TERM PAPER STYLE SHEET

       Many other academic disciplines have embraced the idea of citing all sources in parentheses in your text, but historians still prefer old-fashioned footnotes, which provide your reader with ample and easily accessible information without disrupting the flow of your text. Please use footnotes in your term papers, according to the guidelines below, and then include at the end a bibliography recapitulating all works cited. Let me know if you have any questions.

       When citing a BOOK for the first time, give Author, Title [either in italics or underlined] (then place of publication, date of publication in parentheses), p. x [for single page] or pp. x-y [for multiple pages].

       When citing a JOURNAL ARTICLE for the first time, give Author, “Article Title,” Journal Title, vol. x (year of publication), p. x or pp. x-y. (This assumes a modern scholarly journal organized into annual volumes with continuous pagination, but if that does not apply, you will need volume and issue number of the magazine or newspaper and the exact date of publication.)

       When citing an ARTICLE IN AN ANTHOLOGY for the first time, give Article Author, “Article Title,” in Anthology Title, ed. [insert name of anthology’s editor or editors], (place of anthology’s publication, date), p. x or pp. x-y.

       For repeated citations of each source, the author’s name will suffice, with page numbers. If you have more than one source by the same author, give the name plus a short title. In the bibliography one normally drops the parentheses around the place and date of publication, and there you should provide inclusive page numbers for any articles cited (i.e., state the first and last pages of the whole article).

       Footnotes make it easy to cite multiple sources for an assertion, or perhaps to define a term that some readers will know but not all, or to take note of contradictions between the sources. You should avoid lengthy, discursive footnotes, but you may use footnotes occasionally to address the reader about matters that are not important enough to include in the body of your text.

       As a tip about the structure of your paper, see if you can avoid the sort of organization where you devote the first 3-4 pages to summarizing book A, the next two pages to summarizing article B, and the last four pages to summarizing book C. Such papers are often dull. A more creative plan would be to divide your paper into three or four sections defined in terms of the most important questions related to your overall topic, and then bring evidence to bear from more than one source in each of those sections. This sort of organization indicates that the author’s mind is actively engaged in synthesizing the information available. Good luck with your writing, and again, let me know if you have any questions.

       As noted in the syllabus, the deadline for term papers is 5:00 p.m. on Friday, December 12. I will be happy to give you feed-back on a rough draft, as long as you can get that to me by noon on Wednesday. (In other words, anything turned in by then I will promise to return to you with comments by Thursday morning. If you submit a rough draft after noon on Wednesday, I can’t make any promises.)