citing 2nd hand quotes & Personal communications

Reference Citing Questions | Jerry Talandis Jr. | March 20th, 2002

Hello all,

I'm in the midst of writing up my first assignment (for MET), and I have some questions about how to write up references:

How do you cite a reference for a quote you take from an article written by another author? For example, in Hancock 1997 I want to use a quote he used by Porter 1986. Do I just write "Porter 1986" in my text and then copy Hancock's reference? Is that ok, even though I have never actually read Porter 1986? Or is there some other way to do it?

Next question: how do you cite a reference to your own class notes? In the text, I'm just saying "the following excerpt was taken from my class notes" and then writing the date. In the reference section of the assignment, must I put something there as well?

Thanks,

Jerry Talandis

Re: cites Porter (1993) | Dominic Marini | March 20th, 2002

Jerry,

Here's what I do when I haven't read the original work:

...Hancock (1997, p xx) cites Porter (1993)...

I always include the page number, even though it is not standard, for precision. This way a reader can refer back to the Hancock to see in what in context s/he used Porter's words.

Dominic Marini

Re: citing & referencing | Barry Walford | March 21st, 2002

Hi Jerry,

Dominic has the point on in-text citation, that you cite both your direct source and the original source in your assignment. This makes clear where the idea originates.

However, in your References list you would only cite your own direct source. Anyone wishing to locate the original source would backtrack from your reference details to the source you directly used and check that source's references list (if one is provided) for the original citation.

As for citing your class notes, the usual procedure, I believe, would be to refer to them in your assignment but not in your References list because the information is not recoverable by your reader. If you wanted to provide personal documentary evidence to support the assignment, you could provide samples as Appendices and refer your marker to them in the text.

Much the same goes for other kinds of directly acquired information, broadly described as Personal Communications. These would include insights you might have gained from private letters, e-mail messages, telephone conversations, personal interviews and so forth. Unless the source is particularly well known, you would provide more detailed information than you normally would in-text, to provide any necessary credentials (because there would be no Reference list entry): full name, position, organization, medium of communication and date.

The following URL for APA's FAQs covers these specific issues (Phew, what a lot of acronyms!). Go to the last three items on this page.

All the best

Barry Walford

Re: citing & referencing | Tom Bloor | March 25th, 2002

A lot of sensible suggestions have been forwarded in response to Jerry's original query. I haven't checked out the recommended web address so this might be redundant or conflicting, but here it is. I have always thought that the best way to treat referencing in assignments is to follow the usual practices of academic journals, which in my experience means:

For secondary references: as Barry said 'cite both your direct source and the original source in your assignment'. But (unlike Barry) in the References section, list both sources in full independently and alphabetically in their own right. The reasoning for this is that a Reference/bibliography section is not intended as a claim that you have read the items in question but only that they have been mentioned (even if only in passing) in your paper. It is a reader-friendly thing, and it is not very friendly to expect the reader to obtain a copy of the primary source and then look up the secondary one, when you have the information to hand all the time.

Re lesson notes:

I'm not sure that there is a standard procedure here because lesson notes don't usually figure in published articles. I would treat citations of course modules in the same way as publications: e.g. (Richards 2002) in the text and full details in the References section. The usual procedure for dealing with unpublished comments (e.g. spoken, emailed) is to refer in the body of the article to the source undated and add 'personal communication'; eg (Keith Richards: personal communication); there is usually no entry for this in the References list. Comments made in a seminar could be treated in the same way. Conference papers that were not published are usually given the same treatments as publications but listed in the References section as, say: Name, date, title and 'paper given at the BAAL Annual Conference, University of Cambridge'. Something similar might be done with a formal lecture.

Citations of other people's assignments, dissertations, unpublished PhD theses should be treated as for publications but add the parenthesised word (unpublished) to the details in the final list: eg McCabe, Anne M (1999) Theme and Thematic Patterns in Spanish and English History Texts, Birmingham: Aston University (unpublished PhD thesis). Book titles and thesis titles are normally in italics and article and chapter titles in quotes.

There is some variation in publishing practice, but the above is fairly typical of applied linguistics/TESOL journals.

Tom Bloor

Thanks for your help! | Jerry Talandis Jr. | March 27th, 2002

Dear Mr. Bloor,

Thanks so much for your advice on citing references. Your help and the help of others on this email list have really been a great support. I'm very grateful!

Jerry Talandis

Re: citing & referencing | Tom Bloor | March 28th, 2002

Dear Nina,

You are quite right to include in your table of References exclusively items that you cite in the body of your dissertation. In the case of the inaccessible reference, I would be inclined to mention it in the body of the text (i.e. attribute your citation to whoever it is who cites it (say Jones 2000) and say something like 'who attributes this view to Smith 1994' and then include the full separate refs for Jones and Smith in the table of References.

Incidentally, the fact that a book is out print does not mean that it is necessarily inaccessible; it may exist in libraries and be obtainable on interlibrary loan. I appreciate that not everyone is in the happy position of being able to take full advantage of such facilities.

What I said was 'unfriendly' to the reader was what I took to be Barry Walford's otherwise reasonable suggestion that you needn't give the reference details for the original since the interested reader could chase them up via the text which cited it. My point was that the reader might want to know the full ref without going to the secondary source to find it.

Best