Citations

Here are some notes on citations. Module One might not call for many quotes but it is important to get used to using the academic format.

A quote should be on a separate line, in italics and indented. The quote also needs a ‘lead in’ and ‘lead out’ in your text. You cannot just put it there to make a point by itself.

Example:

“Dewey’s Pragmatist perspective further develops the research’s understanding of dance as language. Whereas above phenomenological hermeneutics implies dance could be thought of as dealing with the leftovers of verbal language Dewey reverses this idea:

‘language, signs and significance, come into existence not by intent and mind but by over-flow, by-product, in gestures and sounds. The story of language is the story of the use made of these occurrences; a use that is eventual as well as eventful.’  (Dewey 1958, p.175)

Dewey sees verbal language as an adornment to the act of communicating. He sees communication as the drive to share and collaborate meaning. Effort of doing this can lead to verbal language but communication is not brought into existence by verbal language and the effort of communication could just as well lead to a movement language . ” – Akinleye, unpublished thesis

The citation (Dewey, 1958, p.175) is linked to the following in the bibliography, which should not be separate, but a part of the same document. That means that when you read the above quote you can turn to the back pages and see which book it is. The citation tells us this: to find the book you go to the bibliography and look for the name Dewey. I may have a number of books by Dewey I have quoted from so then you look for the one published in 1958. Now you can locate the full detail example below. 

If there were two books by Dewey published in 1958 in my bibliography then I would put

(Dewey, 1958a p.175). Then the bibliography I would put 1958a again so you know which one of the two books by him published in 1958 I was talking about. So the bibliography entry will look like this:

Dewey, J. (1958) Experience and nature, New York: Dover Publications.

This citation format is Harvard:

Surname, initcal of first name. (Year the book you are looking at was published), where it was published: who published it

Note the punctuation as well as the content of the text. Using this method means your work is in line with standard citation formats, which means that anyone who is used to doing research can read your work and find the very text you have copied the quote from. Every book published in UK is in the British Library. That means that someone can find the book you are talking about. That is what citation is for. It is not to prove you know the quote was in a book by X.

Also note that the date is the date of the book you are holding in your hand when you look at the quote. So for instance Dewey did not first publish‘Experience and Nature’ in 1958, but that is the date of the book I have, so when I put the page number (…, p.175) you can find the page with the quote on it. In a book published earlier or later the print size maybe different or the size of the book pages etc… this means that that quote is not on page 175 of those books. This is why it is important the date is of the publication you have looked at, otherwise the page number is meaningless.

Does it make sense?

Adesola