Citing Sources

When citing a source in the body of a paper, use the author’s last name and the date of publication; if it’s a print source, include the specific page (or pages).

In the bibliography include: authortitle of book, chapter, or article (and page numbers if it’s a chapter or article), volume and issue number of journal if appropriate, date of publication, publisher or journal title.

Titles of books and journals should be in italics. Titles of articles and chapters should be in “quotation marks.”

In a footnote citation, include the page number cited. If the source is a chapter in an edited collection, be sure to reference it by the author of the chapter first (the editor of the collection should also appear later in the body of the reference). When using footnotes, only include the long form the first time; use the short form thereafter.

If a print source was retrieved via JSTOR, Project Muse, or any other similar database of print sources, treat it as a print source only (including all the information above). As long as it initially appeared in print and you have the original page numbers, it is not necessary to provide any web information about how you retrieved it.

Beware of bibliography programs adding extraneous material, such as n.d. or n.p. Make sure to delete them.

The easiest and most effective approach is to find an academic book or article that looks good to you and simply use the bibliography in it as a guide. You are safest with books published by university presses or scholarly journals.

EXAMPLES

Alim, H. Samy, Awad Ibrahim, and Alastair Pennycook (eds.). 2009. Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language. New York: Routledge.

Anyidoho, Kofi. 1983. Oral Poetics and Traditions of Verbal Art in Africa. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.

Baker, Esther Marian. 2002. Handlin’ Rhymes: Hip Hop in Dakar, Senegal. MA thesis, University of California at Los Angeles.

Barrow, Steve and Peter Dalton. 1997. Reggae: The Rough Guide. London: The Rough Guides.

Duka, John. 1984. “In Paris, a Young Black Society,” New York Times (April 20): A16.

Grass, Randall. 1986. “Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: The Art of an Afrobeat Rebel,” The Drama Review 30(1): 131-148.

Gross, Joan, David McMurray, and Ted Swedenburg. 2002. “Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap, and Franco-Maghrebi Identities,” in Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo (eds.), The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 198-230.

For more info on citing sources, see the Olin library page here or Purdue Online Writing Lab