ENGLISH ASSIGNMNET

Documenting Technical Information

At Algonquin College if you are in the Faculty of Technology and Trades you will use IEEE 2006 style for documenting your sources of facts, illustrations and other borrowed information in documents that you create.

The good news for those who hate recording bibliographic information is that IEEE 2006 is very user-friendly – it is mostly automated and uses information fields to guide you through entering the information.

In visual information

To get started let’s look at documenting the source for an illustration (a commonly borrowed bit of information from the internet). Every illustration should have a figure number and a caption below it. At the end of the caption the source of the illustration should be referenced to its source. For example:

Figure 1: Main Elements of a Racing Oarlock adapted from [1] or

Figure 1: Main Elements of a Racing Oarlock source [1]

In the example above there are two different source notations:

• ‘adapted from’ to indicate that the illustration was modified by you somehow (labelled, cropped, coloured or otherwise changed) ; and,

• ‘source’ to indicate that the illustration appears exactly as it does in the source material

In textual information

The use of ‘adapted from’ and ‘source’ is analogous (similar) to paraphrase and direct quotation respectively.

Paraphrase

The start of an item that is paraphrased is usually indicated by informal source markers such as:

According to NASA the 1969 moon landing was . . . [1]

with the square-bracketed source number at the end of the paraphrased material.

Direct Quotation

An item used in your document exactly as published (word-for-word) is indicated by quotation marks with the square-bracketed source number at the end:

“That’s one small step for a man but a giant leap for mankind” [1]

Incidentally, it is quite right to refer to authors by their citation number:

According to [1] he never said “for a man”; he claims to have said only “for man” [1].

How to add the citations and works cited

Citations

1. At the end of a caption or paraphrase or passage of quoted text leave the cursor where it is (yes, you should leave a space or two).

2. In the menu bar at the top of the page locate the References tab – click on it. 3. In the Style tab (just to the right of the References tab marker) select

IEEE2006 option. 4. Click on the ‘Insert Citation’ button. 5. Choose ‘Add New Source’ – or, if your source has already been entered and

used, select the appropriate source you wish to cite. A dialogue box will appear. 6. Select the type of information source you wish to cite – likely a website – and fill

in the information requested. 7. When you hit ‘OK’ the citation will appear where you left the cursor.

Works Cited

1. When you are ready to add the Works Cited to your document place (click) the cursor where you want the Works Cited to appear (usually at the end of the document).

2. In the References tab select the ‘Bibliography’ option. A menu will appear. 3. Select ‘Works Cited’ and the entries you have made will appear where you left

the cursor (hopefully at the end of the document).