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I'm editing some conference papers for publication. I noticed today that I seem to have an inconsistent policy on footnotes. Specifically, I'll cite articles as: A.N. Other, Spodding today 25(1), 88-89, whilst books are cited as A.N. Other, Books!, pp. 88-89. I'm not sure what I should do, so I'm going to ask LJ:
[Poll #545058]

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There are 20 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I fully recommend putting www.google.com or possibly scholar.google.com in all references and leaving it at that.

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I think so long as you're consistent it doesn't really matter which you use. I'd use "pp." and the number range, but The MLA style guide (summarised here in rather lurid colours but hopefully readable) suggests just numbers for both books and articles -- not sure what the vet/science equivalent of the MLA would be but there must be some kind of respected academic organisation (more respected than LJ anyway ;-) whose style guide you could follow to save having to make the decision.

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Ah. I know what I'm doing when writing science, but these are artsy conference proceedings (from a previous Tolkien Society seminar), hence my confusion.

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Ah well, in that case, the MLA guidelines are probably as good as any other to follow! They're what we were recommended to use for our dissertations etc when I was at university. Actually, I can probably dig out my style guide and photocopy it if you want for future reference. IIRC it has amusing made-up citations as examples. :-)

Thinking about it, I'm not sure why arts/science should be any different in terms of citations. I mean, it's all just books/journals, innit? If arts and sciences are cited differently, what do interdisciplinary types do?

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I don't know why it's different. Artsy types seem to like putting their references in footnotes, whereas when I write science (as I usually do), I'll quote some dull finding and then cite(Vernon, 2005), and have the bibliography at the end.

A fiend of mine opined that it's because arts people are often quoting something in a foreign language, and will translate it in the footnote, along with a reference.

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A lot of the lit crit I've read has had in-line references like that, with bibliography at the end...

I would expect to see translations in the footnotes, yeah, because people probably need to know what it means as they're reading; but if you're just saying "Bloggs raises the interesting question of whether Some Artsy Load Of Bollocks is actually just nonsense (Bloggs, 1969), a question which is energetically disputed by A. N. Other in blah blah blah" then I think that's a lot clearer and less intrusive than footnoting.

IMHO etc., IANAAcademic (any more), usual disclaimers apply, may contain traces of nuts.

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...Load Of Bollocks

may contain traces of nuts.

:-)

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Invest in a style-guide and follow it slavishly. The MLA one is good, though perhaps there's a science-specific one that would be better. Honestly. Do not ask the internet things like that. There are various consistent systems, any of which would be fine, rather than One True Way, but if you mix them up (as you will if you ask the internet) it will all get in a terrible tangle.

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For scientific and mathematical references and citations I would never use pp for articles. I use:

Doe J and Smith J. On Dull Mathematics. J Dull Math. 100(1):88-97, 2005.

or similar.

For books you could use pp, but I'd stick to a single convention, i have never seen pp used for articles. It might also be relevant to cite chapters in the books.

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Of course, if you intend it to go to a specific journal you must follow their house style. A quick glance at the journal should point you in the right direction. Referencing styles can vary dramatically across journals.

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Well, indeed, but you'd never catch me putting references in as footnotes, either. It seems to be a very artsy thing to do.

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I checked my previous PRs and they do seem to use pp for all publications.

On the other hand, as long as you are consistent I wouldn't have thought it mattered that much. Have you tried consulting the archivist? Her subject is the closest, I would have thought.

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The latex default bibliography style is my normal default:

A.N. Other, Spodding today 25(1):88-89, or
A.N. Other, Books!, chapter 5, pages 88-89.

But as leonato said, there's so much variation in journals... I'm sure that anything that is clear will be fine.

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Personally, I don't think it matters so long as you're consistent. There, aren't I the helpful one? :-p

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That's right, you aren't :p

I hope you're going to buy a copy! :)

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Is this the seminar proceedings? I was there so I've already heard all the papers, but since you've put in so much work, of course I'll buy a copy ;-)

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FWIW, in my stuff, I do journal citations as Other, A.N., "Article Title" Foo Journal 25(1), year, 1-10; books as Other, A.N. Foo Book, pp.1-10.

In the bibliography, I cite articles as given above but for books would add year, place and publisher in parentheses immediately after the book title.

I gather this is more or less a standard style in British Arts/Humanities scholarship and I've been advised to do it this way by previous supervisors. David hasn't told me that it is glaringly unorthodox, so I am sticking with it.

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I use 88-99 in the bibliography for pages of an article (which would have the title in Roman between quotes marks which your example lacks) but when I cite something in the text (for which I use author, short title references) I include p. or pp. as relevant. This is the case for articles too; I'd checked my thesis for what I did but I've just checked ASNC stylesheet and that's what it says. The relevant justification for not including page numbers in the bibliography is
(v) ‘vol(s).’ and ‘p(p).’ should be omitted from references which include both a volume number (e.g. of a two-volume work, or of an issue of a periodical, or a volume in a series) and a page number. (The principle is derived from the MHRA Style Book.).

Personally, I much prefer author short title in the footnotes because then it is obvious what work is being referenced. I can recognise a book/article by its title far more easily than by its year (and as for numbers as bibtex expects -- one has to check for each bibliography!).

BTW, I have a .bst file which complies with the ASNC stylesheet (at least I think it does!).

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I dislike "88-89" on the grounds that it's possible to misread as a date range under some circumstances, but I seem to be in the minority there.

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We (www.rsc.org) use pp. for books and just the page numbers for journals, but as long as you pick something and stick to it you should be fine. It's quite unusual to see pp. in scientific journal references, though I dunno about arts journal references. pp. is a good idea for books because there's so much random information in book citations that it can sometimes be hard to tell what each bit means.

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