Guidelines Regarding Quotations and Documentation

This page last revised on September 11, 2002

1. Avoid padding: including material that does nothing to achieve the proper purpose of the paper.

2. Use careful paraphrase rather than quoting where feasible.

3. All quoted material should be accurately quoted.

4. Indirect attributions (which you may carefully paraphrase), e.g.,

J. S. Mill holds that X is Y.¹

and direct quotations, e.g.,

J. S. Mill says, "X is Y."¹

should be correctly documented using footnotes, endnotes, or embedded author-date (-page) citations, and a bibliography page if required.

5. If you wish you may use author-date reference style instead of notes, according to this pattern:

([author][year if needed to distinguish], [page number])

for example:

J. S. Mill holds that X is Y (Mill, 215).

or

J. S. Mill says, "X is Y" (Mill 2002, 215).

Then include a bibliography at the end with corresponding bibliographical entries, for example:

Mill, John Stuart, 2002. "On Liberty." In Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy. Eds. T. A. Mappes and J. S. Zembaty. New York: McGraw-Hill.