Citation Formats – format issues

CHE 451 Acknowledgement Formats

Dr. Naomi A. Kleid

North Carolina State University

You acknowledge sources for the information in your reports for two purposes: (1) so readers can go to the sources you use and learn more about the information, and (2) to demonstrate that you know how to give credit and you know the difference between using a direct quotation for information used verbatim and acknowledging a source for ideas and content used as paraphrased material. If you have any questions about the need for acknowledgements or when or why to use them, please consult the handout entitled: Technical Citations: Chemical Engineering.

This Acknowledgement Formats handout describes how and where to present your acknowledgements. It discusses recommended formats, alternatives, and pros and cons. It also provides a variety of samples. If you want more information, we recommend that you consult the style guides for the leading journals in your field or the following sources, which we used in the preparation of this handout:

Anderson, Paul V. (2003). Technical communication: A reader-centered approach (fifth edition). Boston, MA: Thomson Corporation.

Grossman, John. (1993). The Chicago manual of style: The essential guide for writers, editors, and publishers (14th edition). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Section 16.

North Carolina State University. (n.d.). Citation Builder. Retrieved 16 February 2003 from  http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/lobo2/using/cite/

The American Psychological Association. (1995). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (fourth edition). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

In general, when you acknowledge a source, there are two parts to your acknowledgement: the in-text part and the full-reference part. Sometimes writers try to combine these two items; at other times, writers keep them separate. The following discussion presents several ways to handle the in-text part and the reference part of your acknowledgements. In practice, however, your instructors and consultants recommend that you use short numerical references for the in-text part of your acknowledgement and a citations list (List of Works Cited) for the full-reference part. This approach plus others are described below.

The In-Text Part Of Your Acknowledgement

To indicate a source in text, you may give a verbal acknowledgement or a numerical acknowledgment.   We will discuss and give examples of verbal acknowledgements first. Later we will discuss numerical acknowledgements.

Verbal Acknowledgements

Verbal acknowledgements use words to identify the source in the text. Typically they use the author’s last name; but if the author is not known, then they use the first few words in the title. Verbal acknowledgements can make a report more interesting to read, but they may be difficult to use to acknowledge sources for data in tables. For an example of how to handle this difficult challenge well, see Table 2 in the handout entitled: Technical Citations: Chemical Engineering.  Examples 1 through 3, below, show how to use verbal acknowledgements in text.

As a verbal acknowledgement, you might say:

John Smith (2003) describes the purification process as follows:

“<you would present John Smith’s actual words here>.”

 Example 1

 

If you were referencing specific information that appears on a page of John Smith’s work, you would want to give the page number, not just reference the whole book, article, or report.

 

John Smith (2003, 765) specifies the optimum temperature as 450º C. Example 2

 

If you summarized what John Smith said, you would acknowledge him as the source for your ideas:

 

To summarize the purification process described by Smith (2003),

we note that….

 Example 3

 

As mentioned earlier, verbal acknowledgements sometimes don’t work well in tables. For this reason and others, writers often use numerical acknowledgements.

Numerical Acknowledgements

Numerical acknowledgements use superscript numbers either alone (like this1) or enclosed in square brackets (like this[l]). You can use the numbers to direct your reader to full references that appear as footnotes at the bottom of the page or that appear as endnotes at the end of the report in a numerically ordered Reference List. Alternatively, you can use the numbers to point to brief references at the bottom of the page; then the reader must go to a list of Cited Sources at the end of the document to see the full citation. That list of Cited Sources would not be numerically ordered; it would be organized alphabetically by the authors’ last names or, when the author is not known, the first few words of the title.

Let’s look at some in-text examples of numerical acknowledgements. Example 4 shows the use of a numerical reference to a book as a whole.

 

To summarize the purification process described by Smith,1 we note that…. Example 4

 

If you wanted to use a numerical acknowledgement to a specific fact found on a page in Smith’s book, your reference might look like Example 5.

 

We used the optimum temperature of 450º C2 during the…. Example 5

 

When you use numerical acknowledgements, you do not have to give the author’s name in text, as you did in the verbal acknowledgement, you just need to provide a superscript number that serves as a reference pointer. However, you might decide that you want to use the author’s name in the text (and not reference him or her using only a numerical reference), because the author is especially well-known and respected in the field, or because the arguments are unique or characteristic of that specific author’s approach. The choice would be up to you, and it would be based on your rhetorical analysis of your readers’ needs and expectations and the purposes of this part of your report.

As we already said, Examples 4 and 5 could either point to footnotes providing full references that would appear at the bottom of the page or in a list of references (called endnotes) at the end of the report. You create footnotes and endnotes by going to Insert on the Microsoft Word task bar, choosing references, and then choosing either footnote or endnote. Wherever the full reference appears, it would look like Example 6.

 

1Smith, John. 2003. The purification of metals. Alchemy Press, Basingstoke, U.K.

2Smith, John. 2003. The purification of metals. Alchemy Press, Basingstoke, U.K., 765.

 

 Example 6

Alternatively, Examples 4 and 5 could point to shortened references at the bottom of the page that would look like those in Example 7.

 

1Smith, John. 2003.

2Smith, John. 2003. 765.

 

 Example 7

With the shortened references, the full citation to Smith’s work would appear at the end of the report in an alphabetically ordered list called Cited Sources or Works Cited. This is the approach your instructors and consultants recommend.

How And Why To Use The Recommended Format

In Microsoft Word, you should use footnotes to present the limited information at the bottom of the pages. However, as far as I know, Microsoft Word cannot create the alphabetically ordered list of Cited Sources for you. You will need to type the entries in the correct order; but you will only need to type one entry for each source, no matter how many times you refer to that source. If your report uses both versions of the short references in Example 7, both of these references will both appear at the bottom of the page in your report, but your list called Cited Sources will only contain one reference to Smith’s work. It would be the reference without the specific page number. That reference would look like number 1 in Example 6, but it would not have the superscript number associated with that example because it would be listed under Smith in an alphabetical listing.

We recommend that you use shortened references in the text plus a full citation (once) in a list of Works Cited at the back of your report, because this approach combines the positive aspects of other approaches and mitigates their negative impacts. Specifically, if you use many references and you put long numbered references at the bottom of your pages, your pages may become severely truncated. Furthermore, if you include tables in your text, you may find it difficult to keep the references on the same page as the table to which they apply. These formatting problems can become burdensome; and the only good thing about putting long references at the bottom of the page is that they make it easy for readers to see the full information about the sources you are referencing. If you just put numbered endnotes at the back of your report, you can avoid all the page formatting problems, but your readers will have to turn to the section you call References to find any information about your sources.

In the approach we recommend, you have fewer formatting problems, because the references at the bottom of the page are short, yet the reader can see something about the source you are using and the reader can see the relevant page number there. The reader has to go to the list of Works Cited at the end of the report to see the full reference, and you have to type the works in alphabetical order, but you only need to provide one listing for each work cited.

The Full-Reference Part Of Your Acknowledgement

 

The following samples show various types of full citations like those you would include at the end of your report in a list of Works Cited. There is a pattern to these samples; they include the types of information listed below:

  • author name
  • date of publication
    • For books, the year is usually sufficient; for articles, the date may be required.
    • If you cite more than one source for a single author (or a unique series of authors) in a single year, then you will need to differentiate between the sources by using either the month of publication or a letter after the year of publication.
  • title of the work
  • title of the journal or conference proceeding if the work appears in such
  • publisher location
  • publisher
  • page range if the publication is an article in a journal or conference processing

The samples below have been edited to conform to the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines for factors that often differ from style guide to style guide, such as type font choice, ordering, and capitalization of content elements, and punctuation between content elements.  In your reports, it is less important that you exactly replicate this Chicago Manual of Style format than it is that you pay attention to your choices for such details and implement those choices consistently.

References To Personal Communications

Anonymous. (1994) Personal interview with corporate executive who requested that the company remain anonymous.

Bullard, L. E-mail to the author. 31 March 2003.

Millionaire, J. Phone call to the author. 14 February 2003.

U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Letter to the author. 1 April 2003.

References To Online Sources

America On-Line (11 April 2002) AOL Press: Welcome. http://www.aolpress.com/press2.0/usrguide/preface.htm/

DiMario, M.F. (5 June 1997). Prepared statement before the Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations. Committee on Appropriations U.S. Senate on Appropriations Estimates for Fiscal Year 1988. http://www.access.gpo.gov/public-affairs/appfy98.html/

Kiggins, C. (29 January 1999) Companies spending $300,000 on communication skills training. Career Magazine. Retrieved March 2, 1999 from www.careermag.com

References to Printed Articles With A Company Or Organization As Author Or No Author

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (1995). Asymmetric switching for PWM H-bridge power circuit, NASA Tech Briefs 95-06: 13.

Weak writers. The Wall Street Journal (14 June 1985), A1.

References To Books Or Stand-Alone Printed Reports or Publications That Have A Company Or Organization As The Author

Congressional Record. 1930. 71st Congress, 2nd session. Vol. 72, pt. 10.

General Electric Company. (1995). Refrigerator use and care guide. Louisville, KY: General Electric.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (1995). Research and technology report: Goddard space flight center. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Office of Cancer Communications. (1983). Taking time: Support for people with cancer and the people who care about them. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute.

Standard Oil Company. (1983a). Energy adventures. Cleveland, OH: Standard Oil Company.

Standard Oil Company. (1983b). Energy challenges. Cleveland, OH: Standard Oil Company.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1996). Statistical abstract of the United States, 116th Ed.Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 24B.

References To Authored Articles Printed  In Journals

Filho, S. A. (1986). Stable yeast transformants that secrete functional a-Amylase encoded by cloned mouse pancreatic cDNA. Biotechnology, 4, 311-315.

Mobley, K.; Knight, C.; and Meserth, T. (2003). Designing embedded help to encourage inadvertent learning. Technical Communication, 50 (1), 33-45.

Ramey, J. (1997). Fact, context, communication: The value added to data by information design. IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC), IPCC ’97 Conference Record 385-392.

References To Authored Books Or Stand-Alone Reports

Pinelli, T.E.; Glassman, M.; Oliu, W.E.; and Barclay, R.O. (1989). Technical communications in aeronautics: Results of an exploratory study (TM-101626). Washington, D.C: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Schriver, K. (1997). Dynamics of document design: Creating text for readers. New York: Wiley.

Watson, J. D. (1968). The double helix: A personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. New York: Antheneum.