English 105
Source Citation and Bibliographic Format Quiz Answers in Red and Rationales in Blue
1. In MLA style, where in the paper do you put endnotes and for what are they used? At the end of the paper, just before Works Cited. The MLA endnote is almost never used to cite page numbers of sources, but rather it takes up explanations that are not serious enough to belong in the main body of the paper, or it acknowledges complex indebtedness to a scholar who assisted the author at that point.
Name an academic department that uses MLA. English and any of the Modern Languages (MLA stands for "Modern Language Association).
2. MLA style cites sources in the text of the paper using parentheses at the ends of sentences. Author and page number, with no comma between them, or just the page number if the author is named in the sentence.
What should those parentheses usually contain and how would you cite a paraphrase from page 20 of the article below?
Pearce, Colin D. “Hawthorne’s ‘My Kinsman, Major Molineux.” Explicator 60:1 (Fall 2001): 19-22.
Pearce argues that Hawthorne characterizes the Major based on a historical governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony (20). or
Hawthorne may have developed the character of the Major based on a historical governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony (Pearce 20).
Rationale for MLA citation format: MLA deals with literary scholarship, a field in which old sources are sometimes very good sources. For that reason, no dates are included in the parenthetical citation but they are included in the Works Cited entry. Note that there are no commas in MLA parenthetical citations! Nor does MLA use "pg" or "p." because it is understood that the number indicates a page. Endnotes park your additional comments out of the reader's field of vision so that they do not obstruct reading the main text. The logic of a citation like the paraphrase of Pearce is that if you name your source in the sentence, itself, you do not need to include the name in the parenthetical citation. As with the omitted commas, omitting the author's name when it's in the sentence reduces the total characters your readers have to scan to understand you--Grice Maxim #3: be brief.
3. In University of Chicago and Turabian style, where in the paper do you put footnotes and for what are they used? Name a department that requires U. Chicago style. At the "foot" or bottom of the page on which the reference occurs. It may cite page numbers and give full bibliographic information for the source, since there is no "Works Cited" section in U. Chicago or Turabian, or it may also take up explanations that are not serious enough to belong in the main body of the paper, or acknowledge complex indebtedness to a scholar who assisted the author at that point. In U. Chicago or Turabian, everything related to sources and subordinate explanations happens at the foot of the page.
Name a department that requires U. Chicago style. History, and sometimes Philosophy--ask the instructor.
Rationale for University of Chicago format: History and Philosophy are extremely scrupulous about supporting evidence, and about giving readers' immediate access to side-arguments that might influence acceptance of the main text's points. Therefore, the notes occur at the foot of the page, even for mere page citations. It's quite old-fashioned, dating to the eighteenth-century, but History and Philosophy are seriously tradition-bound disciplines.
4. APA style also cites sources in the text of the paper in parentheses. What should those parentheses contain for a reference to a quotation or paraphrase on page 140 of the article below?
Smith, Richard H., and J. Matthew Webster. “The Role of Public Exposure in Moral and Nonmoral Shame and Guilt.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83:1 (July 2002): 138-59.
Author and year of publication, separated by a comma: (Smith and Webster, 2002)
Name an academic department that uses APA.
Psychology (APA stands for American Psychological Association)
Rationale for APA format: Psychology considers itself one of the "Natural Sciences," especially at Goucher, in that they are experiment-based, and extremely aware of the "recency" of evidence. Newer evidence nearly always is better than older evidence. For that reason, the author(s) name(s) are followed by a comma, unlike MLA, and by the date of publication rather than the page number. They do not care if you have to read the whole document to find the page--the date your sources published is that important to your readers' willingness to accept your thesis.
Using the bibliography on the other side of this page, answer these questions:
5. Name a source from printed in a scholarly journal, using the author’s last name. Name one source printed in a collection of essays, using the author’s last name.
Journal articles: Ackerman, Adamson, Brewer, Miner, Tumminia. You know because the titles are in "quotation marks" and the journal's name is in italics. Essay in a collection: Mann.
6. Of the books written by N. F. Blake, which probably would tell you the most about how England’s first printer, William Caxton, influenced English literary taste? Which of the library’s online search tools would be your first step in locating it?
William Caxton and English Literary Culture. London: Hambledon, 1991--the title tells you. The library's online catalogue.--that's where books are indexed.
7. Adamson, Coleman, and Miner all study literacy and reading in England. Using only the information in this bibliography, which probably would be the best source to find first if you were writing about Medieval English literacy and how do you know? What is the name of the online search tools that would be your first step in locating the articles?
Coleman (1996--latest publication date--most current research). JSTOR's Language and Literature" and "History" databases, or the MLA International Bibliography (via EbscoHost). Note that Internet web pages rarely tell you when they were posted or last revised, but printed books and articles always do.
8. What is the fastest way to tell whether Coleman has read Adamson’s or Miner’s work?
Read her Works Cited section. Note that Internet web pages almost never allow you to do this, but printed books and articles always do.
9) Of the two studies of prophecy, which could be used for an argument about Medieval prophecy: Taylor; Tumminia, both, neither. (Circle one)
Both:
Social Science
research studies trends in human behavior that can transcend individual eras in
culture. In this case, group reasoning about supernatural beliefs is
likely to persist from one era to the next. Taylor's book, though old
(1911), is reporting historical evidence as Humanities research, which does not
so easily go "out of date" as Social Sciences and Natural Sciences research.
Bibliography
Ackerman, Robert W. “Herry Lovelich’s Merlin.” PMLA 67 (June 1952) 473-84.
Adamson, J.W. "The Extent of Literacy in England in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Notes and Conjectures." The Library. 10:4 (1930) 163-93.
Bennett, H. S. English Books & Readers 1475-1557. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1952.
Blake, N. F. Caxton and His World. N.Y.: London House and Maxwell, 1969.
--------. Caxton: England's First Publisher. N.Y.: Barnes & Noble, 1976.
--------. William Caxton and English Literary Culture. London: Hambledon, 1991.
Brewer, Derek S. "Malory: The Traditional Writer and the Archaic Mind." Arthurian Literature I (1981) 94-120.
Christianson, C. Paul. Memorials of the Book Trade in Medieval London: The Archives of Old London Bridge. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987.
Coleman, Joyce. Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
A Companion to Malory. Ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996.
Mann, Jill. “Malory and the Grail Quest.” In A Companion to Malory, 203-20.
Miner, John Nelson. "Schools and Literacy in Later Medieval England." British Journal of Educational Studies. XI (1962) 16-27.
Taylor, Rupert. The Political Prophecy in England. N.Y.: Columbia UP, 1911.
Tumminia, Diana. “How Prophecy Never Fails: Interpretive Reason in a Flying-Saucer Group.” Sociology of Religion. 59:2 (Summer 1998) 145-70.