Citation Styles

For my courses, you may use any generally accepted format for citing works in your research papers and essays. These include the MLA and Chicago styles for footnotes and endnotes, as well as the in-text citation style used in social science literature. The important thing, though, is that you cite items in a consistent style, using a system that gives all relevant information about the source (including author, title, publication information, page numbers).

Below are a few examples for the citation of books articles and other printed matter. Please use this system if you are not already using another.

Journal articles

1. Pat Simpson, “How the West Was Won,” Journal of Rocky Mountain Studies, Vol. 35, No. 6, 1987, pp. 342-360.

Single-author books

2. Pat Simpson, How I Won The West (New York: Western Publishing House, 1989).

Edited books (single editor)

3. Pat Simpson, ed., The West and the Rest (Chicago: Midwest Publishers, 1992).

Edited books (multiple editors)

4. Pat Simpson and Mary Billings, eds., Who Won the West? (Ridgeville, Ken.: Home Town Books, 1991), p. 35. Use state abbreviation with unfamiliar cities.

Chapters in edited books

5. Pat Simpson, “West of Eden,” in Mary Billings, ed., Essays in Honor of George Custer (Chicago: Midwest Publishers, 1987), p. 45.

Newspaper articles

6. Pat Simpson, “What West?” Chicago Sentinel, January 6, 1973, p. A3.

Repeated citations

Do not use “ibid.” or “op. cit.” For repeated citations, use the author’s last name and a shortened version of the title:

7. Simpson, “How the West,” p. 344.

8. Simpson and Billings, Who Won, p. 35.

Use “idem” (for a repeated author’s name in a single note) and “et al.” (to abbreviate the note for a work with more than three authors) when necessary:

9. For an overview of this issue, see Pat Simpson, How We Lost the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); idem, Who Cares About the West? (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996); and John Sweeney et al., Why We Care About the West (London: Transaction Publishers, 1994).

Internet

For Internet citations, please give all relevant information (author and title, for example, if citing an article from the net), as well as the URL and the date accessed.

10. Richard South, “My Western Life,” article from electronic journal Directions, www.sallis.com, January 14, 1996.

Unpublished sources, document collections, archives

Scholars use a variety of styles for citing primary sources such as unpublished papers or archival documents. The style should, however, include all the information necessary for someone else to locate the document.

11. Jonathan Yardley, “Who is Western, Who is Eastern?” paper delivered at conference on East and West in a Global Context, University of Mississippi, June 23, 1996, p. 4.

12. Letter from Tom Jennings to Lt. Col. William Smith, April 15, 1867, Archive of the Society for Western Analysis, Omaha, Nebraska (hereafter ASWA), Box 653A, File 79, p. 4.