Citing Your Sources

VI. Citations

Responsible scholarship requires that you give proper credit for any quotation that you use in your paper, as well as arguments and ideas that you learned from your research; otherwise, you are committing plagiarism by tacitly claiming that the words and ideas in your paper are your own.

Citation Overview

Citing sources requires two elements, both of which should be correctly formatted.

1. Footnotes to mark the specific idea or quotation you are using from another source.

2. A bibliography at the end of your paper to list all the sources that you have either cited in a direct quotation or paraphrased.

Most word processors have a feature that will place footnotes in the correct location, but it is up to you to format the note in Turabian style. Thankfully, there are some online citation generators that will help you in this task.

For CTH papers, use the guidance for footnotes in the Turabian Notes and Bibliography instructions, which provides examples of how to cite various types of sources. As noted in the instructions, for the first reference to a source in your paper, include the full version of the citation. For subsequent references, use the shortened version.

Footnotes (view example)

At the end of the last word of each quotation or paraphrased idea add a superscripted number to indicate the presence of a note at the bottom of the page that informs the reader where you found the information. Indent the first line of each note five spaces, and leave a single line between notes. Single space each note, and number them consecutively from the beginning to the end of the paper rather than separately by page. Take full advantage of the footnotes feature of your word processing program, if available, to manage the placement of the superscripted numbers and the footnotes.

^ Technical Tip: Microsoft Word instructions on how to add footnotes

Bibliography (view example)

Your bibliography should be an alphabetized list of all the books and articles you have consulted in writing your paper. As illustrated in the examples linked above, it should contain the same information as your first citation in a footnote but in a slightly different order. Format the list as follows:

• • Use a half-inch hanging indent for each item so that your reader can easily locate each author's name.

  • As with footnotes, single-space each entry, but add a space between entries.

  • If you cite more than one work by the same author, replace the name with 3 em dashes.

Note: You do not have to include the Bible in your bibliography.

^ Technical Tip: The Citation Generator for Turabian Style will correctly format the bibliography entry for multiple types of sources.