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Guidelines for Papers

Preferences for footnoting and bibliographical style. Good practice in citing sources in history papers calls for footnotes (or endnotes) and bibliographies. Consistency of style is essential, though the department has no required particular style; instructors have the last word in what is appropriate for their courses. On the whole the History Department advises that you follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2010 (on-line at http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?clio6042885). We urge you to develop good habits in citing authorities for history papers along the following general rules:

Footnotes are preferred to in-text citations. In this respect, history differs from most science, social science and some humanities disciplines. Short essays with only a few well-identified sources may simply employ in-text citations, for example: (Smith, 34), but longer essays should use full footnotes and include a bibliography.  

In footnotes, authors’ names are arranged with family name last, followed by given names, e.g. Fredrick Flintstone and Barnaby Rubble, Of Rocks and Dinosaurs.

For example, from a hypothetical research paper about The New York Times and reports from Moscow and Hanoi by the correspondent and writer Harrison Salisbury.

1. Gay Talese, The Kingdom and the Power, 2nd ed. (New York: Ivy Press, 1992): 501.
2. Richard F. Shepard, The Paper’s Papers: A Reporter’s Journey through the Archives of the New York Times (New York: Times Books, 1996): 100.
3. Harrison Salisbury, ‘Without Fear or Favor’: The New York Times and its Times (New York: Times Books, 1996): 13.
4. Salisbury, A Journey for Our Times: A Memoir (New York: Harper & Row, 1983): 323.
5. Shepard, Paper’s Papers, 178.
6. Salisbury, Journey, 15.
7. Mark A. Lawrence, “Mission Intolerable: Harrison Salisbury’s Trip to Hanoi,” Pacific Historical Review 75 (August 2006): 430.
8. Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, The Trust: the Private and Powerful Family behind the New York Times (Boston: Little Brown, 1999): 630.

Bibliographies are arranged alphabetically by authors’ last names: the family name of the first author comes first, and subsequent authors in normal order, e.g. Flintstone, Frederick and Barnaby Rubble, Of Rocks and Dinosaurs.

Bibliography to accompany the preceding notes:

Lawrence, Mark A. “Mission Intolerable: Harrison Salisbury’s Trip to Hanoi.” Pacific Historical Review, 75 (August 2006): 429-458.

Salisbury, Harrison. A Journey for Our Times: A Memoir. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

___. ‘Without Fear or Favor’: The New York Times and its Times. New York: Times Books, 1996.

Shepard, Richard F. The Paper’s Papers: A Reporter’s Journey Through the Archives of the New York Times. New York: Times Books, 1996.

Talese, Gay. The Kingdom and the Power. 2nd ed. New York: Ivy Press, 1992.

Tifft, Susan E. and Alex S. Jones. The Trust: the Private and Powerful Family behind the New York Times. Boston: Little Brown, 1999.

In footnotes containing repeated citations of the same source, current practice prefers the author’s last name and page. If you cite multiple works by the same author, use a shortened version of the title, such as Talese, Kingdom, followed by a page number, as shown above.  The older forms of citation, ibid. and loc. cit. are no longer used.

Footnotes to websites

Give author, title, URL address, <date posted> and (date accessed). For example: Harry Hopkins, Work Relief Administration Press Conference, 11 June 1934, New Deal Network, http://newdeal.feri.org/workrelief/hop06.htm, <posted 7/14/02> (accessed 8/23/05).

Developing Your Own Voice

As teachers of history, we want students to develop their own ideas and the ability to express them. A distinctive voice is one of the most important things a college education can give you. Studying history is an excellent way to develop your voice. Contrary to popular belief, history is not just a series of dates and facts without argument or analytical framework. History involves reflection about past events, their people involved, their causes, and their significance. No history professor wants a student simply to repeat what he or she has been read or told. We want to see students creatively considering the issue at hand and reframing it. Originality draws upon ideas and information from other sources but requires that you put them together in a novel, distinctive and coherent way.

Proper citation allows you to separate what you know and think from what others have said, so that readers can appreciate the power of your ideas. It reveals where you got your information and enables your readers to trust you as a reliable writer. All scholarship depends on that trust. Without it, without good citations that can be traced to the sources you have used, your work is something else: fiction, propaganda, lies, deception, or fantasy. For your citations to be effective, you have to know when to use them. You don’t have to use them for widely known facts (example: “George Washington was the first president of the United States.”). You must cite when you put lesser-known information into your paper (the population of the U.S. in 1800, say), or use someone else’s words, ideas, or analytical framework. The citation lets you show the reader that you have done your research and marks those findings of from your own thoughts and interpretations of that research. It also lets readers verify and follow up on your claims. Without citations, your voice gets lost.