Every time you mention an idea or a fact that you didn't generate with your own brain, you should say where you got it. This is called ATTRIBUTION. It's a good idea generally, and in formal writing, such as newspapers or research papers, attributing information to its source is absolutely essential.

The best way I know to attribute a source is to NAME THE SOURCE BEFORE MENTIONING THE INFORMATION. (E.g., According to So-and-so, information information information.)  Even better is to say also WHERE you found the information, by naming the magazine or book or whatever. If you do this AFTER mentioning the information, there'll be no doubt about who said what in your paper, because the information will be sandwiched between the name of the source and the place where you found the information. E.g., According to So-and-so, information information information (title, page number).  Or to put it another way:

Or again:

According to Don Maxwell, the best way to attribute information to its source is to make it look like this sentence, with the info sandwiched between the name of the person who said it and the place where you read it, heard it, or otherwise found it ("Attribution & Documentation" 1)

COMPLETE DOCUMENTATION (i.e., attribution and documentation) does this and also names the place of publication, the publisher, the date of publication, and any other relevant information.  Here's how that works:

Let's look at the traditional form  of documentation first, even though  you won't use it for this course.  You may have been introduced to it in high school.  The traditional form has numbered footnotes or endnotes, like those in the little sample paper I've written below about some articles on the subject of altering photographs with computers.

(First, you might want to have a look at these three photos to see what's at stake here.)

The documentation is completed by the footnote or endnote that is related to the reference by the raised ("superscript") number. (Endnotes are just like footnotes, except that they are collected on a separate page at the end, instead of being at the foot of the pages on which they are referenced.) And the same information (minus the page number) is indexed alphabetically at the end of the paper in a list called the bibliography. Here's what the bibliography for this sample article would look like:

 

Bibliography Brand, Stewart, Kevin Kelly, and Jay Kinney.     "Digital Retouching: The End of Photography     as Evidence of Anything." Whole Earth Review,     No. 47, July 1985 42-50. Daviss, Bennett. "Picture Perfect." Discover,     July 1990 56. Familyname, Firstname. Underlined Title of a     Book. City: Publishing Company, 19##. Lastname, Firstname. "Title of an Article."     Underlined Title of the Periodical. Number,     Date, Month Year page. Lastname, Givenname. Personal Interview. Date. Surname, Firstname. "Title of a Chapter or     Portion of a Book" in Underlined Title of      the Book. City: Publishing Company, 19##. Surname1, Firstname1 and Firstname2 Surname2.     Underlined Title of a Book. City: Publishing     Company, 19##.

(NOTICE that the footnotes are INDENTED and the bibliography entries are OUTDENTED ("hanging indent").  Footnotes are punctuated as one sentence and bibliography entries as three sentences.  Also, some persons prefer double-spacing of footnotes and bibliography entries.)

That traditional footnote form is going out of style fast. DO NOT USE IT FOR THIS COURSE!  Instead, see the following:
 
 

A more modern system is sometimes called PARENTHETICAL NOTATION or IN-TEXT NOTATION., or several other names. It comes in two main flavors: "MLA" (Modern Language Association) and "APA." (American Psychological Association). They differ superficially, but both generally adhere to the "attribution sandwich" principle that I described at the beginning.

Use the MLA system for this course--or if you're majoring in a social science, the APA system.

The MLA system works like this.  The text (including the annotation) is the same; only the documentation format is different:

 

According to Stewart Brand, in an article called "Digital Retouching: The End of Photography as Evidence of Anything," the new, undetectable technique of digital retouching of photographs is beginning to raise many ethical and moral problems. He says that digital retouching "is in the thick of how we will think about communication and 'truth' and editorial responsibility. . . ." (Whole Earth Review, No. 47, July 1985, 43)         In the same article, Jay Kelly says, "You can print a lie in 100,000 subscriptions and it looks the same in ink as the truth." He goes on to say that because there is no way to know whether information is true, we can only hope to trust the source. (43) And Stewart Brand mentions later in the article that even the National Geographic is not immune to this digital retouching of photographs. According to Brand, Jay Adkins, Associate Art Director of National Geographic, admitted that once they had moved an entire pyramid to make a picture more attractive for a Geographic cover. (45)         Digital retouching is so easy now that almost anyone can achieve professional results on a home computer. For example, Bennett Daviss pointed out recently in Discover magazine, that a divorcee can erase her ex-husband from the family photos, and then for about $20 a photo lab will turn the digitized pictures back into conventional negatives. ("Picture Perfect," Discover, July 1990, 56)

CAUTION: Many formatting guides recommend using no punctuation in parenthetical notation.  If you're not sure what to do, check with the person you're writing your report for.

Note that the information is sandwiched between the source's name and the page number--the "information sandwich" I described above.  For example:

With this system, there is no need for separate footnotes or endnotes. But a list of "Works Cited" (meaning "Things I Mentioned," a more accurate name than "bibliography") is still essential to index all of the references. For example, beginning on the page following the main text, you'd find:

 

Works Cited Brand, Stewart, Kevin Kelly, and Jay Kinney. "Digital Retouching:         The End of Photography as Evidence of Anything." Whole        Earth Review, No. 47, July 1985 42-50. Daviss, Bennett. "Picture Perfect." Discover, July 1990 56. Familyname, Firstname. Underlined Title of a Book. City: Publishing         Company, 19##. Lastname, Firstname. "Title of an Article." Underlined Title of the        Periodical. Number, Date, Month Year page. Lastname, Givenname. Personal Interview. Date. Surname, Firstname. "Title of a Chapter or Portion of a Book" in        Underlined Title of the Book. City: Publishing Company, 19##. Surname1, Firstname1 and Firstname2 Surname2. Underlined        Title of a Book. City: Publishing Company, 19##.

FORMAT NOTE:

	The entries are in alphabetical order.
	The first line of each entry is "outdented" (also called "hanging indent").
	Each entry is punctuated as three sentences.  (Traditional footnotes are punctuated as one sentence.)

Most of the fast-changing social sciences use the APA style, in which the date of publication is considered more important than it is in the humanities. For that reason, the APA style is sometimes called the "name-date" style because it looks like this:

The list of works cited is usually called "References" and  looks like this:

Note that it is punctuated as if it were four sentences.
 
 

The physical sciences often use a style in which a single reference might have several "footnote" numbers that relate the refence to every work in the References (or Works Cited) list that mentions it. There are no separate footnotes or endnotes in this style, but instead the References entries function as both notes and "bibliography" entries.  They are formatted similarly, but are also numbered.

Please do not employ this format for your project in this course.  But please do become familiar with it so that you won't be surprised in scientific writing.
 

For more information about attribution and documentation online, and many more examples, point your browser to--

MLA: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html

APA: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_apa.html

Numbered References: http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocNumberedReferences.html

(There are many other online guides to formats for documented writing. These are particularly succinct.)
 

NOTE:  In this paper I underlined the titles of books and magazines. This is the traditional way of telling a typesetter to italicize when you can't do the italicizing yourself because you're writing with a pen or a typewriter. Even though most computer printers can italicize nowadays, some teachers and editors still prefer manuscripts with italics indicated by underlining. (Most editors will gladly send you a style guide, and some teachers have style guides, too.)

Italics are fine with me.  I prefer them, partly because in web pages underlining usually indicates a hypertext link.
 

HOW TO INDICATE TITLES:  Just remember--as a rule of thumb--that you quote boats and "list" ships. That is, indicate titles of articles, stories, and other small works with quotation marks. Use italics (which slant--that is, "list" as ships do) to indicate titles of books, magazines, and other works that can contain small works.  So it's like little "lifeboats" on a big ship.
 

WORD PROCESSOR TIP: Because you aren't going to have footnotes or endnotes, don't use the word processor's "Footnote" or "Endnote" feature for this project. You'll only waste time and energy.
 

Attribution & Documentation
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