Everyone at a university needs to pay attention to the issue of proper documentation. All of us--faculty and students together--draw from a vast pool of texts, ideas, and findings that humans have accumulated over thousands of years; we could not think to any productive end without it.
In MSOE’s MSEM program, we follow the Documentation and Style Guide for documenting research sources. A number of different style guides exist. You may have become familiar with a different style of documentation during your undergraduate studies. The underlying principle of a style guide is to impose a certain discipline on the reporting of source information. It just means that information used in documenting your sources should be presented in a certain order, using a specified format.
MSOE’s Documentation and Style Guide is patterned after The Chicago Manual of Style , which is widely used in business. The only difference between our style guide and Chicago is the placement of the publication date. In Chicago, it appears near the end of a citation. In our style guide, the date is the second element in the citation. Since Chicago is available at virtually any library, if you have a question about how to document a source that is covered in the Documentation and Style Guide , you can simply check with a local library.
Principles of Documentation
Reasons for documentation
We document sources for two reasons. First, it provides the reader with information on how to obtain additional information. You will find this feature useful as you conduct your research. Second, it recognizes or gives credit to the originator of the ideas, words, or facts. If you don't do this, you are committing plagiarism.
What to document
A source must be documented if you:
- quote it verbatim
- summarize a passage in your own words without quoting it
- borrow wording as well as ideas from a passage (paraphrasing),
- cite somebody's opinion
- paraphrase an argument or opinion that is not generally known
- cite information or statistics that are not generally known
- allude to statements not generally known (usually, very familiar quotations--Milton, Shakespeare, or Lincoln, for example--need not be documented. But recent quotations from press conferences must be documented, at least until they become familiar as well).
The Special Case of General, or Common, Knowledge
One of the more perplexing aspects of footnoting or documenting your sources is how much documentation is needed. Do you need to document every sentence? Or, should you only document direct quotes? Unfortunately, no hard-and-fast rule applies, with the exception that you always must document direct quotes.
The confusion arises when you encounter the situation of common knowledge . Within any given field, a certain amount of the information that you encounter in your research will be common knowledge in that field. Common knowledge does not need to be documented.
How does one define common knowledge? Well, in a research report for this class, only three types of statements should be used: facts, opinions, and assumptions. You are not expected to document basic assumptions, except in those instances wherein specific reference is made to the particular research upon which an assumption has been based.
Facts and opinions do require documentation. Some facts are widely known, easily verified. No one will challenge that Herbert Hoover was President of the United States , or that the Detroit Tigers belong to the American League in professional baseball. Information like that can be confirmed easily in several readily available sources, or is common knowledge. It needs no documentation.
Other facts are commonly known within a discipline. Facts that appear throughout the literature for a discipline ordinarily require no documentation. As long as one or more items in the Bibliography contain the information, you have authority to which you can refer should questions arise.
Still, other facts do require documentation. These facts are:
- Not well known, even within a discipline;
- Contradictory to other facts or suppositions;
- Obscure, or difficult, for the reader to verify;
- Specific pieces of information that bear directly upon important points;
- Brought in from other disciplines;
- In some way open to question, because readers are not as well informed about the problem as the researcher.
Opinions carry little weight when measured against facts. Nevertheless, in some instances no evidence can be found except for expert opinion. Whenever expert opinion is presented, it should be clearly identified (e.g., “White believed …,” or, “In White’s opinion …”) and given proper documentation.
A good practice to follow is, if you are in doubt, document.
How to document
The Documentation and Style Guide contains a great number of examples of how to document specific sources that you may encounter in your research. However, as noted earlier, a style guide imposes a certain discipline on the how information is presented in footnotes and the bibliography. Understanding the underlying discipline will enable you to create your own citations in the event you encounter a situation not covered in the Documentation and Style Guide . The following descriptions are adapted from The Chicago Manual of Style .
The basics of documenting a book
The following information should be included, where applicable, in both the initial footnote for a source and the bibliographic entry. The order in which this information is listed is the order in which it should appear. Variations in content and order may be necessary for certain types of books, which are covered in the Documentation and Style Guide . The information used should be obtained from the title and copyright pages of the book:
Author: full name of the author or authors; full name of the editor or editors if no single author(s) listed (editor’s name may be given after title); or name of institution responsible for the writing of the book. (In the event that no author or editor or institution is listed as the author of the work, then the title of the work is the first element in the footnote and bibliography.)
Date of publication: this should be the most recent copyright date
Title: full title of the book, including any subtitles. Book titles appear in italic.
Editor, compiler, or translator, if any, and if in addition to listed author (may be located in author’s position if no author listed)
Edition, if appropriate
Volumes: total number if multivolume work is referred to as a whole
Volume number of a multivolume work, if single volume cited
Title of individual volume, if applicable
Series title, if applicable
Facts of publication: city and publisher. When multiple cities are listed on the title page, use the first city listed. For well-recognized cities, such as Chicago and New York , the state is not required. However, for cities not as well-known or where several cities may have the same name, such as Greenville , South Carolina , the state should be included.
Page number(s): in the footnote, you must provide the specific page or pages on which the material cited can be found.
Following are samples of a footnote and bibliographic entry for a book:
1 Curtis E. Tate, Jr. , Leon C. Megginson, Charles R. Scott, Jr., and Lyle R. Trueblood. 1975. Successful Small Business . ( Dallas , TX : Business Publications, Inc.), p. 127.
Tate, Curtis E., Jr., Leon C. Megginson, Charles R. Scott, Jr., and Lyle R. Trueblood. 1975. Successful Small Business . Dallas , TX : Business Publications, Inc.
The basics of documenting an article
The order of the elements for an article are similar to that of a book:
Author or Authors: This is similar to the information for a book. Again, in the event no author is listed, the title of the article appears first.
Date
Title: The title uses regular title capitalization and is enclosed in quote marks.
Issue information: this could include volume and issue number
Page reference: for the footnote, this should include the page or pages on which the information is contained. For the bibliographic entry, this should include the range of pages of the article.
Following are sample footnote and bibliography entries:
1 Gary Blau, December 1994, "Developing and Testing a Taxonomy of Lateness Behavior," Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 79 (6), p.963.
Blau, Gary. December 1994. "Developing and Testing a Taxonomy of Lateness Behavior." Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 79 (6), pp. 959-970.
The following is an example of no author being listed:
1 "Database Marketing Demystified," June 1993, Target Marketing , p. 13.
"Database Marketing Demystified." June 1993. Target Marketing , p. 13-16+
Note: In addition to following The Chicago Manual of Style for documentation, you should follow it for writing style. More information on that can be found at: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/cmosfaq.html
Documentation Style Considerations
The Documentation and Style Guide should serve as your source for documentation style. Following is a general discussion of the major areas of documentation style.
Footnote placement and format
Footnotes are placed at the end of a sentence or paragraph and follow the punctuation. For a more detailed description of the placement of footnotes for special instances, see the “Mechanics of footnoting and footnotes” in the Style Guide.
Footnotes are numbered consecutively throughout the entire report. You do not restart footnote numbering for each page. Nor do you repeat footnote numbers. Each footnote should be treated as being unique.
For best results, use the automatic footnoting feature in Word and other word processing programs. All you need to do is to place your cursor where you want the footnote to appear, click on Insert in the toolbar, and click on Footnote (Reference/Footnote in Word 2002). Make sure you choose footnotes, rather than end notes for placement.
The first line of the footnote should be indented. The recommended indentation is 0.25” rather than the default 0.5” in Word.
The first time you cite a source, you should provide complete information in the footnote. The next time you cite the same source, you can use a shortened version of the footnote as described in the “For subsequent references to the same source” section of the Style Guide.
You need to distinguish between sources obtained physically and virtually in your footnote and bibliography. For sources that you obtain online or through an online database, you should retain a copy of the source and indicate in the footnote: A copy of this article is in the student's possession and may be consulted by contacting the student at smithj@msoe.edu.
A footnote should contain the specific page or pages on which the material being cited can be found. The only exception of this is when you have an online source. Since you cannot know on which page in the original work the information can be found, for subsequent references, you do not need to include a page number. However, in the complete citation, you should include the page numbers contained in the original citation.
Format and style for quotes
Direct Quotes
A direct quote is when you use someone else’s words verbatim. It should be enclosed in quote marks with the footnote following the quote mark. If you copy-and-paste from an article or online site and just place a footnote without the quote marks, you are committing plagiarism.
In addition to source documentation, direct quotes require source attribution. That is, a direct quote must be attached to someone or something. This is typically expressed as an introductory phrase, such as “According to Smith,” or “Jones stated:”
When you attribute material to an author or some other authoritative voice in your text for the first time, you should provide the person’s full name and their credentials, e.g., at least their functional title and organizational affiliation. For example:
According to Gary Armstrong, Crist W. Blackwell Distinguished Professor of Undergraduate Education in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , and Philip Kotler, S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University , today marketing is about “creating customer value and satisfaction.” 1
After this full identification of the author or authors, you can use their last name or names in subsequent references to them within your text. For example:
Armstrong and Kotler maintain that too few organizations approach marketing from a customer value viewpoint. 2
When you have a quote that is five or more lines, you should treat it as a lengthy direct quote, which requires a different type of formatting. With a lengthy direct quote, you single-space the direct quotation and indent it from both margins. With this format, you do not use quotation marks. For example:
According to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com:
We want to deliver a special experience to every customer. The customer experience really matters. We’re focused on just having a better store, where it’s easier to shop, where you can learn more about the products, where you have a bigger selection, and where you have the lowest prices. You combine all of that stuff together and people say, “Hey, these guys really get it.” 1
If the above example were less than five lines, you would have the situation of a quote within a quote. In this instance, you use single quote marks for the quote. For example:
Bezos said, “You combine all that stuff together and people say, ‘Hey, these guys really get it.’” 1
Note that quote marks always follow the punctuation, even when you are placing a special term in quotes. For example: If the above example were less than five lines, you would have the situation of a “quote within a quote.”
Indirect Quotes
When you paraphrase or summarize research material, it is considered an indirect quote and you need to document that.
At times, you may have an entire paragraph that you have summarized or paraphrased this is from the same source. In this instance, you only would need to footnote the paragraph. However, if, within the paragraph, you have added your own observations, then you need to footnote those sentences that are not your own observations.
In some style guides, they recommend that you document each sentence in an indirect quote. However, in the MSOE Documentation and Style Guide, this is not required if all the information in the paragraph is from the same source.
In the event that it requires more than one paragraph to summarize an article or other source, you have two options. One is to document each paragraph. The other is to begin the summarization with attribution and then footnote the last paragraph.
Article and book titles
Titles of articles, whether in the footnote, bibliography, or text, should be enclosed in quotes and you should use title case. That is, all words in the title should have an initial capital letter with the exception of prepositions, articles (a, an the), and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor) unless they are the first or last word of the title. For books, the title is in italic and uses title case.
Names of books and periodicals appear in italic in the footnote, bibliography, and text.
Constructing the Bibliography
The bibliography provides a record of your research. It not only includes those sources that you use in your text, but also any sources that you consulted that relate to the subject, even though you did not use material from them in your text. As a record of your research, the bibliography provides readers with relevant research on the topic.
You should review the “Preparing the Bibliography” section of the Style Guide .
Avoiding Plagiarism
First, faculty in the MSEM program believes that students are ethical and would not deliberately misrepresent someone else’s work as their own. So, how then does plagiarism occur?
The two main reasons are poor notetaking and negligence. When taking notes, or copying material from an online source, you need to insure that you are preserving the integrity of your source. It is disheartening to have to go back and try to locate a source that you would like to use in a report.
The easy access to full-text articles online has led to an increase in negligent plagiarism. This is caused by either not knowing when documentation is needed or forgetting that the paragraph you pasted into your report came directly from one of your sources. Being diligent in keeping track of your source material and being familiar with documentation can avoid this situation.
The more common types of negligent plagiarism include:
Copy-and-Paste with documentation – this is the most common form of plagiarism. The student simply copies from an online article and pastes that into the report. The student then documents the source, but fails to indicate that this is a direct quote.
Copy-and-Paste without documentation – this is the same situation as described above, however the student does not document the source.
Using another’s organization – in this instance, the student decides to follow the organization from an article or book. In other words, the approach to the topic, the arrangement of ideas, and the scope of the content are someone else’s.
Using another’s significant intellectual property elements – significant ideas, methods, and conclusions belonging to someone else, but used by a student without attribution, constitutes plagiarism. The intellectual property may be taken from either web or print resources.
Using a report for another class – submitting a report that was prepared for another course can also be considered plagiarism, if the student has not obtained permission from the instructor. The student, in effect, is misrepresenting that the report was prepared for the current class. Also, using material from another report without documenting it, even if it was your report.
For more discussion about plagiarism and how to avoid it go to: Purdue Online Writing Lab on Plagiarism
Frequently Asked Questions
Why must I have source attribution with direct quotes when I am already documenting my source? Shouldn’t that be enough?
Direct quotes do not magically appear in a report. They need to be attached to someone or something. You don’t need to always attribute a quote to an author. For example, if the author happens to be a staff writer for a magazine, you may want to use the magazine for attribution and not the author.
Why do I need to provide credentials for an author? Isn’t it enough that the article was published in a prestigious academic journal, such as Harvard Business Review?
The author’s credentials are presented as a further way for the reader to judge the credibility of the source. For example, a corporate executive writing about his or her company’s practices may be less objective than a professor of management at a major university.
My whole paragraph is from the same source and the same page, why do I have to document the direct quotes in the paragraph separately?
Direct quotes must always be footnoted, even in this instance.
Why can’t I just repeat a footnote’s number, especially for online databases?
As mentioned earlier, the MSOE Documentation and Style Guide is based on The Chicago Manual of Style . To be consistent, we follow the Chicago style of consecutively numbering footnotes.