Question on Formal Footnotes.... (tradition, Almighty, science)

[UltraViolet]

When I went to school (more years back than I'd like to admit)
there were still many of us without computers and such,
and now that my daughter is older (we home educate)
I don't know what to tell her about sourcing information she gets from the net.
Or for that matter, anything multimedia.
A DVD from the library? A Video lecture series?
The almighty Wicki?

What are the formal source and footnote rules these days,
when writing a serious research paper?

What's allowed, and how is it handled?
Certainly research is considered VALID even if it doesn't have a page number I hope?!

Thanks so much for your help.

~Vi~

[MysticSang'ha]

Ooooooh, good question, Vi.

[doppelgänger]

MLA Citation Style Guide

Pan down and you'll find the proper citation forms for websites, e-books, movies, television shows and other new media.

[+Xausted]

Originally Posted by UltraViolet

The almighty Wicki?


~Vi~

Don't ever use wiki in a serious paper. It is seen as a crime by academics (well over here anyway). And her course should have set rules for citations etc.

[Aqualung]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

MLA Citation Style Guide

Pan down and you'll find the proper citation forms for websites, e-books, movies, television shows and other new media.

The MLA style doesn't allow footnotes. Look at The Chicago Manual of Style.

Usually if you're writing a scholarly paper on language or literature, it's most acceptable to use MLA. For the social sciences, use APA. I don't know if any other groups have such strict recommendations, though. I like to use the Chicago style the best because it's one of the few styles that allows footnotes intead of in-text citations (which are just ugly and ruin the flow of the paper).

[Aqualung]

Originally Posted by +Xausted

Don't ever use wiki in a serious paper. It is seen as a crime by academics (well over here anyway). And her course should have set rules for citations etc.

What you do is find the wikipedia page, and then look at the bottom for their sources, and use those ones instead.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Aqualung

The MLA style doesn't allow footnotes. Look at The Chicago Manual of Style.

True. But MLA has an easy to remember, intuitive system for citations for a wide variety of non-traditional sources. So I like to use the MLA forms and just put them in footnotes. And if someone doesn't like MLA forms in footnotes . . . they can kiss my lily-white arse.

Bottom line, your citations should contain enough information that a person looking to verify your source will have minimal trouble finding out what specifically you were looking at when you wrote. Achieving that purpose is more important than the anal-retentive details of the form. Having said that, if you are publishing, editors tend to be highly anal-retentive about citation form.

[Aqualung]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

Bottom line, your citations should contain enough information that a person looking to verify your source will have minimal trouble finding out what specifically you were looking at when you wrote. Achieving that purpose is more important than the anal-retentive details of the form. Having said that, if you are publishing, editors tend to be highly anal-retentive about citation form.

Agreed. I hated it when part of my grade on a paper would making sure I had exactly the right punctuation in a citation.