A. K. M. Adam
23 Seabury Hall
Office 328-9300 ext 39
Documenting your use of Sources
Most of what I've told you before is simple advice: "Students who do this usually get lower grades from Prof. Adam." The following is--contrariwise--not just good advice; it is an universal academic convention, it is an unwavering rule of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, and it is a United States law.When should you document your use of sources? If you are in doubt, then you probably ought to document the source. The rules go this way: all direct quotations must be documented, and paraphrases or specific allusions to a source must likewise be documented. Any information which is not common knowledge (in other words, something you learned from a particular source in the course of your research) should probably be documented as well. It is always wiser to be well-documented and safe, than insufficiently-documented and liable to academic (and in some cases, judicial) punishment.
I still use footnotes whenever I have the option; many writers in the humanities prefer this familiar form. Some professors encourage using MLA or APA in-text citations. In any case, you should cite sources in a way that will enable an interested reader to find the information to which your citation refers. If you read a whole book, found some good general ideas in it, and identify those general ideas in a book, then cite the book itself. If you one general idea in one chapter of a book, cite the chapter in the book. If you are referring to any specific item or idea, tell the reader precisely what page to look at.
*One reminder: a definition in a scholarly reference source, a commentary in a scholarly commentary series, almost any academic reference source has an author. Don't settle just for an editor's name when you cite the work of one of the authors. (I say this as someone who has written a definition in an edited reference source.)
How do I do it right?
Basic footnote style
Book:
1 A. K. M. Adam, What Is Postmodern Biblical Criticism? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 36.
Article:
2 A. K. M. Adam, "The Sign of Jonah: A Fish-Eye View," Semeia 51 (1990) 177-191.
Article in edited book:
3 A. K. M. Adam, "Twisting to Destruction," in Perspectives on New Testament Ethics: Essays in Honor of Dan Otto Via, Jr., ed. Perry Kea and A. K. M. Adam (Nashville: National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 1995) 79-104.
Translated work:
4 Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
5 Jean-François Lyotard, "On the Strength of the Weak," trans. A. K. M. Adam, Critical Theology 1 (1991) 27-35.
Article in Dictionary:
6 Eduard Lohse, "penthkosth&," TDNT 6,44-53.
7 Christopher M. Tuckett, "Synoptic Problem," ABD 6, 263-270.
(For most purposes you can use just ABD or TDNT; these well-known reference works are cited by their standard abbreviations. Notice, however, that these citations name the authors of the articles, not the editors of the reference works.)
Book in series:
8 Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James (Black's New Testament Commentary 16; Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1980).
Footnotes usually require a bibliography at the end of the paper; in a bibliography, the works are listed by the author's last name, in alphabetical order. The eight sources listed above would look like this:
Adam, A. K. M. "The Sign of Jonah: A Fish-Eye View." Semeia 51 (1990): 177-191.
______. "Twisting to Destruction." In Perspectives on New Testament Ethics: Essays in Honor of Dan Otto Via, Jr., ed. Perry Kea and A. K. M. Adam, 79-104. Nashville: National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 1995.
______. What Is Postmodern Biblical Criticism? Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Laws, Sophie. The Epistle of James. Black's New Testament Commentary 16. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1980.
Lohse, Eduard. "penthkosth&." In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich, trans. and ed. Geoffrey Bromiley, 6:44-53. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968.
Lyotard, Jean-François. "On the Strength of the Weak." Trans. A. K. M. Adam. Critical Theology 1 (1991): 27-35.
Tuckett, C. M. "Synoptic Problem." ABD 6: 263-270.
Several notes relative to this sample bibliography. First, it's difficult to make the first line of text hang over subsequent lines on a web document--so I haven't tried. On the other hand, it's easy to make a first-line overhang with a word processor, and this is the most appropriate way of formatting a bibliography.Second, notice that the abbreviated reference works from the footnotes have been written out here. They get a little extra honor in the bibliography.
Finally, when you encounter a series of works attributed to exactly the same author, use a row of six underlines ( ______ ) followed by a period for the author after the first work cited. Arrange the works of that author either in alphabetical order by the title of the work, or in chronological order (in this example, they're in chronological order). If the author collaborated with another author for a work in your bibliography, write the name out again (with the collaborator) in a separate heading.
Basic in-text reference style
When Spivak concludes, "The dissimulation of political economy is in and by ideology" (In Other Worlds 67), she sums up many others' feelings. One cannot say the same for Davis' claim that Stanley Fish is an egocentric clown (34).
When Spivak (1988) concludes, "The dissimulation of political economy is in and by ideology" (p. 67), she sums up many others' feelings. One cannot say the same for Davis' claim that Stanley Fish is an egocentric clown (p. 34).Note one particular feature of these examples. The sequence of punctuation at the end of a clause is quotation-mark‹parentheses‹comma (or "period"). For you visual learners, that looks like "xxxxxxx xxxx xxx" (1776). When you're using quotations within the body of your paper, the parenthetical reference constitutes part of the sentence in which the quotation appears. The parentheses do not just drift off, unattached, as though they bore no intrinsic relation to the any specific sentence.
DOCUMENTATION:
Inadequate documentation of sources constitutes plagiarism, and is ground for failure.
A K M Adam
E-Mail: akm-adam@nwu.edu