History Analytical essay

General Style Guidelines for Writing History

• Quote the titles of articles, chapter titles, essays, and episodes, example: “The Cult of Womanhood.”

• Italicize the titles of books, periodicals, and movies, example: Fault Lines or The New York Times.

• Citations belong at the end of the sentence (regardless of the quote’s placement in that sentence).

• For MLA in-text citation, the citation is in parentheses, includes the author’s last name and page number, and is followed by punctuation to end the sentence. For example “In the wake of the War of 1812, leaving the Federalist Party in shambles, the ruling Democratic- Republicans had split” (Varon 56).

• For Chicago Style footnotes the number follows the sentence punctation. A footnote for a book citation includes the author’s name, title, (city: publisher, year) page number. For an article the footnote includes author’s name, “Title,” Publication, vol. number, issue number (year), page number. For example, here is a note at the end of the sentence for a book citation, see bottom page. Subsequent notes for the same source still provide author, title, 1 and page number. And here is one for an article. 2 3

• Pro-tip: use your word processing application to insert the footnote. Don’t try to do this manually.

• Use last name when writing about authors or people in history, first names are too informal. • Avoid you, your, we, our, us

• Your reader did not live in history • You can’t assume to know how your reader is interpreting the information - use I instead of

we.

• Avoid phrases like “I think” or “I believe” as they undermine your authority; make the statement without the phrase.

• Numbers • Write out numbers under 100; i.e. seventy-eight or 1789 • Write out numbers beginning a sentence: Nineteen eighty-seven proved to be an eventful

year.

Cont. on second page.

Kelly Lylte Hernandez, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 1 178. Hernandez, Migra!, 210.2 Michael Guasco, “To ‘doe some good upon their countrymen’: The Paradox of Indian Slavery in Early Anglo-3

America,” Journal of Social History, 41, no. 2, (Winter 2007), 402.

• Punctuation • Apostrophes are only used to indicate possession (Lincoln’s speech) or combine two

words into one (don’t).

• Use the appropriate punctuation. Avoid just using a dash

Don’t be that guy.