Comments on footnoteMaven: Working With Citations

Foot, I'm nearly 70 years old. What little creat...

2008-11-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

Foot, I'm nearly 70 years old. What little creativity I have left is spent making up my own citation formats.

Some of us hold to the theory that since we are not writing for academe, because we are not writing for editors who all swear by Kate Turabian, and because I know there are more ways than one to do a thing, I'm probably in a great huge minority of one who says "don't sweat the details" when it comes to adding footnotes to blog articles. [Why do I know you are not surprised with my position? LOL!]

While I think it MOST IMPORTANT to provide references and sources in our blog articles, I don't think that the MLA, Chicago, Campbell and Ballou, Turabian, AMA, PMLA, AIP, Strunk, and Columbia Guides have a place on my desk when I am blogging. YES, I include author, title, publisher, place, date, and page numbers whenever I cite from a reference source be it a hard copy or a digital online copy --- but I'm not at all concerned about following a specific format/style.

I spent more than a decade "forcing" graduate students to follow a specific style manual in their writings --- they had no choice but to conform with the university's requirement. As a blogger that conformity is not needed in my humble opinion. As you said, "you must find the method that is the most productive for you."

Thanks for bringing up the problems of footnoting --- and of the importance of giving credit where credit is due. Just the name of your blog and of your nom de blog gives daily testimony to the importance of adequate citations. This [what is adequate] is an issue we should all be most aware of and one to which we should all lend our support.

Terry Thornton
Fulton, Mississippi USA

Denise:Loved your article and glad you are an advo...

2008-11-21T12:16:38.342-08:00

Denise:

Loved your article and glad you are an advocate of standardization. I would like to see, and am working on, a method of using citations in blogs. (I tend to be really sloppy on my blogs.)

My research and writing professor, nationally known, had exceptionally high standards. Ex.: The punctuation in a section that is italicized is not italicized. And you were marked down if it was.

Incentive: There were judges who would refuse to read a motion if the citations were not correct. Explain that to a client.

I think if students had to create a Master Citation file at the beginning of a writing assignment (write it once correctly) and then only had to drag and drop, we might have a few more citation converts.

Read Denise's article, she knows what she's talking about.

fM

Just had to write more on this topic at The Family...

2008-11-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

Just had to write more on this topic at The Family Curator... http://familycurator.blogspot.com/2008/11/on-subject-of-citing-sources.html.

fM, great article on a much-maligned subject! I ha...

2008-11-21T10:38:00.000-08:00

fM, great article on a much-maligned subject! I have always loved citations; alas, my students hated to bother with the proper MLA format. Instead of looking up the proper format, they liked to be "creative." ugh.

I like to think of citations as a puzzle or a math problem. There is only ONE answer. If you are a historian, this may be different from an English critic (Chicago vs MLA), but there is only ONE right answer for your usage. It's like a game to find the right answer.

I love your idea of making a master Word file for citations -- now that's Creativity that works!

Great post, footnoteMaven. I appreciate your sugg...

2008-11-20T02:16:00.000-08:00

Great post, footnoteMaven. I appreciate your suggestions on this topic. I began a similar Word file for all of my genealogy sources, but am far from completing it. I had relied on the "source" field in my genealogy software for many years but found I was very inconsistent. Starting from scratch was refreshing and has given me a new look at my research. I like your suggestion to create all three reference formats at first using Elizabeth Shown Mills' manual. I plan to add that step into the continued work on my master bibliography.

Lisa
Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture
Small-leaved Shamrock
A light that shines again
100 Years in America

Thank you fM for making things easier. A big old ...

2008-11-19T12:54:00.000-08:00

Thank you fM for making things easier. A big old lightbulb went off in my head - you know - duh! I was making the whole thing harder than it is if you look at it logically. Kinda of like the way I finally caught on to algebra - one day I just "got it".

Hey Thomas:Sorry, I'm a purist. I write my own, an...

2008-11-19T11:59:53.042-08:00

Hey Thomas:

Sorry, I'm a purist. I write my own, and they are all based on the Chicago Manual of Style which I believe is the most effective for history researchers. EasyBib does not have that choice available.

I'm really advocating standardization, which is Evidence Explained for family historians. EE is rooted in the Chicago Manual of Style.

As you know, lawyers have a style guide for their regional areas. I consider EE the style guide of family historians.

I also believe people should not use programs such as EasyBib until they understand and can write citations on their own. I know you can, but I don't believe beginners should start this way.

Just my opinion.

fM

Great post. I started doing the same thing by dum...

2008-11-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

Great post. I started doing the same thing by dumping sources and cites into a Word file but then I found EasyBib (http://www.easybib.com/) which allows me to do the same thing. Better yet, it lets me choose from 50 different types of sources and I can look up books using ISBN numbers.

I've posted about EasyBib here: http://thomas20.com/blog/?p=5