon
onto	with
out (of)
outside
past
round
through
to
toward(s)
under(neath)
up
within

Ending with a Preposition

Ending with a preposition

Contrary to popular wisdom, you are allowed to end a sentence with a preposition. The noun or pronoun (the object of the preposition) can usually be found earlier in the sentence:

You are the only person I am showing this to.

Which of those girls are you going on a date with?

Check out the treasure we stumbled upon.

Most of the time, though, you can reword the sentence to avoid ending on a preposition.

Prepositional Phrases

Using prepositional phrases

So far we’ve figured out that prepositional phrases provide extra information. In fact, a prepositional phrase will never be part of the core of the sentence. When you’re analyzing a sentence, you can take away the prepositional phrases to make it easier to find the subject and verb:

This sentence also shows how prepositional phrases function in a sentence. They act either as an adverb or an adjective.

The phrase in the morning clarifies when I like to eat. In other words, it tells us something about the verb (like) by providing a time frame. When you modify the verb, you’re using an adverb, and that is also the role of the prepositional phrase in the morning.
The phrase with cream cheese tells us a bit more about the kind of bagel this is. Since bagel is a noun, the prepositional phrase is acting like an adjective.

If you can tell whether a prepositional phrase is adjectival or adverbial, you can give yourself a pat on the back. For most of us (mere mortals) simply spotting a prepositional phrase is good enough.

Common errors

Don’t automatically assume that you’re dealing with a preposition. Take the following sentence:

I must have left behind my monocle.

The word behind can be a preposition or an adverb, and in this case it’s an adverb. It’s modifying the verb (must have left) rather than relating a noun or pronoun to the rest of the sentence.

The Twelve Tenses

Introduction

In English there are twelve tenses (or forms). Each one is characterized by its tense (past, present, or future) and its aspect (simple, continuous, perfect, or perfect continuous).

Native speakers intuitively grasp which tense is correct. ESL students have a much harder time. However, everyone can benefit from understanding what makes each tense unique.

Twelve Tenses

The following chart breaks down all twelve tenses (with links to the relevant lessons). For the examples we’ve used the regular verb to walk and the irregular verb to sing:

Past	Present	Future
Past Simple I walked / I sang	Present Simple I walk / I sing	Future Simple I will walk / I will sing
Past Continuous I was walking / I was singing	Present Continuous I am walking / I am singing	Future Continuous I will be walking / I will be singing
Past Perfect I had walked / I had sung	Present Perfect I have walked / I have sung	Future Perfect I will have walked / I will have sung
Past Perfect Continuous I had been walking / I had been singing	Present Perfect Continuous I have been walking / I have been singing	Future Perfect Continuous I will have been walking / I will have been singing

Past

Present

Future

Past Simple

I walked / I sang

Present Simple

I walk / I sing

Future Simple

I will walk / I will sing

Past Continuous

I was walking / I was singing

Present Continuous

I am walking / I am singing

Future Continuous

I will be walking / I will be singing

Past Perfect

I had walked / I had sung

Present Perfect

I have walked / I have sung

Future Perfect

I will have walked / I will have sung

Past Perfect Continuous

I had been walking / I had been singing

Present Perfect Continuous

I have been walking / I have been singing

Future Perfect Continuous

I will have been walking / I will have been singing

Note that another name for the continuous is the progressive tense.

Tense

While there are twelve tenses, we also use the word tense to refer specifically to the present, past, and future tense.

The way to think about these tenses is that they are the point in time from which an action is measured. The action might take longer, and its actual timing may even surprise you, but the tense makes sense from the perspective of the speaker.

For instance, if you say “I have been studying guitar” (present perfect continuous), then the action clearly happened in the past, but it is being measured in relation to the present moment. It may even spill over in the present, as the speaker is likely still studying the guitar.

Similarly, if you say “I am leaving soon” (present continuous) you are using the present tense, even though you are describing an action that will take place in the future.

In other words, the concept of tense is flexible, so be prepared for some odd uses.

Aspect

The aspect of a verb refers to how the action relates to time. Some actions happen just once, others are repeated, and still others extend over a longer period of time. The aspect indicates how the action extends over time.

Simple

The simple aspect describes a simple fact:

He drove.

I love chocolate.

The simple aspect doesn’t say anything about whether the action is finished or continued for a certain amount of time. That’s why the simple aspect is not all that specific, and we often have to add more context to make sense of what is going on:

He drove for an hour before I took the wheel.

Continuous

The continuous or progressive aspect describes actions that take place over a period of time and may be unfinished:

I am writing a book about Mozart.

In this example, the act of writing is a process that is incomplete and takes a certain amount of time.

To form the continuous aspect, use a present participle and one or two helping verbs. Note, however, that not all verbs have a continuous forms. For more information, check out our lesson on stative and dynamic verbs.

Perfect

The perfect aspect describes a completed action:

We had performed a funny skit.

She will have finished her course by then.

To form the continuous aspect, use a past participle and one or two helping verbs.

Perfect Continuous

The perfect continuous combines elements of the previous two aspects. The action has an element of continuation, but it also has an end point. It is a completed action that takes place over a certain amount of time:

We had been watching Youtube videos, when suddenly the teacher walked in.

You can form the perfect continuous by combining the present participle with a number of helping verbs.

More Information

For more information, please check out the individual lessons for each verb tense.

Introduction to Prepositions

Introduction

Prepositions are words like in, during, or between. They are normally followed by a noun or pronoun, with which they form a prepositional phrase:

Here are some more examples:

during recess
between you and me
from Russia
with love

The job of the preposition is to relate the noun or the pronoun (the object of the preposition) to the rest of the sentence. Take, for instance, the following sentence:

I work at the post-office.

The prepositional phrase tells us a bit more about where I work.

Voice

The voice of the verb refers to the relationship between the subject and the action.

If the verb has an active voice, then the subject is doing the action.

If the verb has a passive voice, then the action is happening to the subject. In other words, the subject would normally be the object of the verb.

Active voice: Treebeard sang a song.

Passive voice: The song was sung by Treebeard.

The passive voice is formed by using some form of to be as a helping verb and adding a past participle. Here are some examples:

To Be	+ Past Participle
am	headhunted
had been	praised
will be	struck
were	seen

Another clue that you’re dealing with the passive voice is that the implied subject is often included after the verb (usually in a by construction):

These cows are milked by robots.

In fact, to make a sentence active you need to figure out who is actually doing the action (robots) and make that the subject:

Robots milk these cows.

However, not all verbs are easily transformed from the active to the passive (or vice versa). Some transitive verbs that take a direct object in the active voice simply don’t make sense in a passive construction. For example, you can’t say that something is lacked.

Usage

As much as possible, write in the active voice. Compare the following two sentences for directness:

If you want to ensure a successful rebellion, the current ruler must be apprehended, all media outlets must be captured and controlled, and innocent civilians should be protected as much as possible.

If you want to ensure a successful rebellion, you should apprehend the current ruler, capture and control all media outlets, and protect innocent civilians as much as possible.

As you can see, the active version is more colorful and concise. That’s why you should use the passive voice sparingly.

The passive voice works best in the following situations:

When you don’t know who the subject is or don’t want others to know
When you want to draw attention to the action (and its object) rather than the subject
When you want your tone to be more abstract and indirect (e.g., in some academic discourse)

However, be selective about when you use the passive voice, also in formal writing. Your default option should be the active voice.

Finally, some grammar books tell you to avoid mixing the active and the passive voice in the same sentence. Our advice is to go with what sounds the most natural.

The following sentence has two passive voice verbs:

We were told by our tour guide that the Louvre was closed due to flooding.

In this case the first verb is best made active, whereas the second is fine as is:

Our tour guide told us that the Louvre was closed due to flooding.

Being aware of these subtle differences will give you greater control over your writing.

Mood

You can think of the mood as the tone or manner in which something is expressed. English has three moods: the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive.

The indicative is the one we use most often. It includes statements of fact and questions:

The time passes so quickly.

We will be doing a fundraiser.

Aren’t you glad I didn’t say “banana”?

We want justice.

By that time I will have been waiting for five hours.

Indicative statements can use any of the twelve verb tenses described above.

The imperative mood covers commands, requests, and instructions. The subject of an imperative verb is implied (it’s usually you):

Do the right thing and buy me a coffee. (you do and buy)

Please join me in applauding a fine performance. (you join)

Follow these simple instructions to put together your new table. (you follow)

The subjunctive is the mood that gives writers the most trouble, in part because it is little used. These days we tend to use modal helping verbs (like should, would, etc.) to create the same effect.

The subjunctive expresses conditions that are contrary to fact, hypothetical situations that have not happened or are not likely to happen.

Here’s how the subjunctive is formed:

Now that you know how to form the subjunctive, let’s look at some situations in which the subjunctive should be used.

Hypothetical Statements:

If I were rich, I would live in a hotel. (indicative: I was; I will live)

Wishes and desires:

I wish I were older.

Clauses that start with that and express commands, advice, wishes, and so on:

I suggest that he leave at once. (indicative: he leaves)

If you’re not sure if a statement is subjunctive, try inserting a modal helping verb that makes the clause subjunctive (that he should leave). If that works then the subjunctive mood is probably appropriate.

Advanced Information

The subjunctive is disappearing from the English language, which is why you may often find it more natural to use the indicative form. Here’s a good example:

Subjunctive: If I be honest

Indicative: If I am honest

Most of us would pick the indicative, and not feel bad about it.

The one place where the subjunctive will likely survive for quite some time yet is in common expressions:

So be it

Be that as it may

If I were you

God help us / So help me God

Heaven forbid

Long live the King

Finally, even though the subjunctive is on the way out in English, it is frequently used in other languages.

Tense

Verb Tenses

Now that we know about helping verbs and about the principal parts, we can move on to the different tenses of the verb. The tenses allow us to make subtle distinctions about when something is happening.

The following chart provides a quick overview of the twelve different tenses, as applied to both a regular and irregular verb:

For more information about all twelve tenses, please see our detailed introduction to verb tense.

Principal Parts

Now that we know the types of verbs we might encounter, we are ready to look at the main parts that make up a verb.

There are four principal parts:

Principle Part	Example
Basic Form (An action in the present: I + present tense)	kick
Past Tense (An action in the past: I + past tense)	kicked
Past Participle (Often the same as the past tense. Usually formed by adding -ed to the present tense)	kicked
Present Participle (Formed by adding -ing to the basic form)	kicking

Not all grammar books include the present participle, but we’ve done so to show that all verb tenses can be formed from these principal parts.

By themselves past and present participles cannot be verbs (they’re called verbals), but with helping verbs they can be part of the verb phrase (e.g., will be seeing).

There are some verbs that are a bit irregular in how they form these four principal parts. That’s why they are called irregular verbs!

Here are some examples:

Basic Form	Past Tense	Past Participle	Present Participle
drive	drove	driven	driving
read	read	read	reading
sing	sang	sung	singing
swim	swam	swum	swimming

If you’re a native speaker, but you’re not quite sure how to form the past participle, you can ask yourself, how would I finish a phrase such as he had … or it was … ?

For example, if the verb is swear you might say he had sworn and know that the past participle is sworn.

If English is not your first language, it will take you some time to learn the few hundred irregular verbs that have different principal parts.

Modal Auxiliaries

There are also quite a few helping verbs that allow you to fine-tune the exact meaning of a verb phrase. These are the modal auxiliaries, and in the chart they are organized by function:

Modal Auxiliary	Function
can/could	ability/possibility
may/might	possibility/permission
must/ought to	obligation
should	obligation/condition
would	condition
shall/will	intention/probability

As you can see, some modals have multiple or overlapping uses. Let’s take a closer look at a few that are easily misused.

Shall

There are three ways to use shall:

1. To express a command or make a strong statement:

You shall not pass!

2. To ask a question or make a suggestion:

Shall we go to the mall?

3. To indicate the future tense:

We shall overcome.

Now here’s the rub: traditionally, rule three applies only to first person subjects. You can say I shall or we shall (both first person), but you’re not supposed to say you shall or they shall (unless you’re commanding them – see rule 1).

If you find this confusing, you can take comfort from the fact that most people use will instead to form the future tense (also in the first person). Even in formal writing will is generally acceptable (more so in North America than in Britain). But if you want to be a stickler you can go around shouting “Thou shalt use shall to indicate the future tense with first person subjects only!”

May vs. Might

Often we use may and might interchangeably, but there is a subtle difference between them: may suggests a stronger possibility than might. The latter is more hypothetical, and is especially useful to describe situations that are contrary to fact (they didn’t happen, but they might have).

Let’s first look at some examples where may and might are interchangeable:

I may order a cheese burger.

I might go for a swim later.

By contrast, the following sentences clearly require might rather than may:

If you had stopped smoking decades ago, your lungs might now be clean.

Had I not slammed on the breaks, you might now be in a hospital.

In these cases we are dealing with hypothetical situations, where might is preferred.

And that’s it for helping verbs. Use them together with transitive and intransitive verbs to form complex verb phrases.

Helping Verbs

Helping or auxiliary verbs allow us to create verb phrases. Without them we would have a hard time expressing exactly when something happened (tense), what the tone of the statement is (mood), and whether the action is active or passive (voice).

In addition, a subcategory of helping verbs (called modal auxiliaries) provides other nuances like possibility and necessity.

Three of the most common helping verbs come in quite a few forms (in grammatical terms, they are strongly inflected):

Be	Do	Have
am	do	have
are	does	has
is	did	had
was	doing	having
were	done
be
being
been

These helping verbs make it easy to create verb phrases:

does suggest

have been talking

did wonder

were harvesting

In a sentence, these phrases may be interrupted by adverbs:

You were not listening

I am fortunately going on holidays then.

Alternatively, in questions a helping verb may come before the subject:

Have you been taking your medication?

The only thing that never changes is that the helping verbs always come before the main verb.

Linking Verbs

Linking verbs are a kind of intransitive verb. These verbs don’t take a direct object. Instead, they are followed by a noun or adjective that describes the subject:

Henry is a mechanic.

She became angry.

The linking verb acts like an equal sign, linking the subject to the description after the verb. The latter is called the subject complement:

Subject = complement (noun or adjective)

There aren’t that many linking verbs, and most of them are forms of to be. The others tend to describe states of being or are associated with the senses:

“To Be”	States of Being	Senses
am	appear	feel
is	become	look
are	grow/turn	smell
was	stay/remain	sound
were	seem	taste
…

Note that “to be” can also be a helping verb.

As you study the following examples, look for the way in which the subject complement (the noun or adjective after the linking verb) describes the subject:

Your duet sounded fantastic.

This specimen is a Libellula depressa, a species of dragonfly.

The apple pie smells lovely.

The main dish will be linguine.

Be careful though: some of these linking verbs can be transitive or intransitive verbs in a different context:

Smell the roses!

He tasted the oysters.

She is in the bathroom.

Kendra looked through the telescope.

The first two sentences have direct objects and the last two end with prepositional phrases (so no direct object or subject complement).

Introduction to Verbs

Introduction

Verbs are usually action words. They indicate what the subject of each clause is doing. Normally a sentence has at least one main verb.

Here is a sentence with two clauses, and therefore two verbs:

When I remember my childhood, I become sentimental.

The sentence also reveals that not every verb is clearly an action. The verb become shows a change or a process. These abstract verbs are less about action, and more about describing a state of being (many of them are linking verbs).

So let’s dig in and learn about the different kinds of verbs.

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

There are two main types of verbs: transitive and intransitive verbs. However, some intransitive verbs can also be described as linking verbs.

Transitive verbs take a direct object. The word transitive is derived from the Latin verb transire, which means to go or cross over. English actually has quite a few words that start with trans, and in each case the prefix means across / cross:

translate = carry across (from one language to another)

transvestite = cross dresser

transition = crossing over

transport = convey across

trans-Atlantic = across the Atlantic

In the same way, transitive verbs carry the action across to a direct object:

She sold her car.

Transitive verb: sold.

Direct object: her car.

By contrast, intransitive verbs lack a direct object:

I fell down the stairs.

Intransitive verb: fell.

Prepositional phrase: down the stairs.

If we asked fell what? there is no answer. The prepositional phrase explains where these actions took place, but there is no direct object.

However, there are many verbs that can be both transitive and intransitive:

I guessed the answer.

I just guessed.

In most dictionaries, the abbreviations vt and vi will tell you if a verb is transitive, intransitive, or both.

Who and Whom

The personal pronoun whom confuses many people. What is it for?

Simply put, who is a subject pronoun and whom is an object pronoun.

Specifically, whom is the object of either a verb or a preposition:

The principal gave whom a medal?

To whom were you talking?

As with I and me, there is a simple test you can do to check which one you need. Try substitute “him/her” and “he/she” and see what that sounds like.

For instance, in the example above you could say “The principal gave him a medal.” That’s because “him/her” are object pronouns, and function in the same way as whom. By contrast, “he/she” are subject pronouns, and are similar to who.

In daily speech, we often use who instead of whom, and it may happen that even in writing whom will one day disappear from use. For the time being, though, you’ll want to know what whom is for. That way you won’t make any embarrassing mistakes.

I and Me

The personal pronouns I and me sometimes cause trouble when used in tandem with other nouns and pronouns.

For example, which of the following is correct?

They left some food behind for James and I.

They left some food behind for James and me.

It’s the second option that is correct. The reason is that me is an object pronoun and receives the action of the verb. If you test each pronoun by itself, you can easily tell which one’s correct:

They left some food behind for I.

They left some food behind for me.

So when in doubt, just take away the other noun or pronoun and see whether you need I or me. Here are some correct sentences to peruse:

She and I went to the movies.

Mia gave Esther and me a taste of her own homemade cough medicine.

My girlfriend and I would love a massage.

The police pulled aside just Karen and me.

Reflexive and Reciprocal Pronouns

Reflexive Pronouns

Reflexive pronouns are easy to spot. They always end in –self or –selves:

Singular	Plural
myself	ourselves
yourself	yourselves
himself	themselves
herself
itself
oneself

These pronouns are often used as a direct object:

Sarah saw herself in the mirror.

At other times, they add emphasis to a subject or object. In this role they are sometimes called intensive or emphatic pronouns:

The professor himself committed a solecism.

Reciprocal Pronouns

Reciprocal pronouns are two pronouns that work together and form a pair. There are just two pairs to learn:

Reciprocal Pronouns
each other	one another

They often help when the subject of a sentence is in the plural:

Good friends take care of each other.

In this example, the action is reciprocated, or returned in kind.

Indefinite Pronouns

Indefinite pronouns are a large group of pronouns that at first seem somewhat unrelated. Their shared characteristic is that they tend to be somewhat vague in their reference. For instance, how do you define and limit “somebody” or “most”? As their name suggests, indefinite pronouns are less definite than the other pronouns.

That’s why indefinite pronouns don’t always refer to specific persons or things. In fact, they may even be lacking a clear antecedent:

Nobody knows but me.

Everything is hunky-dory.

Other indefinite pronouns are more specific, and what they refer to can be deciphered from context.

You ate all of the candies!

Few people can juggle hand grenades.

Here is a list of indefinite pronouns:

Singular	Plural	Sg. or Pl.
another	both	all
anybody	few	any
anyone	many	more
anything	others	most
each	several	none
either		some
enough		such
everyody
everyone
everything
little
much
neither
nobody
no one
nothing
other
somebody
someone
something

Note how many end in –body, -one, or –thing.

Impersonal and Demonstrative Pronouns

Impersonal Pronouns

Impersonal pronouns can replace personal pronouns. They are more abstract and generally mean “a person.” There are just two impersonal pronouns:

Impersonal Pronouns
One	It

Try to use one sparingly in formal writing, as it can sound a bit stiff. Similarly, it is a rather vague pronoun, and often you can be more specific:

Vague: In The Divine Comedy, Dante often tries to outdo his teacher Virgil. One might argue that it reveals an “anxiety of influence.”

Better: In The Divine Comedy, Dante often tries to outdo his teacher Virgil. Harold Bloom argues that such poetic competition reveals an “anxiety of influence.”

Finally, note that one can also be classified as an indefinite pronoun and that it is included in the personal pronouns.

Demonstrative Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns are used for pointing at something, as you might in a demonstration:

Allow me to demonstrate how to drive this Porsche.

There are just four demonstrative pronouns:

Singular	Plural
This	These
That	Those

And this is what those pronouns look like in a sentence:

These cupcakes are wonderful.

This essay is plagiarized.

Those onions make me cry.

That is a great idea.

In the first three examples, the pronoun acts like an adjective (it modifies a noun). In the last it acts like a noun.

Notice that this and these refer to things close by, whereas that and those are reserved for more distant objects.

Interrogative and Relative Pronouns

Interrogative Pronouns

There are five interrogative pronouns, and they are used for asking questions:

Interrogative Pronouns
Who	What
Whom	Which
Whose

Here are some key things to know about interrogative pronouns.

1. Interrogative pronouns often lack an antecedent because the noun they refer to is found in the answer to the question:

Who shot John F. Kennedy? Lee Harvey Oswald.

2. The pronoun whom is reserved for the object of a preposition or verb:

To whom did you sell your old truck?

Whom will Sally marry?

Few people actually use whom in everyday conversation, and in less formal writing who is sometimes acceptable.

3. You can add emphasis to your interrogative pronoun by adding –ever at the end (e.g., whoever).

Relative Pronouns

Relative pronouns relate extra information, usually in the form of a relative clause. Here are all five relative pronouns.

Relative Pronouns
Who	That
Whom	Which
Whose

With the exception of that, these are the same as the interrogative pronouns. It’s just their function that’s different.

We tend to use who for people, which for things, and that for people or things, though there are exceptions. Here are a few examples of relative pronouns in a sentence:

The Tragically Hip, who went on their last tour in 2016, have long been an iconic Canadian band.

I ran into Jenny, whom you dated in high school.

Jupiter, which is the largest planet in our solar system, is still tiny compared to the sun.

I love those socks that you wore yesterday.

As mentioned earlier, whom has fallen into disuse. It is properly used as the object of a verb or preposition, but in casual speech is typically replaced by who.

Personal Pronouns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6PY-emsOLg

Personal Pronouns

The following chart shows every personal pronoun:

Subject Pronouns	Object Pronouns	Possessive Pronouns	Possessive Adjectives
I	me	mine	my
you	you	yours	your
he/she/it	him/her/it	his/hers	his/her/its
we	us	ours	our
you	you	yours	your
they	them	theirs	their

Organizing these pronouns is easier with the help of some key words.

Person

First person refers to the person who is speaking (the I or we).

If you’re talking to someone else, then that would be the second person in the conversation, and you would use pronouns like you and yours.

If the two of you are talking about other people or things, then they would be in the third person (it, they, them, etc.).

Number

If there is just one person or thing, then you’re dealing with a singular pronoun. A plural pronoun refers to two or more persons or things.

Gender

Third person pronouns are categorized by gender. They are masculine (he, him, etc.), feminine (she, her, etc.), or neuter (it). The other pronouns can apply to any gender.

Case

When a pronoun is the subject (and doing the action of the verb) it is in the subjective case:

He studied kinesiology.

On the other hand, if the pronoun receives the action of the verb then it will take the objective case:

The mountain conquered me.

Possessive pronouns can act like subjects or objects:

Yours is more colorful.

You can have mine.

Finally, possessive adjectives do not function like subjects or objects. Like other adjectives, they accompany a noun that they modify:

I love your hair.

Integrating Quotations | Part 2 (CMS)

Introduction

Once you’re familiar with how to introduce a quotation using a signal phrase, you’re ready to learn the more advanced rules on this page. You don’t have to memorize every rule, but try get a general sense of things and then consult specific sections when you have questions.

Additional Rules

Block Quotations

According to the official Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.), passages longer than a paragraph need to be set off as a block quotation. However, for users of Turabian style (the student friendly version of CMS) the minimum length is much less: passages of five or more lines can be turned into a block quotation.

Here’s an example of properly formatted block quotation:

Annabel Spotchek argues that

The invention of sliced bread made life considerably easier for early twenty-century men and women. However, not a few male writers blamed sliced bread for an increase in feminism. They argued that freed from the drudgery of cutting bread, women were able to take up the cause for universal suffrage and start working in factories. Such men were happy to acknowledge that sliced bread had brought some improvements (particularly in the toasted sandwich department), but they felt that the new technology was responsible for a significant deterioration in their quality of life. (Spotchek, Sliced Bread [New York: Loafer Publishing, 1999], 44)

While Spotchek correctly notes the importance of sliced bread, she ignores …

Note the following rules:

Single space block quotations, but leave a space before and after
Indent the entire block quotation one tab space
Retain original paragraph indents, except for the first paragraph.
After the block quote, don’t indent your next line unless you actually intend to start a new paragraph.
The citation is usually added in parentheses rather than in a note.

As mentioned, most of the time you can integrate a block quotation just like a regular quotation. Do be cautious, however, about continuing your sentence after a longer passage.

Finally, if you introduce your quotation with a complete sentence, then you can use a period instead of a colon (unless you’re using an introductory phrase such as as follows).

Quoting Poetry

Here are the essential rules for quoting poetry.

If you’re quoting two or more lines of poetry (three or more in a footnote), use a block quotation:

In “The Fly,” Ogden Nash mixes humour with theology:

God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
(1-2)

The citation is usually placed on its own line, though you can decide where. You can also insert an extra line between the poem and the citation.

For poems with lines of regular length, the text should be left aligned (indented one tab space). If a poem has irregular spacing then you are allowed to centre the text (based on the longest line):

One wonders whether Ella Pencil’s poem “Spaced Out” parodies itself:

This is yet another poem that
relies on unu-
sual
spacing to make
an impression.

(1-5)

As much as possible, however, try to retain the original formatting of the poem. If a poem contains very long lines, you can indent a run-over line slightly (less than a tab):

Finally, if you do decide to integrate longer quotations in the body of your text, use a slash (/) to indicate each line break:

In “The Fly,” Ogden Nash mixes humour with theology: “God in His wisdom made the fly / And then forgot to tell us why” (1-2).

For stanzaic breaks, use a double slash ( // ), with spaces on either side.

Quoting Drama

When you quote a passage from a play, distinguish the names of the speakers by, for instance, using all caps:

In David Baird’s play Broken Glass, the leaders of the main political parties are divided about how to stem the tide of illegal immigrants from the Vatican:

PRIME MINISTER GATTUSO. We cannot allow any more of these robed people into our country.
ANDREA PEERLESS, wiping his brow. I can’t accept such a heartless …
PRIME MINISTER GATTUSO. heartless? It’s simply a matter of restoring order. We cannot have these people parading through the streets in their funny costumes.
(3.4.15-19)

Use italics for stage directions. Note also that in a print format you can apply hanging indentation to each speaker’s lines.

Citations of plays are usually by act, scene, and line number.

Quotes within Quotes

A quote within a quote is placed between single quotation marks:

My friend Natasha told me about a conversation she had with Nibaa after their American lit class: “The other day, Nibaa said, ‘I don’t understand why Moby-Dick is a classic. Much of it reads like a manual on how to run a ship.'”

In the unusual event that you’re dealing with a quote within a quote within a quote, you would revert back to double quotation marks.

If you’re not quoting anything more than the entire quote within a quote, then just use double quotation marks:

Natasha told me what her friend Nibaa had to say about Moby-Dick: “I don’t understand why Moby-Dick is a classic. Much of it reads like a manual on how to run a ship.”

Adding Emphasis

It may happen that you want to emphasize something in a quotation. To do so, italicize the words in question, and then add a phrase such as “emphasis added,” either in a parenthetical citation or in a footnote:

Birnwick and Flintstone noted that “most of the penguins who watched Madagascar or Happy Feet showed little reaction to scenes that involved penguins dancing” (95; emphasis added).

Alternative phrases are “italics mine,” “italics added,” and “emphasis mine.” Users of Turabian style should note that such a phrase may also be added in square brackets within the quotation (right after the italicized passage).

Most of the time, though, you don’t need to add any emphasis. Assume that your reader is smart enough to figure out what’s significant about the quotation.

Ellipses

Sometimes when you quote you may want to skip part of the quotation.

To indicate the omission of words, phrases, or entire lines, you must use an ellipsis (plural ellipses), which is just a fancy word for three spaced periods. Here’s an example:

Simeon Winchester studied the 1500 meter race in Oslo in 1981, and argued that “people love to see the pacemaker succeed . . . against all odds.”¹

If it fits the syntax, feel free to retain original punctuation such as commas, colons, and question marks before or after the ellipsis.

If you indent a longer quotation of poetry and you skip one or more lines, use a line of dots (roughly the length of the typical line) between the quoted passages:

In the “The Lady of Shalott,” Tennyson appears to allude to the shadows in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave:

And moving thro’ a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“I am half sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.

(46-48, 71-72)

Be careful that when you use an ellipses the grammar and meaning of the quoted passage still make sense.

Also, you do not have to add ellipsis marks at the beginning or end of a quotation. We know that the quoted text has been cut out of a larger passage. The only exception is if a sentence trails off on purpose (for dramatic effect).

If you end one sentence before the ellipsis, and start a new one afterwards, then you will end up with four spaced periods (one regular period and three for the ellipsis). Here is an example:

Computer programmers “read on average one book per year. . . . They get most of their knowledge from watching Youtube videos.”¹

Square Brackets

You can edit quotations by inserting your own words in square brackets. Here are some areas where this is useful:

1. When you want to clarify or explain something in the original passage

A recent study by Abel Williams and Cain Jones found that “even when participants knew that a name brand item was of the same quality or worse [than similar non-brand products], such knowledge did not significantly affect purchasing behaviour.”¹

2. When you want to insert some words to make the grammar work:

Sniggle and Popper claim that the story of “Sleeping Beauty provide[s] a powerful analogy to a person in a coma.”¹

Do note, however, that in CMS style you do not have to use square brackets to change the first letter of a quotation from lowercase to uppercase, or vice versa.

3. If there’s a mistake in the quotation (let’s say a spelling error), you can insert [sic] behind it to indicate that the mistake belongs to the original author of the quotation:

According to Bert Rottweiler, “Carl Jang’s [Sic] theory of the anima and animus can be explained by means of the concept of yin and yang.”¹

If you’re following Turabian style you can fix the spelling without noting the mistake. You can also avoid coming across as pedantic by rewriting slightly:

Bert Rottweiler argues that Carl Jung’s use of the terms anima and animus “can be explained by means of the concept of yin and yang.”¹

In other words, try to minimize the use of square brackets.

Paraphrasing

A paraphrase is when you sum up a passage in your own words and provide an appropriate citation. Quotations take up a lot of space, so paraphrases can be a useful way of incorporating the ideas of others.

Let’s say you want to paraphrase the following passage (found online on Adler University’s website):

Perhaps Adler’s most influential concept – and the one that drives Adler University today – is that of social interest. Not to be confused as another form of extraversion, social interest should be viewed as an individual’s personal interest in furthering the welfare of others. Collaborating and cooperating with one another as individuals and communities can progress to benefit society as a whole.

Here’s how you might paraphrase part of this passage:

Alfred Adler’s most important contribution was his emphasis on a person’s social interest.¹

Be careful that you don’t use entire phrases from the original text. This is how not to do it:

Adler’s concept of social interest is not another form of extraversion, but refers to a person’s interest in further other people’s welfare.¹

When too many specific words or phrases are copied directly from the original passage, you may be guilty of plagiarism, even when you have cited your source.

Final Advice

It’s always important to remember why you are using quotations in the first place. An essay is not just a patchwork of quotations. Think of yourself more as a curator at a museum. You get to put on a show and tell a story. You organize the spaces and write the captions. In the same way you need to help the reader make sense of the ideas of others.

So don’t let the quotations swamp your own analysis. Introduce every quotation carefully and be sure to explain, interpret, and apply quotations before you move on with your argument.

For more information about the CMS guidelines for integrating quotations, see especially chapter 13 of the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.), and chapter 25 of Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (9th ed.).

What is Research?

Introduction

Imagine that you arrive at a party, and everyone in the room is discussing the same topic. Some people are passionate and animated, some try to sound rational or conciliatory, and others appear to be mumbling to themselves. As it turns out, you also have an opinion on the subject. You might even have the urge to yell at everyone to be quiet so that you can address the entire room. However, deep down you know that wouldn’t do. It would be more polite to first get to know the crowd. You might introduce yourself and hear what others have to say. You might ask questions when you don’t understand something. Only then will you be you in a position to state your own opinion. And, when you do, you can have a real conversation in which everyone’s voice is heard.

In academic writing that conversation is called research. Research is the attempt to understand the viewpoints of others. In the process, your own ideas and opinions will evolve, and may even change entirely. When you then turn to writing an academic essay or book, you are able to express your conclusions in a way that is interactive, constructive, and respectful. And, if you do all these things, you will be the star of the party.

Primary and Secondary Sources

Scholars often split their sources into two kinds: primary and secondary sources. Here’s how to tell the difference.

Primary Sources

A primary source is either the main focus of your discussion (e.g., a novel you’re analyzing), or it’s a source that provides first hand information about a particular topic or event (e.g., a newspaper from the time period you’re studying).

Primary sources are valued for their immediacy. For instance, when you do historical research you’ll want to hear from eye witnesses who were close to the action. Here are some common types of primary sources:

newspapers
letters
diaries and autobiographies
original books and articles
government documents
legal records
scientific experiments
interviews
photographs
artifacts (clothing, historical objects, etc.)
buildings and architecture

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are a kind of commentary on primary sources. For example, if I write an analysis of a Shakespeare play I’m producing a secondary source. Here are some more examples:

book reviews
academic books or articles
biographies
documentaries
encyclopedias
textbooks
dictionaries

These lists are not exhaustive, and there is often considerable overlap between primary and secondary sources. For instance, how would you characterize an older work of criticism (say a medieval commentary on Aristotle)? Obviously, the lines get blurred a little, but the main point is that good research is about finding the best sources–which often means looking for primary sources that get us as close to the action as possible.

Using Sources

As you incorporate your research in your writing, you’ll need to decide on the purpose of each source. Here are some of the most common ways to use a source:

Proof. By citing or quoting from a source you can demonstrate that you have sufficient evidence for your argument.

Agreement. You can explain what parts of the source meet your approval.

Background. Perhaps you just want to add some flavour or context to your writing. You can do this by providing background information.

Clarification. Sometimes a source says it better than you can. Alternatively, sometimes your source provides additional perspective and broadens the point you’re making.

Advancement. It can happen that you agree with your source, but you want to share how the insight gained might be applied in a new context or in a different way.

Disagreement. When you find sources you disagree with, you can point out their inaccuracies and shortcomings.

Once you’ve decided how you want to use your source, the next step is to interact with the source in your writing. This is where you have to decide how important the source is to your argument. If your source illustrates a minor point, you might be content with a quick mention or a paraphrase. You might even relegate the source to a footnote. If you source is absolutely central to your argument (say your entire essay is a reply to one person’s opinion), you’ll need to introduce it early and spend some time explaining why your audience should care.

Either way, it’s important to remember that your essay belongs to you, and not to your sources. That’s why we generally discourage people from using quotations in their thesis or in topic sentences. First clarify your own argument and then relate it to the viewpoints of others. Even if an entire paragraph is dedicated to a single source, we still want to know your opinion about it.

Integrating Sources

When you use a source, there are typically three things you need to do. First, you’ll have to introduce the source, which means that you have to give enough context that we can understand it. For a quotation this might mean explaining who is talking, or what the quotation means. For an illustration or graph you might want to point out what it demonstrates and how it relates to your argument.

Next, you need to provide the source, whether by quoting, paraphrasing, or inserting an image. Make sure you cite the source, following the appropriate style guide in your discipline. For the rules on quoting and paraphrasing, please consult our pages on integrating quotations (in the section on Essay Writing).

Finally, you need to interact with your source. Explain any difficult aspects (key words, concepts, ideas), indicate if you agree or disagree with your source, and connect your source to the rest of your argument.

Tip: Don’t go overboard when you introduce a source. If you’re quoting, for instance, you often just need to provide the author’s name. You don’t have to mention the title of the book or article (or publication information) unless it’s immediately relevant to your argument. All such details can be saved for your Works Cited page.

Example

The following excerpt from an essay on the death penalty is just one example of how sources can be incorporated. In this case the author has a mixed opinion about a source:

A New York Times editorial notes that in 1966 support for the death penalty was lower (42%) then it is now (“The Death Penalty, Nearing Its End”). Yet the author of the article nevertheless concludes that the United States “has evolved past it [the death penalty], and it is long past time for the [supreme] court to send this morally abhorrent practice to its oblivion” (“Nearing Its End”). Such rhetoric assumes that as societies evolve and become more progressive, they will abolish the death penalty. Yet people do not change that quickly, and it is quite possible that should homicide rates creep up, the public may clamour for the death penalty to be brought back.

Source: “The Death Penalty, Nearing Its End” [Editorial]. New York Times, 24 Oct. 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/opinion/the-death-penalty-nearing-its-end.html

Notice that the author clearly introduces and explains the source. That way the reader can easily make sense of the information.

Tone

Research is not meant to be antagonistic. You don’t have to critique everyone else. Instead, research allows us to learn from others so that through collaborative effort we can all gain in knowledge.

That also means that the tone of academic writing should be constructive. There is no need to make fun of others, or go out of your way to point out mistakes. Of course you can try to correct errors, and you may need to find flaws in other people’s arguments. Yet it is also important to point out areas of consensus and have something original and valuable to say.

So avoid adjectives like ridiculous or nonsensical, and be generous even when you’re being critical.

Conclusion

Students often ask how many sources or quotations their essay is supposed to have. The answer is that there is no set number. It’s always a matter of balance, of presenting sufficient evidence, of respecting the views of others, and of making sure your voice is also heard. If your entire essay is a string of quotations then your reader will wonder if you have anything meaningful to add. If you don’t provide proof or interact with other critics, your interpretation will lack depth. Doing research and incorporating research is thus an essential skill, and hopefully reading this page has given you the knowledge to write with confidence.

“Am Going To” Future Construction

Introduction

English has multiple ways to form the future simple tense. The most common method is to combine will with the base of the verb (e.g., I will go). A slightly less formal way to achieve the same effect is to use an am going to construction. Let’s see how this works.

Form

To use an am going to construction, start with a form to be (am, are, is), add going, and finish with the infinitive (e.g., to bike). Here’s what that looks like in practice:

I am going to bike

You are going to bike

He/she/it is going to bike

We are going to bike

You are going to bike

They are going to bike

In casual conversation going to is sometimes shortened to gonna (as in I’m gonna get you).

Uses

The phrase am going to has a lot of overlap with the regular future simple tense (using will). Here are the main uses.

Intentions

You can use am going to to declare your intentions.

We are going to come to your last performance.

They are going to go on the next voyage to Mars.

Orders

You can order people around:

You are going to clean up your room!

You are going to come with me this instant.

Predictions

When you make a prediction using am going to, it’s usually based on some knowledge or evidence that you have in the present moment.

It’s going to rain any moment

He is finally going to apply for a job.

Comparison with “Will”

Compared to am going to, the future simple using will is a bit more formal and tends to express more certainty,

In addition, the construction am going to is often used in relation to our current moment (what we know to be true right now).

More Information

For more information, please see our introduction to all twelve verb tenses in English.

Introduction

Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, once wrote a poem comparing the work of writing with manual labour. In the poem “Digging,” he describes how his Irish ancestors have always dug for potatoes and have found a sense of fulfilment in such backbreaking work. Although Heaney savours the smells and sounds of the earth, he prefers to write poems:

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it. (25-31)

Heaney realizes that by making poetry his vocation he is breaking with family tradition. He himself is cutting through “living roots” (27).

“Digging” expresses an anxiety many of us feel. What is the value of immersing ourselves in a world of words and ideas? Is there not more satisfaction in honest work than in staring at a screen for an hour, wondering how to express ourselves? Should we feel guilty if the “pen rests” (30) and we don’t know what to write?

Heaney suggests that it is okay to take our time. Writing is a slow process, and when we rush it the results are often predictable.

That’s why before we talk about the nuts and bolts of essay writing it’s good to have the proper mindset. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, this introduction took over an hour to write.

What is an essay?

The word essay is derived from the French verb essayer, which means to try. In other words, an essay is a first attempt at something. It’s not the final word and you can always change your mind about what you’ve written. If you do, you simply write another essay.

This also means that an essay doesn’t have to solve all the world’s problems. You can zoom in to the one specific question that interests you. If someone shares your concerns they will read your work; if not, they’ll move on. Not everyone cares about the Spanish Civil War or the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, and though your prose should be accessible, you do not need to come up with some lesson or moral that applies to everyone. So make your subject matter your primary focus.

Essay Structure

In high-school, a lot of students get taught the five paragraph model, where every essay has an introduction, three main points, and a conclusion.

We don’t believe in such a rigid structure. Ideas are fluid and your essay structure needs to be adaptable. In fact, a good essay structure is organic: it grows and branches out like a tree. And every tree looks a little different from the next.

So be prepared to be flexible, to adapt the rules to your own needs. If you avoid short cuts you will write much better essays.

Conclusion

Writing is one of the most difficult things to master, but at the same time everyone can do it. As long as you accept the challenge and do your best, your writing will improve. To back up this claim we could give you a money back guarantee, but then this website is already free.

Good luck!

Works Cited:

Heaney, Seamus. “Digging.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47555.

Integrating Quotations | Part 1 (CMS)

Introduction

If you want to see dramatic improvement in your writing, then focus on integrating quotations. It’s an area where many people struggle. Whereas in ordinary speech we easily introduce the words of others (he said; she was like), it somehow seems more difficult in writing. That’s why learning the rules is time well spent.

In fact, being able to integrate quotations will give you the confidence to interact with the ideas of others, to be part of a larger discussion. Quoting is not just about referencing a few lines of text that seem vaguely relevant. It’s about having a conversation.

On this page we’ll cover the basics of integrating quotations. All examples follow Chicago Style rules.

The Basics

The parts of a quotation

In academic writing, nearly every quotation is made up of three parts: a signal phrase, the quote itself, and some kind of citation:

Signal Phrase + Quote + Citation

Example: As Kurt Ramble has argued, “Urban farming should be incorporated in the elementary school curriculum.”¹

The signal phrase consists of your own words that signal to the reader that there’s a quotation coming.

The quotation can be long or short. If it’s quite long then it may have to be formatted differently as a block quotation.

As for the citation, in this guide we will be using footnotes, but you could use parentheses if you’re following MLA or APA conventions. The footnote number is usually placed at the end of the relevant clause or sentence.

Now that we know the three basic parts of a quotation, we can zoom in a little more. Most quotations share the following details.

The bibliographic information should generally be included in the footnote. Note that you do not have to mention the author’s name in your signal phrase:

Drinking a can of coke has an immediate effect on the body: “Because you have just swallowed your entire daily intake of sugar, your liver goes into overdrive and turns sugar into fat.”¹

Finally, you can mention the title of a source in your text, but try do so mostly if the title is directly relevant to your argument or if you are using multiple works by the same author.

Types of Signal Phrases

Quotations are categorized by the way they are introduced, and there are three different signal phrases.

The short expression

One of the easiest ways to introduce a quotation is to announce who the speaker or author is and to add a verb that describes the way in which the idea is expressed:

As Jonathan Truculent once observed, “The best part of the pizza is the crust.”¹

As Iris Evans suggested, “Cell phones and tablets have increasingly overlapping capabilities.”¹

There are plenty of other verbs that work equally well (usually in the present tense):

argues, believes, notes, states, implies, observes, writes, etc.

Note that many of these constructions are introduced by the conjunction as:

As Smith argues …

Now it should be pointed out that your signal phrase can include quite a bit more than the author and the verb. Here are some instances where the “short expression” is not all that short:

As Imagen Randolph suggested, in a salacious memoir that caused quite a scandal, “There was always inappropriate behaviour at his parties.”¹

Connelly mentions the contrary opinion of Judge Gavel, who writes, “No jury should convict on those grounds.”¹

It was George Fandangle (1882), the nineteenth-century antiquarian, who famously wrote about the Greek philosopher Stroumboulopoulos, “Just like the popular culture he analyzed, he is now mostly forgotten.”¹

Notice, however, that at the core of these signal phrases we still have the author and the verb. In all such cases we can use a comma between the signal phrase and the quotation.

Checklist for the short expression:

Does your signal phrase include at least a subject and a verb (e.g., He suggests?)
Does your signal phrase end with a comma?
If your quotation started at the beginning of a sentence in your source, have you kept the capital?
Is the quotation a complete sentence?
Have you added a proper citation (usually a footnote)?

The formal introduction

Next, we have a more stately way to introduce quotations. The formal introduction consists of an independent clause that typically makes a claim about the quotation that follows. The quotation then acts as proof or evidence of the signal phrase:

Godfrey Boggart, on the other hand, claims that opera is a dead art form: “While classic operas like Carmen or The Magic Flute are still being performed, most new operas receive little public attention and are in any case overshadowed by musicals.”¹

Note that the formal introduction does not need to have a verb of expression (writes, believes, argues, etc.). It just needs to be a complete sentence that allows us to make sense of the quotation.

In addition, just as with the short expression, the quotation is usually a complete sentence too. The one exception is if the quotation is an appositive phrase:

To describe the reasoning of toddlers, child psychologist Martin Frost coined a humorous portmanteau word: “toddlerlogical.”¹

If you find this an awkward construction, then just use the next method of integrating quotations: the run-in quotation.

Checklist for the formal introduction:

Are both the quotation and your introduction complete sentences? (exception: the quotation is an appositive noun)
Does your quotation start with a capital?
Does your introductory phrase end with a colon?

The run-in quotation

Often you can combine your signal phrase with the quotation to form one complete sentence. In that case you don’t need any punctuation in between. You will have to be selective about which words you quote, as the transition needs to be seamless.

The transept “first became popular in Romanesque architecture, and it gave the basilica the appearance of a Latin cross.”¹

Buchanan contends that “despite being the longest ice age, the Huronian era remains understudied.”¹

Notice that the signal phrase may include the author and a verb of expression, but neither is essential. The key is that the signal phrase and the quotation need to be combined to form a complete sentence.

So there you have it: if you pick one of the three signal phrases you should have no trouble introducing your quotations.

Checklist for the run-in quotation:

Do your words combine with the quotation to form a complete sentence?
Have you left out all punctuation before the quotation?

Minor variants

Occasionally you may come across a quotation that has no signal phrase. It’s just sitting there, all by itself in the middle of a paragraph. Kind of sad really, as the reader may have no idea what to make of it. Our advice is to play it safe and always provide a signal phrase.

A more acceptable variant is where the order is flipped around, and the signal phrase comes afterwards:

“The high costs of drugs are as much an effect of government intervention as a by-product of free market capitalism,”¹ writes economist Hugo X. Santana.

In such cases the signal phrase is usually a short expression (see above).

You can even place the signal phrase in the middle if you like:

“The high costs of drugs,” writes economist Santana, “are as much an effect of government intervention as a by-product of free market capitalism.”¹

This way of integrating the quotation (placing the signal phrase later in the sentence) is of course much more common when the words are spoken rather than written down:

“I will shoot anyone who thinks gun control is unnecessary,” shouted Ella Pringle, at a rally in Utah.

Another acceptable variant is to introduce the quotation with a short prepositional phrase:

According to Virgil Cain, “Japanese gymnasts have managed to improve their elasticity by eating copious amounts of calamari.”¹

Just make sure your signal phrase and the quotation form a complete sentence.

While you’re free to experiment, in academic prose it’s best to place your signal phrase before the quotation. Otherwise your reader won’t immediately know what to make of the quotation and has to wait for an explanation.

Continuing after the quotation.

You might be asking yourself, do I need to end every sentence right after the quotation? Can I extend the sentence?

Yes you can.

The only caution is that continuing after the quotation is best done when your signal phrase runs right into the quotation (see above) and when the quotation is relatively short. Here is an example:

Odysseus is “the man of twists and turns” (1.1), an apt description of both his character and his wanderings coming home from Troy.

This is also a great way to string together a number of shorter quotations:

Matilda Anderson, in a recent address to the Anthropophagy Society, argued for a “redefinition of cannibalism” so that the restaurant industry “might have a new source of protein.”¹

If you feel uncomfortable about extending your sentence after the quotation, then just use a period and start a new sentence. Don’t fudge it by adding semi-colons.

Checklist for continuing on after the quotation:

Do your words combine with the quotation(s) to form a complete sentence?
Have you left out all punctuation before the quotation?
Have you put the parentheses immediately after each quotation?
Have you put punctuation after the parentheses as appropriate?

Conclusion

Now that know how to introduce a quotation with a signal phrase, check out part 2 of our guide on quoting to learn about all those finicky exceptions! Don’t worry though–with a bit of practice you’ll master the rules soon enough.

If you would like to print a version of this page, please download our handy Guide to Integrating Quotations Using the Chicago Manual of Style Rules.

Integrating Quotations | Part 1 (APA)

Introduction

On this page we’ll cover the basics of integrating quotations. All examples follow APA style rules. Note that APA papers tend to include few direct quotations, as paraphrasing is the preferred method of citing sources. Quotations are normally reserved for definitions, to capture an author’s apt phrasing, or to interact with the specific wording of the source (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 8.25).

The Basics

The parts of a quotation

In academic writing, nearly every quotation is made up of three parts: a signal phrase, the quote itself, and some kind of citation:

Signal Phrase + Quote + Citation

Example: As Kurt Ramble (2006) argued, “Urban farming should be incorporated in the elementary school curriculum” (p. 78).

The signal phrase consists of your own words that signal to the reader that there’s a quotation coming.

The quotation can be long or short. If it’s quite long then it may have to be formatted differently as a block quotation.

As for the citation, in this guide we will be using parentheses, but you could use footnotes or endnotes if you’re not following APA conventions. When citing multiple pages, use the abbreviation pp. instead of p.

Now that we know the three basic parts of a quotation we can zoom in a little more. Most quotations share the following details.

You’ll notice that this passage is not crammed full of bibliographic information. Most of the time you need mention only the author, the date of publication, and the page or line number. You can also place all this information in the final parentheses:

Drinking a can of coke has an immediate effect on the body: “Because you have just swallowed your entire daily intake of sugar, your liver goes into overdrive and turns sugar into fat” (Sindhu, 2011, p. 41).

Any other details should be saved for the final references list. For example, you should mention titles mainly if they are directly relevant to your argument or if you are citing multiple works by the same author.

Types of Signal Phrases

Quotations are categorized by the way they are introduced, and there are three different signal phrases.

The short expression

One of the easiest ways to introduce a quotation is to announce who the speaker or author is and to add a verb that describes the way in which the idea is expressed:

As Truculent (2015) wrote, “The best part of the pizza is the crust” (p. 314).

In 2018, Evans suggested, “Cell phones and tablets have increasingly overlapping capabilities” (p. 58).

There are plenty of other verbs that work equally well (APA normally uses the past tense):

argued, believed, noted, stated, implied, observed, etc.

Note that many of these constructions are introduced by the conjunction as:

As Smith argued, …

In addition, sometimes you might use a verb that indicates not how the idea is expressed, but how it is received:

We read, …

Now it should be pointed out that your signal phrase can include quite a bit more than the author and the verb. Here are some instances where the “short expression” is not all that short:

As Randolph (2017) suggested, in a salacious memoir that caused quite a scandal, “There was always inappropriate behaviour at his parties.”

Connelly (2012) mentions the contrary opinion of Judge Gavel, who wrote, “No jury should convict on those grounds” (as cited in Connelly, p. 23).

It was Fandangle (1882), the nineteenth-century antiquarian, who famously wrote about the Greek philosopher Stroumboulopoulos, “Just like the popular culture he analyzed, he is now mostly forgotten” (p. 117).

Notice, however, that at the core of these signal phrases we still have the author and the verb. In all such cases we can use a comma between the signal phrase and the quotation.

Checklist for the short expression:

Does your signal phrase include at least a subject and a verb (e.g., He suggested?)
Does your signal phrase end with a comma?
If your quotation started at the beginning of a sentence in your source, have you kept the capital?
Is the quotation a complete sentence?
Have you put the appropriate closing punctuation after the parentheses (e.g., a period) rather than at the end of the quotation?

The formal introduction

Next we have a more stately way to introduce quotations. The formal introduction consists of an independent clause that typically makes a claim about the quotation that follows. The quotation then acts as proof or evidence of the signal phrase:

Godfrey Boggart (2011), on the other hand, claimed that opera is a dead art form: “While classic operas like Carmen or The Magic Flute are still being performed, most new operas receive little public attention and are in any case overshadowed by musicals” (p. 49).

Note that the formal introduction does not need to have a verb of expression (writes, believes, argues, etc.). It just needs to be a complete sentence that allows us to make sense of the quotation.

In addition, just as with the short expression, the quotation is usually a complete sentence too. The one exception is if the quotation is an appositive phrase:

To describe the reasoning of toddlers, child psychologist Martin Frost (2015) coined a humorous portmanteau word: “toddlerlogical” (p. 205).

If you find this an awkward construction, then just use the next method of integrating quotations: the run-in quotation.

Checklist to the formal introduction:

Are both the quotation and your introduction complete sentences? (exception: the quotation is an appositive noun)
Does your quotation start with a capital?
Does your introductory phrase end with a colon?

The run-in quotation

The transept “first became popular in Romanesque architecture, and it gave the basilica the appearance of a Latin cross” (Chevet, 2018, p. 5).

Buchanan (2016) contended that “despite being the longest ice age, the Huronian era remains understudied” (p. 3).

So there you have it: if you pick one of the three signal phrases you should have no trouble introducing your quotations.

Checklist for the run-in quotation:

Do your words combine with the quotation to form a complete sentence?
Have you left out all punctuation before the quotation?

Minor variants

A more acceptable variant is where the order is flipped around, and the signal phrase comes afterwards:

“The high costs of drugs are as much an effect of government intervention as a by-product of free market capitalism,” wrote economist Santana (2017, p. 19).

In such cases the signal phrase is usually a short expression (see above). Note too how the date and page number are in the same parentheses and come directly after the author, not after the quotation.

You can even place the signal phrase in the middle if you like:

“The high costs of drugs,” wrote economist Santana (2017, p. 19), “are as much an effect of government intervention as a by-product of free market capitalism.”

This way of integrating the quotation (placing the signal phrase later in the sentence) is of course much more common when the words are spoken rather than written down:

“I will shoot anyone who thinks gun control is unnecessary,” shouted Ella Pringle, at a rally in Utah.

Another acceptable variant is to introduce the quotation with a short prepositional phrase:

According to Virgil Cain (2014), “Japanese gymnasts have managed to improve their elasticity by eating copious amounts of calamari” (p. 44).

Just make sure your signal phrase and the quotation form a complete sentence.

Continuing After the quotation.

You might be asking yourself, do I need to end every sentence right after the quotation? Can I extend the sentence?

Yes you can.

The only caution is that continuing after the quotation is best done when your signal phrase runs right into the quotation (see above) and when the quotation is relatively short. Here is an example:

Odysseus was “the man of twists and turns” (1.1), an apt description of both his character and his wanderings coming home from Troy.

This is also a great way to string together a number of shorter quotations:

Matilda Anderson (2016), in a recent address to the Anthropophagy Society, argued for a “redefinition of cannibalism” so that the restaurant industry “might have a new source of protein” (pp. 1, 5).

If you feel uncomfortable about extending your sentence after the quotation, then just use a period and start a new sentence. Don’t fudge it by adding semi-colons.

Checklist for continuing on after the quotation:

Do your words combine with the quotation(s) to form a complete sentence?
Have you left out all punctuation before the quotation?
Have you put the parentheses immediately after each quotation?
Have you put punctuation after the parentheses as appropriate?

Conclusion

For more information about the APA guidelines for integrating quotations, see especially sections 8.25-8.36 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

If you would like to print a version of this page, please download our handy Guide to Integrating Quotations Using the APA Style Rules

CMS Essay Format

Introduction

This is a quick tutorial for formatting your essay using Chicago style. Sometimes your teachers may have their own preferences, so do check with them if you have questions.

Note that many of these instructions are not found in the actual Chicago Manual of Style (17^th ed.). They’re included in Kate L. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (9^th ed.).

General Formatting Rules

Paper Layout

Essays are printed on standard 8.5 x 11 inch paper, which so happens to be the default size of a MS Word document.

Margins

Since 2007, the default margin for any Word document has been 1 inch all around. Fortunately, CMS format has the same minimum requirement. If for some reason you need to fix the margins, go to Page Layout > Margins > Normal.

Font

The most common font is Times New Roman, size 12 (though Arial is allowed too). You are allowed to decrease the size for footnotes (e.g., size 10).

Spacing

Most of your essay should be double-spaced. To make this change quickly, first press Ctrl + A to highlight all text and then press Home > Line and Paragraph Spacing (symbol) > 2.0. Make sure you also click on “Remove Space After Paragraph.”

However, there are a few places where single spacing is required:

Single space your footnotes, but do leave a space between them
Single space the entries in your bibliography, but leave a space between them
Single space all block quotations (but leave a space before and after)

You should also single space any table of contents as well as any captions/titles for tables and pictures.

Alignment

Make sure the text of your essay is left-aligned. Look for these buttons in MS Word:

You might think that justified text looks better, but your instructor will likely disagree.

Indents

It is customary to indent your first paragraph (use the tab button). Subsequent paragraph breaks should also be shown by indents, and not by extra spacing between paragraphs.

To get rid of extra spacing, highlight the sentence before and after the paragraph break and press Home > Line and Paragraph Spacing (symbol) > Remove Space After Paragraph.

Headers

The header section only needs to include the page number. To insert page numbers, press Insert > Page Number > Top of Page > Plain Number 3.

However, as soon as you’ve done that, select the option “Different First Page” as well as Insert > Page Number > Format Page Numbers, and start the page numbering at 0. By doing these things you will ensure that the cover page is not included in the numbering.

Cover Page

CMS research papers typically require a cover page. While there is some variation in what can go on a title page, the most common elements are the title (a third of the way down, in bold, with key words capitalized), the student’s name, the course, and the date:

Note that all the text is double spaced. For subtitles, place a colon after the main title and start the subtitle on a separate line.

Footnotes and Bibliography

We’ve covered these topics elsewhere. Check out our detailed pages on formatting your footnotes and bibliography.

Integrating Quotations | Part 2 (APA)

Introduction

Additional Rules

Block Quotations

If your quotation consists of 40 words or more, you need to set it off as a block quotation.

In a block quotation, almost all the regular rules for quoting are inverted or changed. There are no quotation marks, the entire quotation is indented one tab space, and the final punctuation comes before the citation, and not after:

According to Dubrovnick (2011), many students taking psychology are looking for answers to the most fundamental questions of life:

For many students, psychology functions a bit like religious studies. While on the surface students are hoping to discover scientific explanations for the workings of the mind, secretly many are longing to make sense of a world in which spirituality is a fraught concept. These students hope that psychology will fill the void, that their psych prof will teach them what to believe. They couldn’t be further from the truth. (p. 45).

Here’s another way to cite the same information:

Many students taking psychology are looking for answers to the most fundamental questions of life:

For many students, psychology functions a bit like religious studies. While on the surface students are hoping to discover scientific explanations for the workings of the mind, secretly many are longing to make sense of a world in which spirituality is a fraught concept. These students hope that psychology will fill the void, that their psych prof will teach them what to believe. They couldn’t be further from the truth. (Dubrovnick, 2011, p. 45).

Do note that these examples use line spacing that’s more common online. In your essay you should double space all text, leaving no extra spaces between your block quotation and your own text.

Most block quotations are introduced by a formal introduction. The reason is that if you’re quoting a significant amount of text, you need to give it a fairly detailed introduction. Otherwise the reader may have a hard time making sense of the quotation.

In particular, you should avoid using a run-in signal phrase or continuing your sentence after the quotation, even though you will often see these things in older academic texts.

Finally, after the block quotation there is no need to indent your next sentence. Usually you will want to continue with your paragraph and explain the significance of the quotation.

Adding Emphasis

It may happen that you want to emphasize something in a quotation. To do so, italicize the words in question, and then insert (immediately afterwards) the words “emphasis added” in square brackets:

Churchill apparently joked, “Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put [emphasis added].”

If you’re also citing a source, add it at the end as usual:

Birnwick and Flintstone (2009) noted that “most of the penguins who watched Madagascar or Happy Feet showed little reaction [emphasis added] to scenes that involved penguins dancing” (p. 95).

Most of the time, though, you don’t need to add any emphasis. Assume that your reader is smart enough to figure out what’s significant about the quotation.

Ellipses

Sometimes when you quote you may want to skip part of the quotation.

To indicate the omission of words, phrases, or entire lines, you must use an ellipsis (plural ellipses), which is just a fancy word for three spaced periods. Here’s an example:

Winchester studied the 1500 meter race in Oslo in 1981, and argued that “people love to see the pacemaker succeed … against all odds” (2015, p. 46).

Be careful that when you use an ellipses the grammar and meaning of the quoted passage still make sense.

Also, you do not have to add ellipsis marks at the beginning or end of a quotation. We know that the quoted text has been cut out of a larger passage. The only exception is if your source already contains an ellipsis.

If you end one sentence before the ellipsis, and start a new one afterwards, then you will end up with four spaced periods (one regular period and three for the ellipsis). Here is an example:

Computer programmers “read on average one book per year. . . . They get most of their knowledge from watching Youtube videos” (Smith & Smith, 2016, para. 8).

Square Brackets

You can edit quotations by inserting your own words in square brackets. Here are some areas where this is useful:

1. When you want to clarify or explain something in the original passage

A recent study by Williams and Jones (2017) found that “even when participants knew that a name brand item was of the same quality or worse [than similar non-brand products], such knowledge did not significantly affect purchasing behaviour” (p. 14).

2. When you want to insert some words to make the grammar work:

Sniggle and Popper claimed that the story of Sleeping Beauty “provide[s] a powerful analogy to a person in a coma” (2016, p. 33).

Do note, however, that in APA style you do not have to use square brackets to change the first letter of a quotation from lowercase to uppercase, or vice versa.

3. If there’s a mistake in the quotation (let’s say a spelling error), you can insert [sic] behind it to indicate that the mistake belongs to the original author of the quotation:

According to Rottweiler, “Carl Jang’s [sic] theory of the anima and animus can be explained by means of the concept of yin and yang” (2017, p. 44).

In these instances you can avoid coming across as pedantic by rewriting slightly:

Rottweiler argued that Carl Jung’s use of the terms anima and animus “can be explained by means of the concept of yin and yang” (2017, p. 44).

In other words, try to minimize the use of square brackets.

Quotes within Quotes

A quote within a quote is placed between single quotation marks:

My friend Natasha told me about a conversation she had with Nibaa after their American lit class: “The other day, Nibaa said, ‘I don’t understand why Moby-Dick is a classic. Much of it reads like a manual on how to run a ship'” (N. Smith, personal communication, August 2, 2019).

In the unusual event that you’re dealing with a quote within a quote within a quote, you would revert back to double quotation marks.

If you’re not quoting anything more than the entire quote within a quote, then just use double quotation marks:

Natasha told me what her friend Nibaa had to say about Moby-Dick: “I don’t understand why Moby-Dick is a classic. Much of it reads like a manual on how to run a ship” ((N. Smith, personal communication, August 2, 2019).

Finally, when you apply these rules to a block quotation, remember that a block quotation doesn’t have any quotation marks around it, so any internal quotation can be set off by double quotation marks.

Paraphrasing

A paraphrase is when you sum up a passage in your own words and provide an appropriate citation. The APA style actually recommends that most of your citations should be paraphrases; direct quotations are normally reserved for definitions, for capturing the author’s specific wording, or for interacting with a particular passage.

Let’s say you want to paraphrase the following passage (found online on Adler University’s website):

Perhaps Adler’s most influential concept – and the one that drives Adler University today – is that of social interest. Not to be confused as another form of extraversion, social interest should be viewed as an individual’s personal interest in furthering the welfare of others. Collaborating and cooperating with one another as individuals and communities can progress to benefit society as a whole.

Here’s how you might paraphrase part of this passage:

Alfred Adler’s most important contribution was his emphasis on a person’s social interest (“Adler,” n.d., para. 10).

Be careful that you don’t use entire phrases from the original text. This is how not to do it:

Adler’s concept of social interest is not another form of extraversion, but refers to a person’s interest in further other people’s welfare (“Adler,” n.d., para. 10).

When too many specific words or phrases are copied directly from the original passage, you may be guilty of plagiarism, even when you have cited your source.

To avoid any suggestion of unscrupulous copying, be sure also to cite a page or paragraph number. While this is less essential for APA style than for, let’s say, MLA style, it is nevertheless a good practice.

Final Advice

So don’t let the quotations swamp your own analysis. Introduce every quotation carefully and be sure to explain, interpret, and apply quotations before you move on with your argument.

For more information about the APA guidelines for integrating quotations, see especially sections 8.25-8.36 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

Hanging Indentation

Introduction

A number of citation styles require the use of hanging indentation for citing sources at the end of a research paper or book. Here’s the quick explanation of how to add hanging indentation in MS Word.

What It Looks Like

Hanging indentation means that for every entry in your final bibliography, you indent each line after the first one tab space. Here’s an example of an MLA Works Cited Page with hanging indentation:

Now, you can of course just press Tab for every entry, but that’s laborious and MS Word will likely mess up your spacing if you go that route. There’s a much quicker way to achieve hanging indentation …

How To Add Hanging Indentation

Adding hanging indentation in MS Word is super easy. Just highlight your text and press Ctrl + T. That’s it!

Alternatively, you can take a more circuitous route and go to Home > Paragraph (click the little symbol to the right) > Special > Hanging Indentation.

If you take the latter route, you will be able to adjust the spacing options at the same time. For more details, check out the video above.

Introduction

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) provides citation advice for students in the humanities and social sciences. CMS is known primarily for its Notes and Bibliography system, where writers use detailed footnotes or endnotes in combination with a final bibliography.

For writers in the sciences, CMS does provide an Author-Date citation style (similar to APA), but that will not be our focus of this introductory guide.

Our guide to CMS will teach you the rules found in the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.). However, do be aware that occasionally we follow the more student friendly advice provided in Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (9th ed.). This applies especially to the rules for formatting an essay.

Using Notes

What is unique about CMS is its use of footnotes (or endnotes). Whereas MLA and APA require writers to cite their sources right in the body of the text, CMS tends to keep the text free of clutter. Most bibliographic information is provided in the notes. This way it’s possible to provide a detailed citation every time a source is mentioned for the first time.

To create a note in MS Word, go to the References tab, and click on Insert Footnote (or Insert Endnote).

The first time you cite a source, you’ll need to give fairly detailed information (as in this citation of a book):

The Q-tip, or cotton swab, was advertised as the end of ear wax, but, as Hegel found out, history has no end, and doctors now warn people that Q-tips pose a significant danger.¹

1. Bernard Upperlip, A Brief Inquiry into the History of Ear Wax (London: Candlelit Press, 2011), 98.

If you also provide a full bibliography at the end of your paper, you are allowed to cite less information (though consult your teacher first!), but most often your first citation of a source should be as complete as possible.

Information in a footnote is separated using commas. By contrast, in your bibliography you’ll want to use mostly periods:

Upperlip, Bernard. A Brief Inquiry into the History of Ear Wax. London: Candlelit Press, 2011.

You’ll also notice that now the author’s name is inverted, the publication information for a book is no longer in parentheses, and the page number does not have to mentioned (though you do need to give a page range when citing a chapter in a book).

Finally, after you’ve cited a source in a footnote, subsequent citations can be much shorter. Often you can do with the author’s name, a shortened version of the title, and the page number:

2. Upperlip, History of Ear Wax, 99.

In such cases, CMS used to recommend writing Ibid. (the same), but the current style guide suggests you avoid this abbreviation.

The notes and bibliography system described here is what CMS is all about. With a bit practice you’ll get the feel for it soon enough.

Conclusion

With our APA and MLA citation guides we have kept in-text citation separate from final citation (in the Works Cited or References page). For CMS we will use a different approach. For each type of source (periodical, book, etc.) we will provide simultaneously examples of both footnotes and bibliographic entries. That way it’s very easy to see how you would cite a source in both the notes and the bibliography.

Finally, we haven’t covered every last type of citation. In particular, we’ve left out legal sources, for which we recommend you consult one of the following texts:

The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation
ALWD Guide to Legal Citation
Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation

Additional Resources

While our CMS citation guide covers a lot of information, we do provide a few additional resources you might find handy:

Also, if you’re likely to write a lot of research papers, we recommend you check out the free Zotero citation software (no affiliation).

Footnotes and Endnotes

Introduction

The Chicago Manual of Style (17^th ed.) recommends using footnotes or endnotes to cite your sources. Our primary focus will be on the rules for footnotes, but we will provide some guidance for endnotes as well.

Footnotes

Inserting Footnotes

Footnotes are normally inserted at the end of a sentence or clause. In MS Word, go to References > Insert Footnote.

Andrew Appleby notes that “shaving one’s arm pit hair is a surprisingly recent custom.”¹

Ada Lovelace is often credited with envisioning the computer;¹ less attention has been paid to her tumultuous personal life.

The only time a footnote number comes before the punctuation is if you’re using a dash. Note as well that you should never insert multiple footnotes right after each other.

Formatting Footnotes

One annoying feature about CMS is that it can be tricky to format your footnotes properly in Microsoft Word. Here’s what you’ll need to do:

Use Times New Roman font, size 12.
Indent the first line of each footnote one tab space.
Single space your footnotes, but add a space between each one.
Add a period behind the numbers that start the footnotes.
Change the format of the numbering in the footnotes so that the numbers are not in superscript.

For help with these formatting rules, please watch the video above. Do note that in unpublished manuscripts you are allowed to use superscript in the notes (see section 14.24), so if you’re writing an essay for your teacher you don’t have to worry about the last style rule.

Basic Citations

When you cite a source in a footnote, the key elements (author, title, etc.) are separated by commas:

1. Jennifer Trip, “Conservative Politics and the Slippery Slope Argument,” Old Fashioned Quarterly 99, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 78.

By contrast, in your final bibliography you would use periods, invert the name, and either leave out the page or (for some citations) give the full page range:

Trip, Jennifer. “Conservative Politics and the Slippery Slope Argument.” Old Fashioned Quarterly 99, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 70-79.

The basic format of a citation thus includes an author, title, and publication information.

Shortened Citations

Sources that are cited multiple times can be shortened after the first citation. In such cases you can provide just the author’s last name, the title (shortened if longer than four words), and a page reference:

1. Amy Sung, The Siamese Art of Double Dating (Hong Kong: Inky Press, 1999), 87.

2. Sung, Double Dating, 107-11.

When shortening a title, remove the articles (a, an, the) and use just a few key words. For the author, omit first names and remove references to contributor roles (e.g., ed. or trans.).

When citing the same source in quick succession, you can even leave out the title of the source:

9. Sung, Double Dating, 144.

10. Sung, 159.

11. Sung, 162.

Quotation in a Note

When adding a quotation in a footnote, add the citation as a separate sentence:

1. As Michelle Gobbledygook writes, “ancient Roman aqueducts may have been used for elaborate canoe races.” Gobbledygook, The Kayaking Ostrogoth Tribe that Vandalized the Roman Aqueducts (Vancouver: Arch Publications, 1984), 44.

You have some freedom in terms of whether you wish to repeat the author’s entire name.

See and cf.

A common way to introduce references is to write see:

1. Some tennis experts feel that the fifth set tie breaker should be simplified due to the number of power hitters who dominate the service game. See Kevin Isner, “Going the Distance: The Problem of the Fifth Set,” Wimbledon Advantage 55, no. 2 (2018): 22.

You can also use the abbreviation cf. (from Latin confer, compare), but only if you actually intend the reader to compare two perspectives on an issue.

Emphasis

If you want to emphasize part of a quote, add italics, or make any other changes you desire, you can add a quick note at the end of your citation:

5. Castafiore, Milanese Nightingale, 377 (emphasis added).

Multiple Citations

When citing multiple sources in a row, you can often separate them with a semi-colon:

6. Important studies of the history of the kettle include Ernst Schwartz, The Black Kettle (Hamburg: Dietrich Verlag, 2016); Ulrich Smelch, From Cauldron to Kettle (Coventry: Witch’s Press, 2001); and Iris Plasterer, “The Plastic Kettle and the Problem of Limescale.” Kittles and Kettles 17, no. 3 (2007): 14-28.

Cross-Referencing

You can cross reference notes, though you’ll have to double check that your numbering remains accurate:

12. See note 5 above.
4. See chap. 2, n. 9.
9. See 201n15.
13. See 5nn1-2.

In the last two examples, the abbreviations n and nn stand for note and notes. The number that precedes them is the page reference.

Beyond Page Numbers

Sometimes it happens that a source does not use page numbers. In that case you may want to substitute a chapter title, a paragraph number, or some other description of where the claim or quote may be located.

By contrast, for many classic literary works you will have to familiarize yourself with how a work is customarily cited. Dante’s Divine Comedy, for instance is usually cited by canto and line number:

1, Dante, Inferno, canto 3, lines 7-8
2. Dante, Inferno, 3.28-29.

In such complex citations you can use the abbreviations p. and pp. (for page and pages), but do write out line and lines.

Endnotes

One reason to prefer endnotes over footnotes is that the latter can be a distraction from the body of your text. On the other hand, the downside to endnotes is that many readers don’t like flipping back and forth to compare the notes to the text.

Endnotes are primarily used for books and select scholarly publications. Most students can rely on using footnotes instead.

Citations in endnotes follow the same rules as for footnotes. However, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends that for the sake of clarity writers are more cautious about using shortened citations (see above).

To format your endnotes, add the title “Notes.” If you’re working with a longer document, you can add section headings as well (e.g., “Chapter 5” or “Chapter 5: The Wedding from Hell”). In such cases you can restart the numbering, beginning with 1.

Finally, when using endnotes in a book it is customary to add a running head to each page (e.g., “notes to pages 77-79”) to make it easy for readers to match up the notes with the original citation.

More Information

For more information about footnotes and endnotes, see sections 14.1-14.60 of the Chicago Manual of Style (17^th ed.).

Formatting the Bibliography

Introduction

Many academic works conclude with a detailed bibliography. Here’s how to format the page and alphabetize your entries, using the guidelines provided in the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.).

Basic Layout

Always start your bibliography on a separate page. It may be helpful to insert a page break in your document.

Next, write “Bibliography” at the top and centre this heading. Leave two line breaks before starting your first entry (left aligned):

Here are a few more things to note:

Apply hanging indentation to your entries.
Include your regular header (page number)
Single space your entries, but leave an extra space in between them.
Use the same font you have used throughout the essay

Note that like most instructors we follow the line spacing rules found in Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. By contrast, the Chicago Manual of Style (sections 2.8 and 2.24) does allow for double spacing.

Rules for Alphabetizing

All the entries in your bibliography should be sorted alphabetically. A good way to get started is to use Microsoft Word’s sort feature. However, you may still have to do some tweaking to get things perfect.

The Chicago Manual of Style prefers a letter by letter approach to alphabetizing. All that means is that when you’re comparing entries you ignore the breaks between words. Here’s an example:

Coleslaw, Bob.

Cole, Ted.

The point of divergence occurs when the s in Coleslaw comes before the T in Ted.

Most often you can alphabetize by name, but sometimes you may have to compare another detail. As you do so, ignore articles (the, a, an) and skip abbreviations such as ed. or trans.

The 3-Em Dash

Traditionally, additional entries by the same author(s) have been indicated by three dashes followed by a period or comma (in the case of a follow-up abbreviation such as ed.):

Wattle, Jeremy. A History of the Rooster’s Crow. Vancouver: Cage Press, 2011.

—. “The Rooster Always Crows Thrice: Another Look at Peter’s Denial.” New Day Hermeneutics 2, no. 3 (2018): 1-15.

—, ed. The Ultimate Guide to Cock Fighting. Peterborough: Broadviewer Press, 2017.

The implication is that Jeremy Wattle is the author of all three texts. Note that for the sake of alphabetizing we have ignored abbreviations (ed.) as well as the articles in the titles (a, the).

The latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style does not require the use of the 3-em dash. You should therefore check to see what your instructor prefers. If you’re not using the 3-em dash, simply write out the full name for each entry.

Multiple Authors

If you’re citing two sources that start with a common author, cite the single-author text before the multi-author text:

Paddington, Elmer. A Brief History of Corduroy Shorts. London: Tweed, 2004.

Paddington, Elmer, and Bryan Fawning. “Sartorial Bullying and the Status of Corduroy.” The Marxist Tailor 88, no. 1 (1993): 7-19.

When both works are multi-author texts (and start with the same author), alphabetize by the last names of the coauthors.

Stone, Brittany, and Lara Mason.

Stone, Brittany, and Ben Mortar.

If all authors are exactly identical, compare a subsequent detail such as a title.

More Information

For more information, see especially sections 14.65-14.71 of The Chicago Manual of Style (17^th ed.).

Parts of a Citation

Introduction

This page is not thrilling reading, and you should view it primarily as a reference guide. If you’re using the Chicago Manual of Style (17^th ed.), and you have a question about how to cite a particular part of a source (title, author, publisher, etc.), then consult the relevant section below.

Author

Inverting Names

In the final bibliography, the author’s name is inverted:

1. Bernard Standstone, Networking at Starbucks…

Sandstone, Bernard. Networking at Starbucks…

For multiple authors, invert only the first author’s name (and insert “and” before the last):

Homer, Donald, Guy Hicks, and Kim Stanley Philby.

Also, try list the authors in the order they appear on the title page (even though this isn’t the alphabetical order).

Et al.

For any work that has four or more authors (or editors), use the abbreviation et al. after the first name in your footnote

1. Bob Hermite et al., Growing Hasselberries…

By contrast, in your bibliography et al. should be used only for works with more than ten authors. In such cases you can cite the first six or seven and then add the abbreviation.

When coauthors share the same last name (and may even be family), do still cite each name in full:

1. Jason Trilby and Emma Trilby…

Initials

If authors use only initials, don’t write out their full names:

E. B. White,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
P. G. Wodehouse

Pseudonyms

In some cases, you may want to indicate that the author’s name is a pseudonym:

1. Gadfly [pseud.], “Parliament Wrong To Raise Taxes.”

There are, however, plenty of famous authors who have used pseudonyms. Lewis Carroll, for example, was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. For such well known names you do not need to add pseud. or provide the author’s real name.

First names

Some authors are primarily known by their first names. In such cases you don’t have to invert the name in the bibliography:

Dante Alighieri.

Title

Basic Format

Titles of longer works (e.g., books) are italicized whereas shorter works (e.g., articles) are placed in italics:

Teutonic Nights: A Romance (novel)
“How to Turn a Sneeze into a Dab” (blog post)

Note also that the capitalization is headline-style, which means that important words are capitalized, but words like articles (a, the) and prepositions (in, over, etc.) are not. There are two exceptions, however. Do capitalize any word after a colon (at the start of a subtitle) and use sentence-style capitalization for foreign language titles (e.g., Tous les cornichons du monde).

Subtitles

Subtitles are usually introduced by a colon (even if there is no colon in the original). Make sure you capitalize the next word:

A Brewery on the Steppes: An Introduction to the Mongolian Craft Beer Industry

If the main title ends with a question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!), don’t add the colon. The exception is if the question mark of exclamation mark is in quotation marks (the third example):

Stone the Crows! The Popular Representation of Corvidae
Why Always Me? How To Get Children Stop Whining and Love Their Chores
“Haere Ra Dear House!”: New Zealand’s Leaky Home Crisis, 1994-2004

Note also how in the first example the Latin species name is in roman font (see below) and how in the last example the dates are separated by a comma.

If a title has two subtitles, place a semi-colon between them.

Quotations within Titles

If your title is in quotation marks, and it makes mention of another title, use single quotation marks within double quotation marks:

“‘At Small Parties There Isn’t Any Privacy’: How To Host Your Own Great Gatsby Themed Party”

Terms within Titles

When we draw attention to words or terms, we normally use italics:

I can never remember how to spell the words desert and dessert.

This rule also applies for titles. However, if the title itself is already in italics, use roman font for the specific words:

From Schmuck to Kibitzer: My Life as a Yiddish Literary Critic (book)

“Why the Word Stationary Continues to Move Me” (article)

By using roman font in the first example we can distinguish the emphasized words from the rest of the title.

Long Titles

If a title is very long (as is common with older works), you can shorten it by using spaced ellipses enclosed in square brackets:

A Brief Inquiry into the Differences Between the Sexes, Expatiating on the Myth of Tiresias, and Answering the Question whether Men or Women Receive More Enjoyment from [. . .].

You can place the ellipses either in the middle or at the end.

Translated Titles

If you provide a translation of a foreign language title, place it in square brackets:

Een korte geschiedenis van Middelburg [A Short History of Middelburg]

If you provide a translation and omit the original title, let the reader know the language of the source.

A Short History of Middelburg [Dutch]

Publication information

When it comes to citing books, it’s customary to provide the city of publication, the publisher, and the date of publication:

1. Egil Viking, The Oxbridge Guide to Pillaging Monasteries (Reykjavik: All Things Press, 2005).

Viking, Egil. The Oxbridge Guide to Pillaging Monasteries. Reykjavik: All Things Press, 2005.

Let’s review each of these elements in some more detail.

City

When you look at the copyright page of a book, it can be difficult to know which city to cite. In general, if the publisher has offices in multiple cities, cite just the first one given.

SOPORIFIC PRESS
Sleepy Hollow Road 9, Vancouver, Z8Z 9Z9, Canada
Rue de Sommeil 5, Paris, SD 300, France
Träumerei Building, Jena, 983 NDL, Germany

In addition, if the city of publication is obscure or easily confused, then you can add the state, province, or country name (usually abbreviated):

Puddletown, UK: Antediluvian Publications
Yeehaw Junction, FL: Seesaw Press
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Note, however, that if you cite Cambridge University Press, you don’t have to specify that Cambridge is in England. Similarly, if the state is clear from the publisher’s name (e.g., University of California Press), you don’t have to add an abbreviation after the city.

If you don’t know the place of publication, write n.p. or make an educated guess and add a question mark (e.g., Chicago?).

Finally, use English names for foreign cities (e.g., Brussels, not Bruxelles or Brussel), but leave publisher’s names untranslated.

Publisher

Abbreviations

For the publisher’s name, you can omit common abbreviations (e.g., Ltd., Inc., Co.):

Polyp, not Polyp Co.
Towns Brothers, not Towns Brothers Inc.
Myopic Press, not Myopic Press, Ltd.

For university presses you can abbreviate the word university (e.g., Weissnichtwo Univ. Press)

Ampersand

If the publisher’s name contains an and or &, you can you either form in your citations:

Proudfoot and Humble
Haddock & Codpiece
Takit and Leavitt.

Imprints

Often the copyright page will list multiple publishers. In such cases one parent company may be publishing under multiple names (called imprints). Usually it is sufficient to cite just the imprint.

For example, let’s say the title page and copyright page list both “Macmillan” (the parent company), and “Picador” (the imprint), in that case you would cite just Picador.

If you do want to spell out the relationship between the imprint and the parent company, you can do that:

On Point Press, an imprint of UBC Press

Books prior to 1900

For books published before 1900, you can omit the publisher’s name.

Date

For books you need provide only the year of publication. For other works (e.g., articles), you may also want to provide the exact date, month, or season.

Wright, Ian, and Lukas Obviüs, The Art of Mansplaining. Calgary: Red Neck Press, 2018. (book)

Saddleback, Robert. “Ponying Up: The Rising Costs of Miniature Horses.” Grand Spoons Tribune, August 5, 2017. (newspaper)

Often a copyright page will contain multiple dates. Try find the most recent date, but ignore any references to copyright renewal or to specific impressions.

If a source has gone through multiple editions, you will want to cite the latest one:

Blandish, Kate. Mortified or Petrified? The Psychology of Shame and Fear. 2nd ed. Edited by Jude Wooden. Athens: Lightning Press, 2008.

No Date

If a printed text lacks a date, use the abbreviation n.d. On the other hand, when a text has been accepted for publication but has not yet been published, you can write forthcoming in place of the date.

More Information

For more information about the parts of an entry discussed here, please see sections 14.72-14.84 (authors), 14.85-14.99 (titles), and 14.127-14.146 (publication information) of the Chicago Manual of Style (17^th ed.).

Publication Information

Introduction

The last part of a citation is the publication information. What information you provide depends on the type of source and what’s available. Here we review the most common options.

Print Sources

Periodicals

For journal articles, provide the periodical title, the volume, the issue number (if available), and the page range:

Kappa, A. B., Middlington, E. & Mooney, P. R. (2016). The non-uniformity of heterogeneous co-ed frat houses. Social Architectonics, 12(4), 99-108.

Here are a few tips:

Periodical titles are capitalized using title case.
You don’t need to abbreviate periodical titles (unless they already were in your source).
The volume number is italicized. The issue number goes in parentheses and is followed by a comma.
The page range shows the first and last page number. If the page numbers are discontinuous, use a comma (e.g., 22-33, 58-62).

Books

For books and reports, you no longer have to provide the city of publication. Only the publisher needs to be listed:

Youngblood, A. (1999). Addicted to Facebook and fake news: Studies in gerontology. We The North Press.

Note the following:

You can shorten the publisher’s name by corporate abbreviations such as Ltd, and Inc. You should, however, retain Books and Press.
If the author and the publisher are the same, leave out the publisher.

Electronic Sources

DOI

For online sources, it’s customary to add a link that allows the reader to retrieve the source.

The default link is a DOI, or Digital Object Identifier:

Rush, N. M., Quick, C. F., & Scamper, A. (2016). The handwriting of psychology students analyzed through the notation of the ampersand in final exams. The Psychic Calligraphist, 22(1), 1-18, https://doi.org/10.1241/1487.983cbb

Please see our page on DOIs for a more detailed explanation of how to cite a DOI correctly.

URL

If no DOI is available, you can provide a URL:

Carbuncle, R. D. (2015, February 2). How to fake a fake smile. The Chicago Tribunal. https://www.chicagotribunal.com/fake-url

You do not have to add “Retrieved from” or “Accessed from” before the URL.

Before you hand in your essay, double check that any hyperlinks still work.

For more information about citing publication information, please read pp. 293-301 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

Introduction

Welcome to the MLA citation guide! Please note that this is not the official MLA guide. For that you will have to buy the MLA Handbook (9^th ed.). However, we have done our best to cover the essentials, hopefully in a concise and interesting way.

In fact, one thing you will quickly notice is that most of our examples are made up. Don’t waste your time trying to find them!

Basic Principles

The MLA Handbook is primarily used in the Arts. Other disciplines use different style guides.

The focus of the MLA guidelines is on ease of reference. When you cite your sources in the body of your essay (what is called “in-text citation”), you most often have to provide only the author’s name and the page number. The rest of the bibliographic information is contained in your Works Cited page at the back of your paper.

When it comes to those final citations, there are typically three key sections for each entry:

1. Author
2. Title
3. Container

Each of these sections ends with a period. Within a section, you separate information with commas.

Here is a more detailed overview of the basic structure, along with a specific example:

Once you have collected as much information as you can find, you can easily turn it into a complete entry:

Warbling, Wren. “The New Zealand Pigeon Revisited.” The Backyard Birder, vol. 3, no. 4, 1992, p. 9.

The Container System

(Photo by Flickr user Vanveen, with permission)

The last section of each entry is a bit like a shipping container. It holds the contents (the author and title), and is often the larger work in which the source is found. For example, an essay might be found in an academic journal, or a short story in a book.

It may even happen that one container is part of another container. For instance, a television episode might be part of a larger series, which in turn is found in an online streaming service (e.g., Netflix). Think of this second container as the container ship.

At other times, the container is not really a larger work but simply consists of some publication information. In that case it’s more like a packing label.

Whatever metaphor you prefer, the main point is that every entry consists of at most three parts. Fill in as much information as you find relevant.

How to Use this Guide

Often there are multiple correct ways to cite a source. This flexibility can be difficult to teach, so to make things easier, we have split our version of the MLA guide into three major parts:

In-text citation (how you cite your sources in the body of your essay).
The sections of each Works Cited entry (author, title, container).
The type of publication (books, articles, electronic sources, etc.).

There is significant overlap between the last two sections. However, this structure will make it much easier to find what you’re looking for.

In addition to these three sections, we also share MLA guidelines on formatting your paper, alphabetizing entries, optional elements, and much more.

Further Resources

For more information about the MLA guidelines, please consult the following resources:

MLA Handbook. 9^thed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021.
The FAQ section at the MLA Style Centre.
The OWL at Purdue MLA section.

Stative and Dynamic Verbs

Introduction

The main reason why you’ll want to know the difference between stative and dynamic verbs is that stative verbs do not have a continuous tense.

There are a number of continuous tenses, and what they all have in common is that they contain a present participle (e.g., shooting, eating) and some helping verbs.

You can’t use a stative verb in this form:

Incorrect: I am believing you.

Correct: I believe you.

Now that you know why the distinction matters, let’s see how we can keep these verbs apart.

Non-continuous Verbs

Not all verbs regularly express continuous action. Here are some examples of non-continuous verbs:

Emotion or feeling: hate, love, feel, want …

Possession: own, possess, belong …

Thought and opinion: believe, know, realize, understand …

Communication: agree, mean, promise …

These are stative verbs, in that they express a state, not an action. That’s why you wouldn’t say “I am owning a mountain bike.”

However, there are plenty of exceptions. You might say “I am loving this” or “I think I am understanding you.” When used in this way the verb takes on a more dynamic aspect.

More Information

For more information, please see our introduction to all twelve verb tenses in English.

DOIs and URLs

Introduction

The Chicago Manuel of Style (17th ed.) suggests that citations of online sources should include either a hyperlink (a URL), an identifying series of numbers and letters (a DOI), or some other means that allows us to find the source on the web.

Order of Priority

Wondering what type of identifier is best for online sources? Here are your options, ranked from optimal to worst case scenario:

A DOI (Digital Object Identifier). E.g., https://doi.org/10.1515/1938590.
A permalink. This is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) supplied on the web page as a link that remains stable over time. E.g., https://www.scientificcaucasian.org/june-2018/article-3/.
A basic URL. E.g., https://natureofwriting.com.
A Database title. Use only if the URL leads to a page that both requires login access and lacks inadequate bibliographical information.

Just go down the list and pick what’s available. As you do so, here are a few more things to keep in mind:

Try shorten very long URLs. Often you can navigate back a page or two and find a shorter form. This is especially the case if you’re doing research with Google and you find a quote from a book or article excerpt.
However, avoid abbreviated URLs that are meant just for social media sharing or for temporary usage. E.g., a “bit.ly” link.
If a link ends in a slash (/), you can leave it in.
Don’t forget to start DOIs and URLs with http:// (or https://).
For more information about DOIs, please see our detailed introduction, though do note that many of the specific rules apply to the APA style guide.

URL Line Breaks

If you’re printing out a text with URLs, you’ll want to break them up to avoid awkward gaps at the end of a line. You can split a URL in the following places:

After a colon or double slash (//)
Before a single slash (/), period, comma, hyphen (-), underline (_), question mark, number sign (#), percent symbol (%), or tilde (~).
Before or after an equals sign (=) or ampersand (&).

Only rarely should you break up a URL between syllables.

Here is an example:

www.customurns.com

/rustic-Augustan/830%34

Note that you don’t have to add a hyphen to indicate where you’ve added a line break.

Books

Introduction

On this page we review the rules for citing books. These guidelines follow the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.). The examples provided illustrate the rules for both footnotes and final citations (in your bibliography).

The Basics

Here’s the basic format for citing books in your bibliography:

If the author’s name is unknown, just start with the title.

When you cite the same source in a footnote, it will look a little different:

1. Thomas Petty, Mary Jane: The Biography (Los Angeles: High Street Press, 2001), 62.

In this case the name is not inverted, a specific page reference is provided, and the punctuation is different.

For additional elements, please see the variants below.

Variants

Multiple Authors

When a book has multiple authors, list them in the same order as on the title page:

1. Ian Wright and Lukas Obviüs, The Art of Mansplaining (Calgary: Red Neck Press, 2018), 33.

Wright, Ian, and Lukas Obviüs, The Art of Mansplaining. Calgary: Red Neck Press, 2018.

For any work that has four or more authors (or editors), use the abbreviation et al. after the first name in your footnote (e.g., 1. Bob Hermite et al., Growing Hasselberries). By contrast, in your bibliography et al. should be used only for works with more than ten authors. In such cases you can cite the first six or seven and then add the abbreviation.

Editor, Translator, Compiler

If the book has an editor, translator, or compiler (instead of an author), cite it as follows:

1. Peter Sfumato, ed., The Art of Chiaroscuro (White Horse: Dark Matter Publishing, 2017), 155.

2. Larry Rataxes, trans. War with the Elephants: The Official Account (Brussels: Brunhoff Press, 1998), 44.

3. Mark Cassidy, comp., When the Job Market is a Dust Bowl: Convocation Speeches During the Great Depression (Denver: Make Work University Press, 2009), 5.

Sfumato, Peter, ed. The Art of Chiaroscuro. White Horse: Dark Matter Publishing, 2017.

Rataxes, Larry, trans. War with the Elephants: The Official Account. Brussels: Brunhoff Press, 1998.

Cassidy, Mark. When the Job Market is a Dust Bowl: Convocation Speeches During the Great Depression. Denver: Make Work University Press, 2009.

If there are multiple editors, translators, or compilers, use the abbreviations eds., comps., and trans., and cite the names as follows:

1. Fidelity Castro and Manual Mirabal, eds., Perfecting the Cuban Cigar (Havana: Cuban Classics, 2008), 99-101.

Castro, Fidelity, and Manual Mirabal, eds. Perfecting the Cuban Cigar. Havana: Cuban Classics, 2008.

Author and Editor, Translator, or Compiler

Here is how you might cite a book that has an author as well as one or more editors, translators, or compilers:

1. Eugenie Arachide, Social Darwinism and the Problem of the Peanut Butter Allergy, ed. Lorne Kraftwerk and Amelia Shock, trans. William Smooth (Toronto: Anaphylactic Press, 2010), 14.

2. Bart Simon, An American Tune: The Concert in Central Park, ed. Paul Earfull (New York: Bookends, 2013), 49-51.

Arachide, Eugenie. Social Darwinism and the Problem of the Peanut Butter Allergy. Edited by Lorne Kraftwerk and Amelia Shock. Translated by William Smooth. Toronto: Anaphylactic Press, 2010.

Simon, Bart. An American Tune: The Concert in Central Park. Edited by Paul Earfull. New York: Bookends UP, 2013.

Notes:

When an editor, translator, or compiler is listed after the title, the plural form of the abbreviation is trans., or comp.
If you’re listing multiple roles, retain the same order as on the original title page.
Try to simplify elaborate phrases such as “Translated and introduced by” or “Edited and annotated by” to shorter forms such as “Translated by” or Edited by”

Other Contributors

If a book contains another contribution that you find significant, you can mention it in your footnotes or bibliography. Here are just a couple of bibliographic examples. There are many more ways to describe the specific contribution:

Johnson, Bartholomew. Sky High: The Evolution of the Hook Shot. With a foreword by Stilt Chamberlain. Chicago: Jabbar Publications, 2017.

Wince, Irene. The Ethics of Animating Facial Expressions. In collaboration with Arnold Dimple. Buffalo: High Brow Press, 2015.

Note that ghost writers are usually introduced by a With (e.g., With Bob Johnson).

Chapter of a Book

If you want to highlight a specific chapter or section of someone’s book, you can do that! Do note that when you cite the page references in your footnotes, you have some choice: you can refer to a specific page, the chapter’s page range, or leave out the page range altogether:

1. Andrew Tipple, “Of Infidels and Zinfandels,” in The Sommelier’s Guide to Fighting Terrorism (Los Angeles: Portly Press, 2018), 13.

2. Fritz Wunderbar, “The First Word: Swear Word or Imperative?” chap. 2 in Essays on the Evolution of Language (Nottingham: Sherwood Publications, 2011).

Tipple, Andrew. “Of Infidels and Zinfandels.” In The Sommelier’s Guide to Fighting Terrorism, 1-18. Los Angeles: Portly Press, 2018.

Wunderbar, Fritz. “The First Word: Swear Word or Imperative?” Chap. 2 in Essays on the Evolution of Language. Nottingham: Sherwood Publications, 2011.

Notice that in the second example the specific chapter number is provided.

You can also arrange your bibliography entry slightly differently:

Wunderbar, Fritz. Essays on the Evolution of Language. Nottingham: Sherwood Publications, 2011. See esp. chap. 2, “The First Word: Swear Word or Imperative?”

Chapter in a Collection or Anthology

1. Antonia Narcisi, “Will Drones Replace Selfie Sticks?” in Selected TEDDY Talks: Inspirational Speeches from the 2016 Rome Conference, ed. Max Lubotsky and B. R. Mindful (Rome: Colossal Wait Publications, 2018), 88.

Narcisi, Antonia. “Will Drones Replace Selfie Sticks?” In Selected TEDDY Talks: Inspirational Speeches from the 2016 Rome Conference, edited by Max Lubotsky and B. R. Mindful, 72-99. Rome: Colossal Wait Publications, 2018.

Note the inclusion of the full page range (after the editors), as well as the fact that “edited” is not capitalized.

Introduction, Preface, Afterword

If you want to cite an author’s own introduction, preface, afterword, or similar section, you simply add the appropriate phrase:

1. Uluthando Jones, preface to A Zulu in Honolulu: A Memoir (San Francisco: Penguin Press, 2011), 3.

In such cases, the bibliographic entry can usually be simplified:

Jones, Uluthando. A Zulu in Honolulu: A Memoir. San Francisco: Penguin Press, 2011.

On the other hand, if the writer of the foreword (or similar section) differs from the author, you’ll need to provide more information:

1. John Hopper, afterword to Prison Break Dances, by Ed Bojangles, ed. Jane Worthy (San Antonio: Hobble Press, 2009), 8.

Hopper, John. Afterword to Prison Break Dances, by Ed Bojangles, 1-11. Edited by Jane Worthy. San Antonio: Hobble Press, 2009.

Multi-volume Work

If you wish to cite from a work with multiple volumes, here’s how you do that:

1. Hazel Tipsy, ed. Missionary Activities of the Guzzling Society for Inebriation, 5 vols. (Waterloo, ON: On Tap Press, 2016), 3:45-46.

Tipsy, Hazel, ed. Missionary Activities of the Guzzling Society for Inebriation. 5 vols. Waterloo, ON: On Tap Press, 2016.

As you can see, in the footnote we’ve cited a passage from volume 3.

If the volume has an author and an editor, add the number of volumes after the editor’s name (assuming the author is cited first). If the volumes are published over a number of years, provide the first and last year of publication (e.g., 2005-2011).

To cite a specific volume in a footnote, identify the volume number and add the title (if there is one):

1. Hazel Tipsy, ed. Missionary Activities of the Guzzling Society for Inebriation, vol. 4, The Craft Beer Revolution (Waterloo, ON: On Tap Press, 2016), 3:45-46.

You can also place the editor’s name after the title if that’s what you prefer.

Finally, when you cite an individual volume in your bibliography, you can order the information in a couple of ways:

Cash, Brooke, ed. The Complete Guide to the Spendthrift Life. Vol. 3, Games and Gambles, edited by Rich Filthy. Los Angeles: Opulence Publications, 1999-2004.

Filthy, Rich, ed. Games and Gambles. Vol. 3 of The Complete Guide to the Spendthrift Life, edited by Brooke Cash. Los Angeles: Opulence Publications, 1999-2004.

In these examples the individual volume has its own editor.

Reference Work

When you cite a reference work such as a dictionary or encyclopedia, you can either supply a page reference or use the abbreviation s.v (sub verbo; the plural is s.vv.), which is Latin for under the word. This refers to the term or phrase that has been defined or explained in your source:

1. Dictionary of Emoticons, ed. Asahi Nakamura, 2nd ed. (Boston: Character Publications, 2017), s.v. “Lenny Face.”

Dictionary of Emoticons. Edited by Asahi Nakamura. 2nd ed. Boston: Character Publications, 2017.

For variations (authors, contributors, publication formats) follow the other examples found on this page.

In the case of online reference works, you will want to specify either a publication/revision date or an access date (when you last looked at the material). Conclude your citation with a URL:

1. Wikipedia, s.v. “Duels (uncivilized),” accessed June 15, 2018, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/duels-uncivilized.

Note also that titles of websites are not italicized.

Online Book

A number of options are available when citing an online book. These include citing the e-reader used, listing the file format (e.g., PDF), and providing a URL or DOI.

Here’s how you would list the device you used to access the text:

1. John Nelson, Limiting Screen Time (Perth: Fibre Optic Press, 2018), p. 23, Kindle.

Nelson, John. Limiting Screen Time. Perth: Fibre Optic Press, 2018. Kindle.

The same format applies for other e-readers (Kobo, NOOK, etc.).

Since many e-books don’t have stable page numbers, you may often be better off citing chapter or section numbers. In fact, if you’re not sure that the electronic page numbers correspond to actual page numbers in a print version, then avoid using them in your citations.

In rare cases you may want to replace the e-reader with the format of the book (e.g., PDF) along with the program used to read it (e.g., Adobe Acrobat Reader):

Evans, Reginald Theodore. The Uses of Earwax. Denver: Humdrum Press, 2011. Adobe Acrobat Reader PDF.

Another popular way to cite e-books is to provide a URL or DOI. This works especially well for electronic books accessed through academic library catalogues:

1. William Slabskate, The History of Connecticut Park Benches (New Haven: Foliage Press, 2001), chap. 2, https://doi.org/10.1454/aj987sd09g.

Slabskate, William. The History of Connecticut Park Benches. New Haven: Foliage Press, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1454/aj987sd09g.

If you don’t think your reader will be able to access the text by using your link, then instead provide the database title (e.g., JSTOR).

Bible

Quotations from the Bible are cited either in footnotes or in parentheses in the text. There’s no need to cite the Bible in your bibliography.

Traditionally, Bible books are abbreviated (except for short titles) and chapter and verse are separated by a colon:

Matt. 3:2

Mark 7:13

Alternatively, you can use shorter forms that are not followed by a period:

Mt 20:1

Mk 15:4

However, in the actual text of your essay you’ll usually want to spell out the full title:

Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 13 that charity is the greatest virtue.

Finally, at least for the first time you cite from the Bible you should indicate which version you have used:

2 Cor. 3:4 (New International Version)

If after that you wish to specify the version, you can use an abbreviation (e.g., NIV).

Dissertation

For dissertations, place the title between quotation marks and provide details on the type of thesis (master’s thesis, PhD dissertation, etc.) as well as the institution where it was written. You can end your entry with either a URL or with the database and identification number–both often followed by a page reference:

1. Erica Champagne, “When the Wedding Gets Called Off: Nontraditional Ways to Repurpose Bridesmaid Dresses” (PhD diss., University of Studupest, 2001), SpaceQuest (ABC 30910), 45-47.

Champagne, Erica. “When the Wedding Gets Called Off: Nontraditional Ways to Repurpose Bridesmaid Dresses.” PhD diss., University of Studupest, 2001. SpaceQuest (ABC 30910).

If you’ve consulted only the abstract, you can add the word abstract after the title:

1. Erica Champagne, “When the Wedding Gets Called Off: Nontraditional Ways to Repurpose Bridesmaid Dresses,” abstract (PhD diss., University of Studupest, 2001), SpaceQuest (ABC 30910).

More Information

For more information about how to cite books, see section 14.100ff. of the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.).

Periodicals

Introduction

On this page we review the rules for citing articles found in periodicals (academic journals). These guidelines follow the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.). The examples provided illustrate the rules for both footnotes and final citations (in your bibliography).

Scholarly Article

Here’s the basic format for citing a scholarly article in your bibliography:

When you cite the same source in a footnote, it will look a little different:

1. Bill Lastman, “The Rhetoric of Municipal Council Meetings,” Journal of Civic Oratory 55, no. 3 (May 2017): 7.

In this case the name is not inverted, a specific page reference is provided, and some periods are replaced by commas.

Here are some further details to observe:

Important words in titles are capitalized (headline style)
Titles and subtitles are separated with a colon
If the periodical lacks volume numbers, simply place the issue number after the periodical title, separated by a comma (e.g., Journal of Craniology, no. 4)
Periodical titles are not usually abbreviated, unless the periodical is known primarily by its abbreviation (e.g., PMLA) or a publisher prefers shortened titles.
The definite article (The) can usually be omitted from periodical titles, unless the publication is not in English (e.g., Das Argument)
While you only have to provide the year of publication, you may add the month, exact day, or season (more examples below)

Variants

Online Article

If you accessed the article online, you can provide some extra information. Where possible, add a DOI number or URL:

1. Mia Opie, “How Turning a Blind Eye Can Make You a Better Listener,” Blind Optometrist 3, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 24-47, https://doi.org/10.4321/bli.23nk34.

2. Bernard Flunk, “Flight on the Dromedary: Zenobia and the Siege of Palmyra,” Ancient Near Eastern Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2007): 66-121, https://www.journalpod.org/stable/571039.

Opie, Mia. “How Turning a Blind Eye Can Make You a Better Listener.” Blind Optometrist 3, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 24-47. https://doi.org/10.4321/bli.23nk34.

Flunk, Bernard. “Flight on the Dromedary: Zenobia and the Siege of Palmyra.” Ancient Near Eastern Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2007): 66-121. https://www.journalpod.org/stable/571039.

If there is no DOI, and the URL may not work for most readers, you may instead provide the title of the database through which you accessed the source:

1. Nick Bunting, “The History of Christmas Tree Ornaments in Select Pockets of Eastern Michigan,” Adventus 209, no. 3 (January 2001): 1-16, JSTOR.

Bunting, Nick. “The History of Christmas Tree Ornaments in Select Pockets of Eastern Michigan.” Adventus 209, no. 3 (January 2001): 1-16. JSTOR.

To check if a URL works for the average reader, log out of your library database and try use the link. If the URL directs you to at least a citation or preview of the text (even if not full access), you can use it. In other words, in most cases you do not have to substitute the database title.

Forthcoming Article

If an article has not been published yet (but you somehow have access to it), you can cite is as follows:

1. Rosemary Menhir, “Was Stonehenge an Alien Landing Strip?” Studies in Anachronism 12 (forthcoming).

Menhir, Rosemary. “Was Stonehenge an Alien Landing Strip?” Studies in Anachronism 12 (forthcoming).

If the article is to be published electronically, and you have early access, provide the date that accompanies this version:

1. Elmira Starch, “The Pudding is in the Proof: The Challenges of Preserving Culinary Legal Evidence,” Lawyer’s Digest 47, no. 1, published ahead of print, June 5, 2017, https://doi.org/10.4545/577743.

Starch, Elmira. “The Pudding is in the Proof: The Challenges of Preserving Culinary Legal Evidence.” Lawyer’s Digest 47, no. 1. Published ahead of print, June 5, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4545/577743.

If in the meantime the official publication comes out, cite that instead.

No Continuous Pagination

Some online periodicals don’t have continuous pagination. Each article is numbered starting with page 1. In such cases, a unique ID might be provided that can replace the page range:

1. Benjamin Falsetto, “The Eunuch’s Guide to the Orchestra,” Philsharmonica 3, no. 2 (July 2016): agjf8e88m, https://doi.org/10.1515/1633939vv4.

Falsetto, Benjamin. “The Eunuch’s Guide to the Orchestra.” Philsharmonica 3, no. 2 (July 2016): agjf8e88m, https://doi.org/10.1515/1633939vv4.

Access Date

The Chicago Manual of Style does not require an access date for citations of electronic sources. However, if you are asked to provide one, you can insert it before the URL:

1. Johannes Naaktgeboren, “The Dutch Connection to the Paradise Papers,” Studies in Tax Evasion 45, no. 2 (December 2017): 59-72, accessed December 19, 2017, https://doi.org/10.9843/150948902.

Naaktgeboren, Johannes. “The Dutch Connection to the Paradise Papers.” Studies in Tax Evasion 45, no. 2 (December 2017): 59-72. Accessed December 19, 2017. https://doi.org/10.9843/150948902.

Special Issue

Sometimes you may come across an entire periodical issue dedicated to a single theme or topic. Here’s how you can cite both an individual article and the entire issue:

1. Jean Lacroix, “Some Unusual North Sea Catches,” in “The Elusive Red Herring,” ed. Fred Shipley and Bob Seaworth, special issue, Journal of Fisheries and Oceans 42, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 15.

Lacroix, Jean. “Some Unusual North Sea Catches.” In “The Elusive Red Herring,” edited by Fred Shipley and Bob Seaworth. Special issue, Journal of Fisheries and Oceans 42, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 1-29.

Shipley, Fred, and Bob Seaworth, eds. “The Elusive Red Herring.” Special issue, Journal of Fisheries and Oceans 42, no. 3 (Summer 2015).

As usual, you can add a URL or DOI for electronic sources (see above).

Magazine

When you cite an article published in a magazine, there are a few differences to note. Most importantly, the date of publication is not placed in parentheses:

1. William Gray, “More Drivers are Changing Their Gender to Save on Insurance Costs,” Underwriter, October 15, 2018, 23.

Gray, William. “More Drivers are Changing Their Gender to Save on Insurance Costs.” Underwriter, October 15, 2018.

Any articles (a, the) that precede magazine titles are omitted. Similarly, in a bibliographic entry the page range can be left out.

Review

When citing a review, include the author of the review, provide the title of both the review (if there is one) and the work under review, and indicate where the review can be found:

1. Julia Hoeness, “The Texture of Masculine Language,” review of Masculinity and the Language of Nonrepresentability, by Bradley Klothes, Studies in Masculine Failings 4, no. 2 (May 2008): 5.

Hoeness, Julia. “The Texture of Masculine Language.” Review of Masculinity and the Language of Nonrepresentability, by Bradley Klothes. Studies in Masculine Failings 4, no. 2 (May 2008): 5-7.

Besides the author, you can also list other contributors. For example, for a review of a performance you might cite specific performers as well as the location (e.g., written by Jane Air, performed by Emma Rock, Old Chatterbox Theatre). Such information can be placed right after the title of the work reviewed.

Abstract

In some cases you may want to cite just the abstract:

1. Erroneous Mertpickle, “Oecolampadius on Just War Theory,” abstract, Belligerent Quarterly 288, no. 4 (June 2015): 145, https://doi.org/10.9889/1305701.

Mertpickle, Erroneous. “Oecolampadius on Just War Theory.” Abstract. Belligerent Quarterly 288, no. 4 (June 2015): 145-54. https://doi.org/10.9889/1305701.

More Information

For more information about citing periodicals, see especially pages 828-37 of The Chicago Manual of Style (17^th ed.).

Online Sources

Introduction

Increasingly, much research is done online. Here we review how to cite some common electronic sources using the guidelines set out by the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.).

Whereas a book or periodical typically provides the publication information in the opening pages, it may be more difficult to locate information about online sources. You may have to do some digging around:

Perhaps the most important rule to remember is that when you cite an entire website you should use roman font (so not italics) for the title. By contrast, the title of a specific webpage is placed between quotation marks.

Electronic Sources

Entire Website

When citing a website, you should include the title (in roman font), along with a URL. (For more information about citing URLs, check out our separate page).

You may also add a date (along with a description such as last modified on, updated on, or accessed on). Do note, however, that the Chicago Manuel of Style does not recommend the use of access dates unless as a means of last resort (when you have no other way to date the source).

Finally, if you feel that readers may not immediately recognize your source as a website, then just add the tag (website) after the title:

1. Chocolate Fondue Society, accessed April 4, 2018, https://chocfondsoc.org/.

2. Snowflake University (website), updated October 22, 2018. https://snowflakeuniversity.com.

Chocolate Fondue Society. Accessed April 4, 2018. https://chocfondsoc.org/.

Snowflake University (website). Updated October 22, 2018. https://snowflakeuniversity.com.

Note that you don’t have to include websites in your final bibliography: citing them in your footnotes is generally sufficient.

Page of a Website

When citing a specific webpage, follow the same rules as for websites but add the title of the page as well as the author’s name (if there is one).

1. “The Source of Katherine Hepburn’s Eye Infection: The Dirty Secret of Venice’s Famous Canals,” Silver Screen Stories, last modified June 9, 2017, https://www.ssstories.com/

2. Nicky Flamel, “The Mercurial Alchemist,” Alchemy 101, accessed January 2, 2018, https://alchemy101.org/.

“The Source of Katherine Hepburn’s Eye Infection: The Dirty Secret of Venice’s Famous Canals.” Silver Screen Stories. Last modified June 9, 2017. https://www.ssstories.com/

Flamel, Nicky. “The Mercurial Alchemist.” Alchemy 101. Accessed January 2, 2018. https://alchemy101.org/.

Online Article

If you’ve accessed an academic article online (let’s say through a database), it’s a good idea to provide a URL or DOI:

1. Arno Flush, “The Vespasian Legacy: A Brief History of the Public Toilet,” Roman Architecture Quarterly 5, no. 1 (Summer 2018): 1-14, https://doi.org/10.4221/pi35.2sch/.

Flush, Arno. “The Vespasian Legacy: A Brief History of the Public Toilet.” Roman Architecture Quarterly 5, no. 1 (Summer 2018): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.4221/pi35.2sch/.

For more information, please consult our page on citing periodicals.

E-Book

When citing an electronic book, try to mention the reading device (e.g., Kindle), the format (e.g., PDF), or the DOI or URL:

1. Hans Emmental, A Tax Code as Porous as Cheese: The Rise of Swiss Banking (Geneva: Gruyere Press, 2001): p. 44, Kindle.

Emmental, Hans. A Tax Code as Porous as Cheese: The Rise of Swiss Banking. Geneva: Gruyere Press, 2001. Kindle.

For more information, please visit our page on citing books.

Blog

For specific blog posts, follow this format:

1. Ed Hooiberg, “From Istanbul to Constantinople: The Joy of Long Distance Motor Cycle Trips,” Delightful Turkish Historian (blog), March 23, 2018, https://delightfulturkishhistorian.wordpress.com/.

Hooiberg, Ed “From Istanbul to Constantinople: The Joy of Long Distance Motor Cycle Trips.” Turkish Delightful Historian (blog). March 23, 2018. https://turkishdelightfulhistorian.wordpress.com/.

Note that adding blog in parentheses is optional.

Sometimes blogs are associated with larger organizations or publications. In such cases you may need to give a bit more information:

1. Herman Casing, “Double or Triple Pain? The Perils of Window Installation,” Making it in the Trades (blog), Chronicle of Applied Education, March 11, 2016, https://www.apchronicle.com/blogs/making-it/double-or-triple/.

Casing, Herman. “Double or Triple Pain? The Perils of Window Installation.” Making it in the Trades (blog). Chronicle of Applied Education, March 11, 2016. https://www.apchronicle.com/blogs/making-it/double-or-triple/.

To cite an entire blog, list the creator as editor or author and then follow the same format as with a website.

Comment

Comments on blogs and websites usually don’t need to be cited in your final bibliography. In fact, you can get away with just citing them in the text of your essay:

Most readers sneered at Casing’s suggestion that window installers wear gloves. In the words of John Simmons, “Gloves are for pansies” (comment on Casing, February 2, 2017).

Obviously you’ll want to provide a fuller entry for the original blog or webpage.

If you do want to reference a comment in a footnote, you have two options. If you’ve already cited the original post, then you can significantly shorten the footnote for the comment:

1. John Simmons, February 2, 2017, comment on Casing, “Double or Triple Pain?”

On the other hand, if you’re citing just the comment, you’ll want to provide some additional information. Here are two examples, with the first being the most detailed:

1. John Simmons, February 2, 2017, comment on Herman Casing, “Double or Triple Pain? The Perils of Window Installation,” Making it in the Trades (blog), Chronicle of Applied Education, March 11, 2016, https://www.apchronicle.com/blogs/making-it/double-or-triple/#comment-302598710.

2. Bigfoot, April 4, 2018, reply to John Simmons, https://www.apchronicle.com/blogs/making-it/double-or-triple/#comment-30253568.

If the commenter’s name is a pseudonym (e.g., Bigfoot), and you know the person’s real name, you can add it in square brackets:

2. Bigfoot [June Everett]

Video on a Website

You can provide plenty of information about an online video, but we will limit ourselves to a fairly simple example:

1. Esther Taillash, Interview with a Scandinavian Merman, uploaded by SaltyMermaidProductions, Jan. 2, 2018, video, 2:03, https://youtu.be/bri2n_y83.

Taillash, Esther. Interview with a Scandinavian Merman. Uploaded by SaltyMermaidProductions, Jan. 2, 2018. Video, 2:03. https://youtu.be/bri2n_y83.

In this example we’ve clarified both the format (video) and the duration (2:03 min.).

Podcast

Here’s how you might cite a podcast:

1. Brian Peel, “The Ecuadorian Banana Boom,” in Planet Yellow, produced by John Slipshot, January 24, 2007, podcast, MP3 audio, 13:45, https://www.apple.com/ca/itunes/podcasts/planet-yellow/.

Peel, Brian. “The Ecuadorian Banana Boom.” In Planet Yellow. Produced by John Slipshot. January 24, 2007. Podcast, MP3 audio, 13:45. https://www.apple.com/ca/itunes/podcasts/planet-yellow/.

If the producer is the same as the author, you don’t have to mention the latter’s name twice. Also, if you listened to the podcast online (rather than as a download), the file format is optional.

App

When citing an app, it’s customary to include the version number and the operating system it can run on:

1. Fighting Clowns, v. 2.3 (Violent Media, 2018), Android 7.0 or later, soundtrack by John Smuckers.

Fighting Clowns. V. 2.3. Violent Media, 2018. Android 7.0 or later. Soundtrack by John Smuckers.

Social Media

Social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) can often be cited just in the text of your essay:

Brian Roundtree recently questioned whether the term Open Access can include paid content: “Does the ‘Open’ in ‘Open Access’ Still Mean ‘Free’?” (@BrianRoundtree, September 22, 2018).

If you do want to cite social media in a footnote or bibliography, here’s one way:

1. Brian Roundtree (@BrianRoundtree), “Does the ‘Open’ in ‘Open Access’ Still Mean ‘Free’?” Twitter, September 22, 2018, 2:22 p.m., https://twitter.com/BrianRoundtree/status/838839.

Roundtree, Brian (@BrianRoundtree). “Does the ‘Open’ in ‘Open Access’ Still Mean ‘Free’?” Twitter, September 22, 2018, 2:22 p.m. https://twitter.com/BrianRoundtree/status/838839.

For the title of a social media post, use the actual text (the first 160 characters). To describe the post, list the social media platform (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). You may also clarify the format (e.g., Instagram photo).

Social Media Comment

As with comments on blogs and webpages, social media comments don’t require detailed citation. You can provide just a minimal citation in the text of your essay:

In response to John Bigot’s Facebook rant, Emily Newman replied, “I would unfriend you, but then I wouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing you mocked by all your friends” (comment on Bigot, September 4, 2018).

You may instead want to provide a more detailed footnote. If you’ve cited the original social media post already, keep your citation short:

1. Emily Newman, “I would unfriend you, but then I wouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing you mocked by all your friends,” September 4, 2018, comment on Bigot, “I hate it when,” https://www.facebook.com/johnbigot/posts/52309585?comment_id=262099.

For the title of the comment, use the actual text of the comment (up to 160 characters). In the rare instance when you have not cited the original post, you can flesh out some of the details of your citation.

Electronic Grading

Introduction

Electronic grading is a great option for anyone looking for something more convenient than the traditional paper format. Whether you’re taking an online course, want to provide better feedback, or just like to save a few trees, electronic grading provides a great opportunity to improve the educational experience of students and teachers alike.

In this tutorial we’ll cover all the nuts and bolts of electronic grading, from creating a good workflow to providing better feedback. For our grading app we’ve used iAnnotate (for iPad), which we think is the best option available at the moment. If you don’t have an iPad or want to use a different PDF reader, you can certainly still make use of most of the advice on this page.

Note: this tutorial is aimed primarily at instructors, but students might like to understand the process and draw this grading option to the attention of their teachers.

Pros and Cons

Electronic grading is not for everyone. It’s not for traditionalists who are too scared to try something new. It’s not for people who enjoy a mild cramp in their hand after marking dozens of essays. It’s certainly not for people who suffer from technophobia. For most of us, though, electronic grading should be easy to try out, and only once you’ve properly experimented can you decide if it’s for you.

It takes a little bit of courage to go paperless, but there are definite benefits. Some of these might surprise you:

No more worrying about missing staples or paper clips, lost pages and incomplete documents
The due date is flexible. Papers don’t have to be handed in at the beginning of class.
Receiving or handing out papers does not take up valuable class time (or cause a distraction)
Assignments are time stamped, so there is no dispute when something was submitted
Late assignments don’t accrue additional late penalties when a student lacks the opportunity to hand in the document
Apps like iAnnotate allow graders to create custom stamps for the most common errors or feedback
Emailing back an assignment is more likely to start a conversation, as students are generally comfortable replying via email.
While electronic grading is not likely to save you a tremendous amount of time, it does create certain efficiencies. Most importantly, all longer written comments can easily be replaced by oral feedback. The latter can be more in-depth and personable.
Instructors retain a copy of the assignment for as long as they wish. This also helps in case students try to pass off another student’s document as their own (a case of plagiarism).

We could go on, but you get the idea. Of course this is not to say that there are no challenges. For example, if you’re giving audio feedback, you can’t be marking in a coffee shop. You’ll need a quiet place to do your work. Looking at screens can also create eye strain for some people. On the whole, though, electronic grading provides enough advantages that it’s a great option to try.

Workflow

If you’re going to try electronic grading, it’s usually a good idea to start with one class, or even one assignment. In addition, we recommend that students always remain able to hand in paper copies if they feel uncomfortable with online submission. Over time, most students will switch to the latter anyway, but it’s good to give them the choice.

However, before you can grade a single assignment you’ll have to create a proper workflow. This requires a bit of work up front, but once that’s done the process is very efficient. In what follows we’ll describe our recommended setup.

Dropbox

For this tutotial we’ve mainly used Dropbox for uploading and storing files. That’s because Dropbox syncs beautifully with iAnnotate, our preferred grading app. However, if you’re worried about security issues, you can instead use Google Drive. In that case, check out our video tutorial (above) for how to use Gmail effectively.

Dropbox has a feature that allows you to request files. With a couple of clicks you get a link (a URL) that you can share with everyone in the class. Students open the link and can easily upload their file without needing to have their own Dropbox account.

Students should save their assignment as a PDF before submitting, but if they forget it’s easy enough to convert the file to a PDF in iAnnotate. The only thing that presents a problem is when students don’t use either a .doc or .pdf file, but upload something like a Pages document. In that case you might not be able to read the file and it may not sync with Dropbox.

Email

We use Gmail, but you can use another email service if you like. There are a couple of things you’ll have to do to get set up.

First of all, make sure you import your students’ email address into your contact list. This is so that when you send back the assignment (in iAnnotate itself) you don’t have to type out the entire email address. You can start typing a few letters and the full address will pop up. The easiest way to import student emails is if your institution provides a CSV file, but there are other ways too. Make sure you do this before the semester starts to avoid headaches later.

Secondly, you’ll want to make sure that iAnnotate is synced with Gmail on your iPad. That way you can email assignments back from right inside iAnnotate.

iAnnotate

iAnnotate, our grading app of choice, is best used on an iPad. Other than buying an iPad (the bigger the better!), this is the only thing you’ll have to pay for. The good news is that it’s about $10 to $15.

Once you’ve downloaded iAnnotate, you’ll want to customize the settings. You can create custom stamps and set up your own tool bar. In addition, you can write a template email message for whenever you return an assignment. Here’s an example:

Dear student, please see attached your marked assignment. To listen to the audio, please download the assignment and open it in Adobe. Do not open it in your browser. For more detailed instructions, go to Moodle [or a different learning platform]. If you use a Mac, you’ll have to change the default PDF viewer to access the audio. If you don’t know how to do this, use a PC to access the audio or come see me for help. Best wishes, _______.

Do note that at the time of writing this post, the current version of iAnnotate has had some issues with template messages. They still work but you’ll have to add the message tool to your tool bar and use that to send your emails.

Microphone App

If you want to provide audio feedback, you’ll have to use a microphone app on your iPad. The good news is that there are plenty of excellent free mics available. Find one you like and you’re off to the races.

Adobe Reader

When students receive their essay back, they can open it in any PDF reader (even a browser). However, there is a catch. Not every PDF reader will display audio files. For that reason we recommend that students use Adobe Reader (which is a free download) to open their file.

Student Support

To make sure that you’re not forever answering student questions, you’ll want to provide good support up front. Here’s what we recommend you do ahead of time.

Provide easy to follow instructions about how to upload the assignment. Here’s an example:

In this course, written assignments may be submitted either in printed form or electronically–your choice! Electronic submission is due at midnight (after the class); printed copies are due at the beginning of class.

If you submit your assignment electronically, the following guidelines apply:

Please save your document as a PDF.

When you save the document, include both your name and the assignment name in your title. E.g., John Smith Essay 1.

In the week leading up to the due date, I will provide you with a link (via email and Moodle) so you can upload your assignment to Dropbox. You do not need to have a Dropbox account yourself.

Upload your assignment and you’re done!

Additional notes:

Submit your assignment as one document (e.g., no separate Works Cited file).

Once you have submitted your assignment, you cannot do further editing and resubmit later.

I will use the app iAnnotate to mark your paper. This allows me to give audio feedback, which you may find a more personable approach to marking. For more information about how to upload your assignment or open your marked assignment, please see Moodle.

Feel free to adopt these instructions as your own.

If you want to go all out, you can also provide a video tutorial. Here are a couple of sample videos as an example:

Again, you can share these if you find them useful. Whatever you do, the more resources you provide up front, the less trouble shooting you’ll have to do when the essays are due. In fact, the process is so straightforward that few students run into problems.

Better Feedback

We think that the best reason to go paperless is to give oral feedback. Instead of spending a long time writing comments, you can just talk to the student. It’s as if you’re having a conversation. Of course it’s a one way conversation, but still …

The app iAnnotate allows you to create audio clips of up to 1 minute in length. The time limit takes a bit to get used to, and it’s normal to mess up the odd comment and start over. Once you get the hang of it, though, it is incredibly rewarding to simply explain in detail what you think — whether you’re talking about a specific sentence or the whole assignment.

We recommend you produce on average no more than 5-6 audio clips per document, as the file size will start to creep up. In addition, for the final comments, 2-3 min. of feedback is usually sufficient. If you had to write that all out by hand you could fill well over a page.

The other thing that is great on an iPad is that you can use audio recognition on your type pad to simply speak written comments. For example, instead of writing “Great choice of quotation” you can just say it. Plus if this is a frequent comment you can turn it into a stamp!

Conclusion

Finally, if you ever run into technological issues, the most common fix is to make sure you update all your settings. Make sure you have the latest version of iOS on your Ipad. Check that your email password is still correct and that your emails are being sent.

That’s not to say that you’ll never face challenges. If you do, consult an IT person or contact Branchfire, the company behind iAnnotate.

On the whole, though, electronic grading should be a seamless experience. Give it a try and you might be pleasantly surprised.