Notes on Citation

Notes On Citation Colin Klein Fall 2006

In any writing, it is important to distinguish between your thoughts and the thoughts of others. This is necessary to avoid the dread sin of plagiarism, of course. It is also an important component of clear writing. You are in an intellectual conversation with your audience. Your audience needs to know at each point whether you are offering a direct quotation from the text (which normally cannot be disputed unless you’ve made a copying mistake), an interpretation of a quotation (which is open to debate), or your own conclusions (which people will happily debate). There are three principles which, if followed, will satisfy the above requirement in nearly all cases: • First, it is paramount that you distinguish between your own thoughts and the thoughts of others. Context will often make this clear, but if it does not you should add either enough context or a citation to make it clear. • Second, direct quotations always require page number citation. • Third, indirect quotations (paraphrases and the like) only need citation if it is unclear where to find the original source. Here’s an example of how this might look in practice: Darwin writes that that in the Galapagos, he was struck by how “. . . entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties” (Darwin 1859, 41) (1). By this, he means that there is no clear line between two entirely different species 1

and two varieties of the same species that have diverged considerably (2). This is probably true: I argue that if people did not know that Chihuahuas and Great Danes were dogs, they might reasonably think that they were different species of animals (3). Elsewhere, Darwin points out that a similar point holds for different varieties of pigeons (Darwin 1859, 21) (4). At 1, I have given a citation because I’ve used a direct quotation from Darwin. At 2, though I’m still talking about Darwin’s ideas, I don’t need to cite: it is clear from context which part of Darwin’s text I’m talking about. 3 was my own idea given in support of Darwin, and I’ve marked the shift with phrases like “I argue that.” Finally, although 4 is not a direct quotation, I have shifted to discussing a different part of the text; I give a citation to allow my reader to find the relevant passages if she so desires. For an assignment like the first short assignment, it should be easy to make it clear that you’re just reconstructing Anselm’s argument, and so by and large you’ll only have to put citations if you’re giving direct quotations or (if you feel like it) talking about Rowe. That is, you’ll mostly be writing sentences like 1 and 2 in the example above. In future assignments, though, I’ll ask you for more of your own ideas, so it’s important to keep the above in mind as you write them.

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