GSU Library Research Guides: African History: Citing

Why cite?

Citing your sources is an important part of the scholarly writing process. Citations include the key elements that allow your sources to be identified and located - author, title, date, etc. The actual format of the citation depends on the resource type as well as the documentation style you are using.

There are several reasons to cite:

Give proper credit to the ideas, words, and works of others you use in your research
Allow readers to find your sources - so they can determine if they are reliable, better evaluate your argument, and locate additional information
Avoid plagiarism

Citation styles for history

Historians generally use the Chicago Manual of Style or its derivative, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (commonly known as Turabian, after its author). Though not identical, the two styles are very similar.

Always check with your instructor to find out which citation style he or she wants you to use.

The Chicago/Turabian style offers two systems:
1) notes and bibliography (humanities style)
2) author-date

Historians prefer the humanities style because it accomModates a wide variety of sources. Documentation is presented by notes (either footnotes or endnotes) and a bibliography.

Copies of these manuals are also available at the Research Support Desk on Library North 2.

Basics of Turabian

After using a source, put a superscript number at the end of your sentence:

Marius notes that "history and writing are inseparable."³

Cite the source in a correspondingly numbered note at the end of the page (footnote) or at the end of your paper (endnote):

3. Richard Marius. A Short Guide to Writing about History, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 5.

If you use this source again, subsequent notes are shorter:

9. Marius, 105.

In your bibliography, list the source alphabetically according to the author's last name:

Marius, Richard. A Short Guide to Writing about History, 3rd ed. New York: Longman, 1999.

Turabian examples

	Note format	Bibliography format
Book (one author)	Jenny L. Presnell. The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 98.	Presnell, Jenny L. The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Article in a print journal	Jonathan Dewald, "Crisis, Chronology, and the Shape of European Social History," American Historical Review 113 no. 4 (October 2008): 1037.	Dewald, Jonathan. "Crisis, Chronology, and the Shape of European Social History." American Historical Review 113 no. 4 (October 2008): 1031-1052.
Article online	Emily Chao, "Dangerous Work: Women in Traffic," Modern China 28 no. 4 (October 2002): 73, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3181348 (accessed June 14, 2008).	Chao, Emily. "Dangerous Work: Women in Traffic." Modern China 28 no. 4 (October 2002): 71-107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3181348 (accessed June 14, 2008).

Be aware of small differences across similar formats. For example:

Book citations vary slightly for edited collections, multiple authors, translations, or new editions.
Articles have subtle differences if they are newspapers, weekly magazines, or scholarly journals.