HISTORY ARGUMENTATIVE PAPER

How to Use Citations

What is a citation?

Whenever we write anything that uses written material by someone else as evidence we must use citations to give credit to that person or persons for their original work. There are several different systems of citations that people use. Historians use a system known as Chicago-style.

When we say “Chicago-style” citations, what we are talking about is the use of what we call “footnotes”. The way that a footnote citation works is this: a superscript (smaller than normal) number is inserted into the text. This number matches with a number that appears at the bottom of that page of text in an area known as a footer. In the footer we type out the information required to identify the text used.

Typically, the information that needs to be included in a footnote follows this format. For a book, a footnote looks like this:

Author’s name, Title of Book (Place of publication: name of publisher, date of publication), page number

Here is an example using your textbook:

Schultz, Kevin, HIST4 (Boston: Cengage, 2016), 16.

When do we cite?

Typically, there are two types of situations when we cite material:

1. Whenever you quote the exact language used by someone else, also known as a direct quote, you must cite it.

2. Whenever you use someone else’s specific and unique ideas or arguments, you must cite it.

How do we cite?

Modern word processing programs make it really simple to use citations. The processes are as follows.

For Microsoft Word:

1. Insert citations by clicking on the References tab on the toolbar and then clicking Insert Footnote.

2. When you click Insert Footnote, the program will insert a superscript number wherever your cursor is and will take you to the bottom of the page where the corresponding footnote is placed.

3. Type in the necessary information for the footnote. Do not change the font size or style, this is taken care of automatically.

For Google Docs:

1. Click on Insert on the toolbar, then click on Footnote.

2. When you click on Footnote, the program will insert a superscript number wherever your cursor is and will take you to the bottom of the page where the corresponding footnote is placed.

3. Type in the necessary information for the footnote. Do not change the font size or style, this is taken care of automatically.

For Your Paper

For this paper, your footnotes should follow this format:

Author, Name of document, page number.