Style Sheet for Papers in History

Please note: the HTML version of this style sheet is provided as a convenience. Due to the limitations of HTML, some formatting elements, such as hanging indents for bibliography entries, cannot be represented here. The PDF version is authoritative. If you wish to print out this style sheet and you have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, use the PDF version.

This style sheet was most recently revised on April 8, 2002.

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Papers should be typed double-spaced (or, if permitted by the instructor, legibly written in ink) on one side of the paper. Margins should be standard (one and one-half inches on the left and one inch on top, right, and bottom). Italics are indicated by underlining the appropriate word or phrase or by using the italic function of your word processor (do not use both!). Each report should have a title page, the necessary notes (either footnotes or endnotes), and a complete bibliography of the materials actually used in its preparation. Failure to comply with these rules may make the paper unacceptable.

Honesty in the Writing of Papers

The composition of any paper must be entirely the student’s own work. If the exact words of another work are used, even to a limited degree, quotation marks must be used and a reference (a note) given. If information or ideas are taken from another work, although not in the form of a direct quotation, the student must be careful to phrase this entirely in his/her own words, always with credit given in notes to the source of information. Failure to give such credit is plagiarism, and is equivalent to cheating on an examination.

Yet another reason carefully to document the use of another person’s words and/or ideas is that the statements or ideas may be inaccurate, misleading, or highly controversial. If that is the case, the student would not want to claim responsibility for such statements.

Submission of a paper that is copied from another work, or which contains fictitious notes, will be cause for failure in the course.

Style for Notes and Bibliography

The styles for notes and for bibliography are not identical. The student should carefully study the examples given here for correct usage in both cases. Over the years commonly accepted usages have undergone some changes. Also, what is common usage in the humanities is not the same as that which prevails in the social sciences and the sciences. This style sheet shows a current common usage for the humanities. One of the modern changes is that a volume number of a multi-volume work used to be cited in Roman numerals, whereas today arabic numerals are also commonly used. Examples of both types are given here. What is important for the student to remember is to be consistent. Of paramount importance in both notes and bibliographical citations is CLARITY.

Since there are many acceptable forms, consult your professor or your publisher for the form desired. If the form given here is acceptable, simply follow it. For additional illustrations of citations, see the reference works at the end.

Notes

A note must be provided for each quotation, for important statements of fact, for paraphrases and for any conclusion derived from another writer. When the material in any paragraph comes from several sources, one note may contain all these references. Each note should be indicated by an Arabic numeral placed in the text immediately after the matter to which it refers. The same number should be repeated at the list of endnotes (or at the foot of the page when footnotes are used). Notes should be single-spaced and should be numbered consecutively throughout the paper.

Notes are of two sorts: (1) the content note, which may be used to illustrate or supplement points to a degree not desirable in the body of the text; (2) the citation or documentary note, which must be used in all direct quotations or close paraphrases.

The first citation in a note of any work should provide the full name of the author and the exact title as found on the title page, the the place and date of publication, and the pertinent volume and page references, according to the forms below.

1. Stephen B. Oates, To Purge this Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (New York, 1970), 272.

2. Page Smith, John Adams, 2 (Garden City, N.Y., 1962): 734.

OR

Page Smith, John Adams, II (Garden City, N.Y., 1962), 734.

3. John W. Boyer, "The End of an old Regime: Visions of Political Reform in Late Imperial Austria," The Journal of Modern History 58 (1986): 160-62.

OR

John W. Boyer, "The End of an old Regime: Visions of Political Reform in Late Imperial Austria," The Journal of Modern History, LVIII (1986), 160-62.

4. Thomas S. Ashton, "Workers’ Living Standards: an Early Modern Revision," in Philip A.M. Taylor, ed., The Industrial Revolution in Britain: Triumph or Disaster?, rev. ed. (Lexington, Mass., 1970), 19.

5. Sir George Rodney to John, 4th Earl of Sandwich, Gibraltar, 19 Sept. 1781: The Private Papers of John, Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1771-1782, G.R. Barnes and J.H. Owen, eds., IV (Navy Records Society, 1938), 66.

6. Central Office of Information for British Information Services, The British Parliament, 4th ed. (London, 1965), 15.

7. Francis, Lord Rawdon to Francis, tenth Earl of Huntingdon, Staten Island, 5 Aug. 1776: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings, Esq., of the Manor House, Ashby de la Zouch, III (London, 1934), 179-80.

8. MacGregor Knox, rev. of The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-1939: The Path to Ruin, by Williamson Murray, The Journal of Modern History 58 (1986), 290-92.

9. "Doubts on Pentagon Reform," editorial, Wall Street Journal 13 August 1986: 22, cols. 1-2.

If the work is cited in successive notes and no citations of other works intervene, the later references should make use of the Latin abbreviation ibid., which means "the same", thus:

10. Stephen B. Oates, To Purge this Land with Blood: A Biography of Joohn Brown (New York, 1970), 114.

11. Ibid., 123. (Capitalize ibid. only at the beginning of a sentence.)

If a work is cited more than once but citations of other works intervene, the subsequent citation should employ a short title (not "op. cit."), thus:

12. Oates, John Brown, 123.

In a note referring to two or more sources the various items should be connected by semi-colons, thus:

13. James Thomas Flexner, George Washington in the American Revolution (1775-1783) (Boston, 1968), 174; Don Higginbotham, George Washington and the American Military Tradition (Athens, Ga., 1985), 78-9.

14. There exist special requirements for classical and medieval authors, as well as the Bible. References are to the internal divisions of the work: i.e. book, part, section, chapter, line or lines, etc.–not pages!

(a) Matthew 16. 18-20 (Gospel of Matthew, verse 16, lines 18-20). The King James translation is assumed; specify if otherwise.

(b) Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2. 71-78 (book 2, chapters 71-78).

(c) Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 2. 14 (book 2, chapter 14).

Material on the World Wide Web should be cited as follows. (Some instructors require permission for students to use WWW material in their papers.) Give the author, the title of the web page, the name of the web site, the date that you visited it, and the URL. Because material on the web often changes, the date is essential.

15. John Wyclif, "On the sacrament of communion," Internet Medieval Sourcebook (accessed 8 April 2002), available from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/wyclif-euch.html.

Foreign Words and Abbreviations

All Latin and foreign phrases or abbreviations should be underscored (to indicate italics), except when they have been so extensively used as to be "naturalized" in English. The following Latin words or abbreviations for words or phrases have all been thus naturalized and do not need to be underscored. Also included in this list are some abbreviations for English words or phrases that are useful in historical writing.

Quotations

Excessive use of quotations should be avoided. They should be introduced properly or by the context made an integral part of the material that they illustrate. Double quotation marks should be used for a primary quotation whether it contains several words or only one word. Single quotation marks should be used for a quotation within a quotation. Double marks should be used for a third quotation, single again for a fourth, and so on.

Note citations must be given for all quotations. The quotations must be stated with complete accuracy in all details, and should be verified from the source, if possible. Omissions are allowable provided the meaning is not distorted and the syntax of the sentence is not impaired. Any omission within a quotation is indicated by three periods with a space between each one, thus: . . .; when the final words of a sentence are omitted from a quotation, four periods, with a space between each one, should be used (the final period represents the punctuation necessary for the sentence). Editorial explanations within a quotation are enclosed in square brackets, not parentheses, thus:

"When Washington’s back was turned, the man in his military family on whose friendship he most relied [Joseph Reed] slipped into the cover of this letter [Washington to Gen. Charles Lee] a secret one: ‘I confess I think it is entirely owing to you that this army . . . [is not] totally cut off.’"4

Longer quotations (of more that 5 lines) should be single-spaced in a block indented ten spaces from the left margin. No quotation marks should be used in such a block quotation except as they may appear in the original.

When quoting a passage from a work that says it is quoting from a third source, check the original reference if possible; if the source is unavailable, use the following note form:

16. Joseph Reed to Charles Lee, quoted in Flexner, Washington in the Revolution, 158.

Bibliography

A bibliography listing all materials used by the author should be included at the end of the report. Each reference should contain the full name of the author and the exact title of the work as found on the title page, the number of volumes if the work is a set, and the place and date of publication. If the work is a reprint, the original place and date of publication should also be noted, and the name of the translator (if there is one) should be provided. "Primary Sources" should be separated from "Secondary Works," and if the number of materials cited is large, further divisions should be made, such as "Official Publications," "Newspapers," "Manuscripts," and so forth. Under each division, the items should be arranged alphabetically according to the author’s surname, which should appear first (unlike the practice in a note). If the work is anonymous, the first important word of the title (excluding "a," "an," "the," etc.) determines its place in the alphabetical list. Critical comments may accompany each title.

Generally, primary sources are regarded as those contemporaneous with the subject matter. Just as witnesses in a court trial, not all primary sources will be equally reliable. Secondary works generally are all those written after the events in the subject matter: although lacking the "primacy" of primary sources, they may gain in accuracy and insights from their perspective in time. Thus both types of sources have their place in a careful study of a given subject.

The following examples will serve as a guide for the citation of various types of materials:

Primary Sources

Published Letters

Manuscripts

Contemporary Newspapers

Secondary Works

Books

Articles

Government Publications

Review

Newspaper

World Wide Web site

Some Useful Works on Historical Form and Writing