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Help With Research Citation

Started by Silent, December 05, 2011, 05:30:24 PM

Silent

I've been working on a research paper for a college course and I'm hoping someone here can help me with a problem.  Generally I would ask these things in class but the paper is due later this week and that is the last day of the semester.

The issue I have is with citations.  This might sound weird...I need to cite the Unabomber Manifesto but I'm not sure how I go about doing that.  Is this considered well known enough that citation is not required?  What I'm using is a few quotations from it and my guess is a citation is needed.

Assuming it is needed, how do I cite that?  It was published originally in the Post and Times in 1995 but I accessed it from a website.  http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt  Should I just attribute it to Kaczynski in 1995, or include one of the newspapers and or website?

If it matters for a response, I'm required to use APA format.  Surely with all the brain power floating around Coastgab someone knows the answer.  Thanks in advance for any help on this.

Avi

Since I suspect you will have to write other papers requiring citations in your college career, you would do well to invest in a software template that will format your references. I use Reference Point:

http://www.referencepointsoftware.com/

There are others, and many times, your university bookstore will have heavily discounted template packages.

Anyway, if you draw from a particular source, online or not, you must cite that source. Here is Purdue University's guidelines for these citations, and MLA style in general. Hope this helps.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/

Silent

Thanks for the links.  That software looks handy but actually I'm not anticipating a whole lot of research papers in the future.  If that turns out differently then I might give it a try.

As far as citing the website; I think i'll need to find a different one with his essay.  Surprisingly (or maybe not?) I'm not having much luck finding any reputable sites which give the whole text.  At least I know what I need now.  Thanks for the tips Avi.


Frys Girl

You can do it a number of ways.


here are the bibliographic ways:


1. Single Author: Begin with the entry with the author's last name, followed by a comma and the author's initials. Then dive the date in parenthesis.


Perez, E. (2006).


2. Article in a Newspaper: Begin with the name of the author, followed by the exact date of publication. Page numbers are introduced with "p." (or "pp.").


Lohr, S. (2004, December 3). Health care technology is a promise unfinanced. The New York Times, p. C5.


3. Blog Post: Give the writer's name, the date of the post, and the title or subject of the post. Follow with the words "Message posted to" and the URL.


Kellermann, M. (2007, May 23). Disclosing clinical trials. Message posted to http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/archives/2007/05


4. Document from a web site: List as many of the following elements as are available: author's name, publication date, title (in italics), and URL. Give your date of access only if the source itself has no date or if its content is likely to change.


Cain, A., & Burris, M. (1999, April). Investigation of the use of mobile phones while driving. Retrieved from http://www.cutr.eng.usf.edu/its/mobile_phone_text.htm


With APA, you do Author(Year) to do in-text citation. For electronic sources, my book says "use the paragraph number preceded by the paragraph symbol or by the abbreviation "para.": (Hall, 2001, para. 5). If neither a page nor a paragraph number is given and the document contains headings, cite the appropriate heading and indicate which paragraph under that heading you are referring to.


Good luck!

Frys Girl

Here is an example APA in-text citation, BTW.


Yanovsku and Smith (2002) reported that "the current state of treatment for obesity is similar to the state of treatment for hypertension several decades ago" (p.600).


If your teacher wants footnotes, however, it's a different scheme, just a variation on the basics.

Silent

I'm getting closer.  The Washington Post actually has the entire essay on their site.  It just took some more refined google searches to find it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm

Reading APA rules at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/ assumes that there's at least a publication year, which that link does not provide.  It does mention the essay being published in 1995 but if what Avi said is right then that doesn't matter since I need to cite the link posted above, not the original newspaper.  This creates a problem with in text citations (which I need to have) since a publication year is not present.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/ discusses in text citations always with the assumption of a year being present.

Footnotes are not required so no worries there.  Just in text and the full reference on a seprate page.

The links have helped me get a citation together for the reference page but that in text is stumping me.  It's not even an article outside the Manifesto itself.  There is just a editor's note preceeding it and then 35,000 words from Ted.

If your reference is needed for quotation or discussion of one published part of the manifesto, use the Washington Post or 1995 citation.  If you are referring to the manifesto as a body of writing, without quoted passages or detailed discussion of content, simply cite the manifesto itself with T Kaz as the author.  It is published as a book: ISBN 978-1595948151.

Great timing, as I'm just about to start grading 60 APA style research papers this week. :)

Silent

Quote from: Flaxen Hegemony on December 05, 2011, 07:31:31 PM
If your reference is needed for quotation or discussion of one published part of the manifesto, use the Washington Post or 1995 citation.  If you are referring to the manifesto as a body of writing, without quoted passages or detailed discussion of content, simply cite the manifesto itself with T Kaz as the author.  It is published as a book: ISBN 978-1595948151.

Great timing, as I'm just about to start grading 60 APA style research papers this week. :)

That sounds logical to me but I see two problems.  In text citation seems to require a year so something like (Washington Post) is wrong.  The year 1995 refers to the primary source, not the source I'm using.  Logic then leads me to believe that these two problems mean my source is just bad and shouldn't be used except this is as near the primary source as possible.  I'll just use (1995) most likely.  I didn't see this becoming so complicated.

The quote isn't vital to the paper by any means and fudging the citiation likely would never be noticed.  But citations are a thing of exactness which I wanted to get right.

I chuckled to myself when my first solution was to ask Coastgab but this is why I did.  Thanks to all for the rapid and helpful information.

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