Warring States Papers
Bibliographic Form

This page is a supplement to the Style Sheet. It gives specific examples of citations in different categories. We begin by repeating the relevant paragraph from the Style Sheet:

Bibliographic Form. In your Works Cited expanded listings, include only information which is directly helpful for library retrieval. Also, we deplore the different grimaces customarily used used to differentiate books (italics) from articles (quotes): in our opinion, books and articles are equally valuable to scholarship, and should be treated with equal dignity. It is sufficient to capitalize the titles of both, to distinguish them from regular prose, and the presence of a journal rather than a press in the entry will adequately distinguish the two from each other. Below are samples of entry types in different categories.

Books

This is the basic information:

Author. Title (normally omitting subtitle). Publisher [no comma] date.

Give "place of publication" only when needed to distinguish, eg, Taiwan Shangwu from [Shanghai] Shangwu. Do not recite the "place of publication" litany for eg Peter Lang (Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Paris, Wien), never mind Oxford. Simply:

Arthur Waley. The Analects of Confucius. Allen & Unwin 1938

Order entries in a bibliography by surname, but do not reverse surname and given name, in any language. Simply interfile by surname, giving with the whole name in its original order:

Raymond Dawson. Confucius: The Analects. Oxford 1993
Nicola Di Cosmo. Ancient China and Its Enemies. Cambridge 2002
Ding Shvng-shu. Gu/Jin Dz-yin Dwei-jau Shou-tsv. Taiping 1966
J J L Duyvendak. The Book of Lord Shang. Probsthain 1928; repr Chicago 1963

If you use a reprint with different pagination than the original, give (within reason) necessary particulars in your citation (not in the final bibliography), so that readers can find the passage without undue trouble. To indicate that a reprint has identical pagination, use this form:

Arthur Waley. Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China. Allen & Unwin 1939 = Stanford 2000

Some frequently cited reference books and bibliographic aids have their own standard abbreviations in WSP, see the separate Book Abbreviations page.

Microfilmed Theses are treated like any other published book:

Luo Chia-li. Coastal Culture and Religion in Early China. UMI 1999

It is not necessary to distinguish PhD from MA theses; UMI publishes both. Scholarly books no longer give the degrees of authors on title pages of books (eg "MA Oxon"), and scholarly citations should follow suit. Thus this MA thesis can have the same entry form as the preceding PhD thesis:

Hagop Sarkissian. Laozi: Re-Visiting Two early Commentaries in the Hanfeizi. UMI 2001

In this case, the subtitle is helpful. We do not give UMI order numbers, just as we do not give ISBN numbers for books. Those numbers can be readily determined via the Internet, when needed.

Unpublished Theses. There is no equivalent of UMI for European or Asian theses. The only available copy is in the home library. A sufficient aid to locating that copy should be:

Dan Robins. The Debate Over Human Nature in Warring States China. (PhD, University of Hong Kong) 2001

Edited Books:

Bryan W Van Norden (ed). Confucius and the Analects. Oxford 2002

Edward L Shaughnessy (ed). New Sources of Chinese History. Society for the Study of Early China 1997

In the latter example, it is not necessary to add "and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley." Enough is enough. Another complicated example:

Tien-yi Li (ed). Selected Works of George A Kennedy. Far Eastern Publications 1964

If the author was living at the time of publication, and if he contributed to inclusion decisions, the author is given in place of the editor, as the publisher decided in this case:

David S Nivison. The Ways of Confucianism. Open Court 1996

It is not necessary to add that the actual chores of editing the above volume were carried out by Bryan W Van Norden. We are not doing full bibliographic description, or complete publication history.

Articles in Books:

David S Nivison. "Virtue" in Bone and Bronze, in: Nivison Ways

See above for the expansion of Nivison Ways, which should have its separate entry in the Works Cited list. Note that if the title of this "article" were enclosed in quotes, they would conflict with the author's quotes around the first word. We wish to avoid all such punctuation hierarchy questions.

Journal Articles: Author. Title (omitting subtitle in most cases). Journal (often an acronym, such as JA or MS), issue (with date in parentheses), and pages. See the separate page of Journal acronyms which are standardized for each WSP issue, and need not spelled out. A complex example:

Edwin G Pulleyblank. Chinese Traditional Phonology. AM 3ser v12 pt 2 (1999) 101-137

These are the main editorial preferences. Reasoned departures from them are nearly always discussible.

23 Mar 2007 / Contact The Project / Exit to Journal Page