A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

Dewey, Bellow, Strauss, Friedman--the University of Chicago has been the home of some of the most important thinkers of the modern age. But perhaps no name has been spoken with more respect than Turabian.

The dissertation secretary at Chicago for decades, Kate L. Turabian literally wrote the book on the successful completion and submission of the student paper. Her Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, created from her years of experience with research projects across all fields, has sold more than seven million copies since it was first published in 1937.

Now, with this seventh edition, "Turabian's Manual" has undergone its most extensive revision, ensuring that it will remain the most valuable handbook for writers at every level--from first-year undergraduates, to dissertation writers apprehensively submitting final manuscripts, to senior scholars who may be old hands at research and writing but less familiar with new media citation styles. Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, and the late Wayne C. Booth--the gifted team behind The Craft of Research--and the University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff combined their wide-ranging expertise to remake this classic resource. They preserve Turabian's clear and practical advice while fully embracing the new modes of research, writing, and source citation brought about by the age of the Internet.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

First published in 1937, Turabian's manual has been updated to reflect the fifteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (2003) as well as the habits and needs of today's students. The chapter on source citation now includes sections on online databases, e-books, and "informally published electonic sources." A new and lengthy part 1, "Researching and Writing: From Planning to Production," cautions researchers to "beware of Wikipedia" and "never cite it as an authoritative source." Another caution: citation software "may save time, but it is not a substitute for knowing the underlying principles of the style." Quinn, Mary Ellen

Review

"This latest edition of the trusted Manual for Writers not only answers nearly every question related to scholarly writing that students could possibly have, but it is full of helpful and wise advice about researching, organizing, and writing everything from undergraduate papers to doctoral dissertations." - Paul S. Boyer, Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus, University of Wisconsin - Madison"

The 7th edition of Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers features significant new material, a more user-friendly arrangement, much-needed rules for online resources, and an eye-friendly, two-tone typeset format.

Editors Booth, Colomb, and Williams have adapted material from their The Craft of Research and inserted it as Part I of the 7th edition. Researchers now get both a style guide and a research guide in one book.

The three-part format for the 7th edition also makes it easier to navigate. Part I is the new research guide; Part II is the rules for source citation; Part III is the style guide. In the 6th edition, the first chapter was a guide to the parts of a research paper which then had to be compared to the formats and sample layouts in the last chapter. The new edition combines all this material together in Appendix A along with instructions that are updated to reflect common word processor settings. And the index at the back of the volume now references items by page number rather than chapter and section, a great improvement in my opinion.

The 7th edition brings Turabian up-to-date by including rules and examples for citing online sources. Part II also separates the instructions for notes/bibliography style from the instructions for parenthetical/reference list style. What had been a completely separate chapter for citing public documents is now helpfully included with the rest of the citation rules. Part II of edition 7 now includes over 100 pages of citation examples compared to the 26 pages in chapter 11 of the 6th edition.

One weakness that is not corrected in the new edition is that Turabian's official stance for encyclopedias and other reference works is still that they should only be cited in notes. (17.5.3, p.191) Nothing acknowledges the difficulties of citing scholarly encyclopedia or dictionary references where signed articles are the norm. One can, however, adapt the instructions for edited collections on p.179 to sufficiently cite academic reference works.

Finally, the blue-and-black typesetting makes it much easier to distinguish in-text examples and to move one's eye from section to section.

It is fitting that the 7th edition has been published on the 20th anniversary of Kate Turabian's death. The many improvements in this edition will ensure its place on student bookshelves for years to come.